Thanks to generous support from the Ohio Arts Council, we are so pleased to be welcoming eight new artists to Terradise Nature Center as artists-in-residence for 2024. New this year, the Terradise Environmental Arts Residency features 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.

Please welcome our 2024 Terradise Artists-in-Residence & Arts Fellows:

March:

• Bobbi Kitten (Marion) — Creative Writing & Multidisciplinary
• Kati Henning (Marion) — Large-Format Oil Painting

April:

• Steve Roseberry (Marion) — 3-D, Sculpture, & Mixed Media
• Vicky Branson (Marion) — Creative Writing, Deep Listening, & Journals

May:

• Tiauna Boyd (Marion) — Traditional African-American Foodways
• Jennifer Renée Haverstock (Marion) — Cake Decorating // Cake Art

June:

• Ms. Katie Reese-Hairston (Marion) — African-American Gardening
• Michael Scott (Marion) — Music Performance & Composition

Enviromental Arts Fellows (Full Season):

• Paco, Sofia, & Nicolas Ollervides — Botanical Illustration & Identification
• Nicole Shardé Boyd — Poetry, Spoken Word, & Pressed Flower Art

CONGRATULATIONS to our new cohort of 2024 Artists-in-Residence & Fellows. We look forward to showcasing your work & inviting our audience to your culminating events over the next four months! Stay tuned for more!

Terradise Environmental Arts Residency 2024 Details:

Two artists will be “artists-in-residence” each month – ideally, two artists from two different counties within our expanded four-county North-Central Ohio service area (Marion, Morrow, Wyandot, & Crawford Counties) — from March thru June. We interpret “from” loosely – to mean anyone living in, working in, or ancestrally from either county. (See our application for more details.)

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.

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.

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 eight one-month residencies with a residency stipend of $1,000 each in 2024, 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.

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!