Summer Residency at TLC Farm

Summer Residency at TLC Farm 

   Tryon Life Community Farm (www.tryonfarm.org) a non-profit sustainability education center in Portland, OR, is seeking a visual artist/designer to assist in the completion of our educational signage project.   

About the Project 

   Here at TLC Farm, we are re-embodying and re-weaving ancient stories of what it is to be alive. We take as our base operating principle the fact that all systems, and all elements of each system, are interconnected, and that the deepest knowledge and understanding comes from looking at a subject within the context of the greater whole(s) in which it is embedded.    As a land-based project which is open to the public 6 days of the week, we have the need for accessible, thorough and comprehensive signage so that visitors to the land are able to self-educate.  We have been developing concepts and design ideas for 9 educational signs for the past several months, and are now ready to move into the finalized design & production process.    In some ways, each sign on this tour is telling the same story: one of the great web of life in which we find ourselves suspended. That said, each sign focuses on a different aspect of the web, magnifying one piece of what knowledge and skills are necessary for humans to relearn in order to live in harmony with our Mother Earth.  About the Residency 

   In exchange for 25 hours of work a week (at least 15 of which must be spent on the land sign project) we will offer you space for a tent on our land, the opportunity to live in a thriving land-based community and support around integration into and completion of the project.  We ask $5 a day for food, and would welcome you to arrive generally in May and to stay through the end of August, with a project completion deadline of no later than September 1st.    We are looking for a person who both has a developed understanding of the concepts about which the signs are meant to educate – including colonialism, permaculture, earth-based spirituality, bioregionalism, organic gardening, natural building, watershed ecology, native rights, etc. – as well as the ability to translate these relatively complex concepts into a coherent series of interconnected images.  The balance of design work to art production in this residency is yet to be determined, and will develop as the summer and project progress. 

How To Apply 

   Please send electronic copies of the work you feel best represents your ability to undertake this project along with answers to the following questions to [email protected]. 

Who are you?  What are you doing?  How does this project interface with and build upon the time you have already spent upon this earth?Tell us about your experiences living in community.Tell us about your relationship with the land.How do you work collaboratively as an artist?  As a designer?How would you illustrate, with minimal text, the concepts of globalization and re-localization?How will you deal with potentially having to do your creative work in a shared-use space in which there might be meetings, children and a general feeling of scrappiness and DIYishness?How will you deal with the dynamic of this being a position which requires a lot of self-direction and motivation within the context of the community having a clear idea of the product desired and already having put a lot of foundational work into the project?Is there anything else you’d like us to know?