Thanks to generous support from the Ohio Arts Council, we are so pleased to be able to bring back our Terradise Environmental Arts Residency for its fourth season in Spring 2025! This year, we anticipate being able to welcome nine new artists-in-residence to Terradise Nature Center as artists-in-residence for 2025. The Terradise Environmental Arts Residency is open to artists in any genre (including musicians, writers, performers, & folk/traditional cultural artists) living in, working in, or with ancestral ties to Marion, Morrow, Wyandot, & Crawford County: the historic extent of the Sandusky Plains prairie formation, which Terradise ancestor Trella Romine researched & fought to protect & resurrect. New this year, we will reserve four residency slots for near-cutoff applicants from past applicant pools, in an effort to honor applicants’ labor and to make our residency more accessible to our community. Additionally, our program will feature three “alumni” residency // workshop opportunities for past Terradise Environmental Artists-in-Residence interested in continuing & deepening their engagement with Terradise Nature Center. We anticipate applications will formally open in late December/early January 2025, with an application deadline of March 1st, 2025, & residency months for new residents in April, May, & June of 2025. We look forward to your application; & to many lovely arts events to come in Spring 2025! Stay tuned for more!

Terradise Environmental Arts Residency 2025 Details:

This year — the fourth season of the Terradise Environmental Arts Residency — we’ll be doing things a little differently, to honor the labor of past applicants, & to help make our in-demand paid residency experience more accessible to more local artists. In 2025, we’ll support three artists-in-residence each month – ideally, artists from different counties within our expanded four-county North-Central Ohio service area (Marion, Morrow, Wyandot, & Crawford Counties), & working in different genres/modes — in April, May, & June. We interpret “from” loosely – to mean anyone living in, working in, or ancestrally from either county. (See our application for more details.) Much as we have loved our February & March residencies, we’re sticking to warmer months this year for on-site programming, with the expectation of being able to host outdoor events that get participants out into Terraidise!

New this year, unsuccessful applicants from our past three residency application cycles will be given an option to have their past application materials automatically considered for a 2025 residency. Four of our nine available slots will be reserved for unsuccessful past applicants, to honor the labor already put in to those outstanding applications.

We’re seeking artists in all genres — from photography to painting to theatre to music to folk/traditional arts to poetry to foodways to woodcarving to dance to film/video/media arts! Artists from historically-marginalized communities are especially encouraged to apply. Past Terradise Environmental Arts Residents are eligible to reapply after one year “off” the program. Residents from 2022 and 2023 are now eligible for a second residency; however, priority may be given to new applicants. Alumni should also check out our alumni residency/workshop program this year.

Our residencies are “non-residential” (i.e., no housing will be provided) & are intended, in most cases, for artists currently living in Ohio or with access to a place to stay in the region; but you will be expected to visit Terradise Nature Center and/or Terradise Nature Preserve (across the river, managed by Marion County Parks District) at least three times during your residency. You will not be expected to collaborate or meet up with the other artist; although you’re welcome to if you’d like. If you are a member of an indigenous tribe with historic ties to Ohio living out-of-state, & do not have current housing options in the region, contact us to see what we can arrange: we would love to host you!

As a Terradise Environmental Artist-in-Residence, your tasks will be to:

• Visit Terradise, & explore & enjoy our property, & this important stretch of the Olentangy (Whetstone) Riveer
• Explore Terradise’s history, mission, & landscape – including the history & legacies of founders Trella & Ray Romine, and/or their poetry, photography, & writings
• Produce original artwork in any genre inspired by the Terradise Nature Center or Terradise Nature Preserve properties, our mission, our history, Trella & Ray Romine’s artwork, lives, or archives, or our stretch of the Olentangy!
• Your work can make direct use of Terradise (photography, incorporating materials, sound/film recording, performance/installation), or can be inspired by this land & our mission!

All resident artists will be asked to co-host a two-hour public program, workshop, or artists’ talk, outdoors at Terradise or remotely on Zoom, at the conclusion of their residency month.

Thanks to the generous support of the Ohio Arts Council, we are thrilled to be able to support nine one-month residencies with a residency stipend of $1,000 each in 2025, with an additional small materials stipend available for necessary project supplies for each artist’s residency on a reimbursement basis! Stipends & supply reimbursements will be provided at the end of each artist’s residency month, upon successful completion of their public event. We reserve the right to adjust stipend amounts & number of artists based on number of applicants.

Note: Due to changes in grant funds supporting this program to an every-other-year cycle, as well as shifting organizational priorities, it is likely that the Terradise Environmental Arts Residency will go on hiatus for the 2026 season; all interested North-Central Ohio artists who have been considering this program are encouraged to apply in the 2025 cycle, as future seasons of the residency cannot, at this time, be guaranteed.

About Terradise Nature Center

Terradise Nature Center — located on the historic homestead of pioneering Marion County 20th-century naturalists, poets, & local historians Trella & Ray Romine along the Whetstone (Olentangy) River just outside of Caledonia, Ohio — is one of Marion County’s fastest-growing cultural heritage tourism & outdoor destinations. Envisioned as a way to open Trella & Ray’s enchanting home “on a hill, in a woods, by a river” to all of Marion & Morrow County, & to share the Romines’ tireless conservation, arts, & local history/heritage preservation work with the community, Terradise operates as a 501(c)(3) organization, & features rentals of the historic Romine Homestead (featuring the Romines’ photography collection & naturalist library), open hikes & visits along Terradise’s beautiful five acres directly along a historic fishing bend in the Olentangy River (locally known as the “Whetstone,”), & a suite of award-winning environmental education, community conservation, & outdoor environmental sensing experiences. We serve the historic Sandusky Plains region of North-Central Ohio: Marion & Morrow Counties, along the Olentangy River’s flow; & our neighbors in Crawford & Wyandot Counties to the North.

Terradise Nature Center’s mission is “to inform and engage our communities in their history, heritage and resources.” We operate exclusively for educational & recreational purposes: to educate Marion & Morrow Counties (& surrounding communities) about both natural & cultural heritage and resources — including the primary resource of our five beautiful acres of nature preserve — and, in service to that purpose, to study, conserve (including through native plant propagation), & build programming to activate the natural surroundings of the Terradise Nature Preserve, the Olentangy River, and associated wetlands and forest, for the bi-county community.

Although Terradise Nature Center is a nature center, our mission mandates us to work towards the preservation of Marion County’s natural and cultural heritage. This vision grows out of the work of Terradise’s founders — Marion County poet and conservationist Ray Romine, and Marion County photographer, filmmaker, local historian, conservationist, and florist Trella Romine, who together built what became the Romine Residence on our bend in the Whetstone (Olentangy) River in 1953. They named this piece of ground “Terradise”: meaning “heaven on earth.” From the 1950s through the early 2010’s, Terradise became an important site for the rise of both the local history movement in Marion County, and the nascent prairie conservation and native plant restoration movement in North-Central Ohio. Despite these busy organizing lives, the Romines were also artists; and their commitment to the importance of the arts and environments is reflected in Terradise’s dual mission. For more on our rich history & legacy at the intersection of environmental, conservation, arts, & public history programming, see our Caledonia Conservationists: Prairie Environmentalism Along the Whetstone digital exhibit.

About the Terradise Environmental Arts Residency

As a part of our strategic plan, Terradise Nature Center is excited to expand our arts programming in the next five years by mobilizing our beautiful six-acre nature preserve as location and muse for local art-making.

In 2021, Terradise Nature Center began to build on our annual photography contest to honor the life-long arts & culture committments of Trella & Ray Romine thru expanded on-sie arts programming: including Terradise’s efforts to preserve and present the photography, filmmaking, and poetry of Terradise founders Trella & Ray Romine, & the Ohio Arts Council & United Way of North-Central Ohio-funded Terradise Ambient: Environmental Soundscapes Along the Olentangy soundscape project.

In 2022, we launched the pilot season of the Terradise Environmental Arts Residency through the once-in-a-lifetime support of a Community Projects Grant from the Ohio Arts Council’s Arts Resiliency Initiative: designed to kickstart COVID-19 recovery in Ohio communities through direct funds to artists.

Thanks to OAC’s support, the pilot year of the Terradise Environmental Arts Residency was able to provide month-long grants to twelve community artists from Marion & Morrow County between February & June 2022. The first year of our residency program led to six dynamic artist-produced public arts events. We were proud to continue our Terradise Environmental Arts Residency for a second season in 2023: bringing aboard eight additional artists, & also providing focused support & artmaking opportunities for four emerging or returning artists in North-Central Ohio through a special “mini-residency” program. Learn more about our past artists-in-residence & past iterations of the Terradise Environmental Arts Residency program at this link.

The Terradise Environmental Arts Residency is currently the only paid artist’s residency in North-Central Ohio; & is the only artist’s residency in the wider North-Central Ohio region explicitly serving artists living, working, or with historic roots in the Sandusky Plains region. Moreover — in keeping with our organizational committment to social justice, accessibility, outreach, & reparative praxis — our residency explicitly seeks to honor, support, & amplify the work of non-professional, working-class, of-color, immigrant, youth, elder, disabled, queer, & other historically-marginalized artists: including folk & traditional cultural artists working in genres that may not always or historically have been considered “fine” art. This spirit of inclusivity, alongside our committment to mobilizing our breathtaking property & legacy to help local artists grow their work & expand their arts livelihoods, sets the Terradise Environmental Arts Residency apart.

We are so excited to continue the Terradise Environmental Arts Residency for its third season in 2024; & to connect a new cohort of North-Central Ohio artists — including welcoming artists from Wyandot & Crawford Counties for the first time! — to the magic, majesty, legacy, & powerful vision of our stretch of the Whetstone.

Come join us!