Calling all Earth lovers to join me in building the International Art and Ecology Residency endowed to our regenerative future!
Earth Calls Residency offers fertile conditions for transformative, integrated experiences of community and the land. Based on the holistic belief that all life forms are interconnected, the program’s mission is in the service to the individual, cultural and environmental wellbeing from a nature-informed perspective.
The Earth Calls is an international creative and social cross-pollination Residency committed to our sustainable future and Earth Stewardship by practicing values of healing, protection, conservation, regeneration, education and creation.
“Regeneration refers to a system’s ability to evolve its own capacity and build beneficial reciprocal relationships with other systems.” Abrah Dresdale
The Residency is situated in a place of potent beauty on a pristine mountain top in pastoral Serbia, next to a vast horizon, with great biodiversity, forests and pastures, on the brink of wilderness, remote from any industry, yet accessible.
During the pandemic, I built “the foundational stones” of the Residency. With your assistance we will embark upon a year of development toward the goal to open the Residency to the public in the summer 2024.
ACT GLOBALLY, ACT LOCALLY
Time is of the essence to take action in Earth care on a personal level.
Seeking the answer to my personal greatest impact came to its zenith during the pandemic…
In 2020, after over two decades of environmental art practice in the United States, I headed to a postwar visit to my ancestral land in Southwest Serbia, to work on an eco art installation series — with the healing of people and place on my mind. I found that my beloved vernacular culture has been overpowered by the exploitative mindset of current policies.
In 2021, winning the support of the Foundation for the Contemporary Arts, NYC, I presented these environmental works in a solo exhibition of large scale photographs at the Priboj Homeland Museum, Serbia.
ENDOWMENT TO THE PLANET
During my prolonged stay due to the pandemic, I decided "the time is now" to act on my life goal of starting an Art and Ecology Residency. It’s my way of giving back to society at large my credentials of the environmental art profession, unique uprooted-bicultural experiences, as well as my ancestral land.
So far I have implemented the project's first phase:
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set property logistics
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managed professional land survey and started digging the water well and the rain and wastewater chanel system
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established an organic the cascade garden
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cut a few evergreen trees, treated the wood, used the lumber to build the Eco Cabin One structure (where I humbly dwell now) and left the rest to age for the additional structures
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began landscaping and the road to the cabins
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formed a Print Store of my artworks at my website to support this mission.
GOAL
The goal is a comfortable year round stay for an integrated people-land connection. The setting will include three eco cabins, camping platforms, an indoor and outdoor workshop with communal wood deck, two auxiliary sheds, greenhouse, organic garden, a tree house, outside wood furniture -tables and benches, and solar lamps around the property. And we are determined to grow…
PUBLIC PROGRAMING
Programs will welcome creative, educational and restorative sessions for artists, environmental activists and nature lovers. Educational and environmental art sessions will center around sustainable and regenerative themes connecting global and host cultures.
"The regeneration paradigm is drastically different from a sustainability paradigm, where the goal is to sustain (rather than degree further) the current conditions." Abrah Dresdale
“WHEN YOU CONTROL THE SEED YOU CONTROL LIFE ON EARTH”
Dr Vandana Shiva.
The Residency will house a Heirloom Seed Library joined with foraged wild-grown species such as medicinal herbal teas and mushrooms.
Organic food comes from the already started garden and from local farms. In the garden we nurture eco habitats including fruit, nuts, berries, vegetables. We use heirloom seeds for polyculture patches such as three sisters: corn-bean-pumpkin. The plan includes orchard tree forestation, mushroom foraging and growing, and a honeybee station.
Bee Guard Inn, New York State Council on the Arts supported living sculpture project housing local bees, Catskill Mountains
ABOUT THE FOUNDER- ENDOWER
I am a Yugoslavian born/American environmental artist, with over two decades of experience as a nomadic art professional (Art Project Director, Museum Exhibition Specialist, Educator, Placemaker) activist and permaculture designer.
As a dual citizen of the United States and Serbia, my mission is to link the global community and the local culture. Serbia is a postwar social conundrum deeply affected by the war consequences. There is no systemic support for eco art initiatives, such as the one I propose here.
Pollock Krasner Foundation supported bicultural project presenting disbalanced biodiversity of the same species, Trapa Natans are native and endangered species in Europe, in the States they are costly invasive species.
Image Left: Chicago Cultural Center, Right: Belgrade Student Center
MY MOST FORMATIVE INFLUENCES ARE MOTHER NATURE AND THE WAR
My sense of place evolved from intimate closeness to nature, my first and master teacher and inspiration. I had fallen in love with the language of nature before I learned to read, on the visits to my ancestral mountaintop land.
The other is uprootedness caused by the war in my Yugoslavian homeland. I found a reconciliation bridge between (my two citizenship) cultures in responsibly belonging to the nature of a place through my art and activism, regardless of the borders.
WHAT WILL YOUR CONTRIBUTIONS SUPPORT
Your contributions will support Phase 2 addressing the immediate priority infrastructure tasks toward the goal of providing comfortable conditions during all seasons:
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Winterization of Eco Cabin 1
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Interior insulation
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Interior Installations
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Solar and Water well system
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RainWater System
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Labor and some materials and Expansion of the garden and food forest
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The plan is to follow with Phase 3 of the project for the opening in the summer 2024.
The Earth Calls Residency is
ENDOWED TO THE GLOBAL COMMUNITY
To achieve such an audacious mission we count on the international solidarity of people who see climate change unfold with the urgency for action toward a sustainable future!
We invite you wherever you might reside on the globe to participate in the formation and the future programs of the Residency! We welcome alliance with eco oriented organizations, artists residencies and enthusiastic individuals.
All backers become FOREVER FRIEND OF EARTH CALLS!
Your name will appear as an Earth Calls backer on the web page and publishings.
You will get a desktop wallpaper image from the Eatrh Calls land!
GRATITUDE FOREVER!
