Pine Meadow Ranch Center for Arts & Agriculture
Residencies
About the Residency Program
Our vision at Pine Meadow Ranch Center for Arts & Agriculture (PMRCAA) is to connect sustainable agricultural practices, conservation, arts and sciences with traditional and contemporary crafts and skills integral to ranching life including: metal, glass, wood and leather work, ceramics, fibers and textiles, writing, painting and drawing, photography, film and music.
Efforts consist of offering a space where cultural practitioners, ecological scientists and creative thinkers can immerse themselves in their work and/or research through access to studios, open space, and beautiful scenery, working alongside PMRCAA staff, volunteers and community members to preserve the natural biosphere and historic buildings of the ranch for years to come.
At PMRCAA, we strive to bring together individuals from diverse backgrounds and cultures to find creative solutions to unique challenges. We hope to serve as a platform that fosters the exchange of knowledge between creative people from in- and outside of Central Oregon.
Residents are asked to contribute to the ranch or the local community by helping around the ranch and/or by presenting a workshop or artist’s talk in the community. At the same time, residents are given time and space for their own artistic practice.
Program Overview
In 2018, PMRCAA hosted trial residencies by inviting eight artists for two-week stays. In 2019, PMRCAA moved into its pilot year with more engagement opportunities for residents on the ranch and in the local area community.
Currently, we are hosting three residents at a time. Residents are being accommodated for two to four-week residencies from mid-March to mid-November. They are provided studio space in one of the ranch buildings and a private room with a shared bathroom, kitchen, dining and laundry area. As we continue to remodel other buildings, PMRCAA will be able to accommodate different artists, scientists and scholars. For our 4-week long residencies, residents are invited to participate in an open studio event towards the end of their residency.
The PMRCAA residency program is designed as a retreat experience to pursue personal creative work and share collegial interaction within a small community of creative thinkers. In this spirit, residents are expected to commit themselves for the entire residency session they are awarded.
This program strikes a balance between providing residents the opportunity to socialize with other residents, as well as ample time to work independently. We trust residents to choose the rhythm they need during their creative process, and hope that by working side-by-side in a supportive environment they might find interdisciplinary inspiration.
The 2023 Residency Program
If you desire strawberries, you eat them. If you love strawberries, you grow them yourself. – Hannah Arendt
We are excited about our theme for our 2023 Residency: FOOD & AGRICULTURE.
Food is inextricably connected to thriving people, sustainable environments, prosperous economies and community resilience. Looking forward, many agricultural practices will need to adapt (if they haven’t already) to meet the challenges posed by changes to our environment, climate and population. In recent years, significant efforts have been made to shift away from the industrialized system that currently dominates the food industry, in the hope that a collection of more holistic techniques and sources of food production solutions will take its place. These efforts also explore collaborative forms of community interactions that give rise to community-supported agricultural initiatives such as farmers’ markets and seed to table co-operatives, which encourage us to eat more seasonally and locally.
Aiming to improve our understanding of regional community food systems (from production to processing to distribution to consumer) and to explore strategies for strengthening local food systems, for this residency cycle we will host artists, culture bearers, scientists, scholars and researchers to reflect on the theme of food & agriculture as foundational expressions of life.
Our Residency Application is currently closed. Applications for 2024 residencies will open in late summer 2023.
To apply, click the button below to access our application portal. There, click the ‘Create New Account’ button. Follow the prompts to create an account. Once logged in, you will see information to apply to the 2023 PMRCAA Residency Program.
Click here to download a PDF version of the 2023 Residency Application Questions.
Before you apply, we encourage you to look at PMRCAA’s goals and history, as well as The Roundhouse Foundation’s Mission and Vision. PMRCAA foregrounds its identity in a strong sense of place and community, and encourages residents to actively engage with the local talent in an exchange of ideas and knowledge.
Click here to watch a tutorial video for a walk-through on how to sign up in our application portal.