I-Park welcomes artists Aug. 20 for Open Studios Day

EAST HADDAM » Artists from the United States, China, Australia, Canada and Iran recently arrived in East Haddam for a fourweek residency at I-Park. Their stay will culminate in a free Open Studios Day on Sunday, Aug. 20, from 2 to 5 p.m., during which the public can meet the artists, view their work, and stroll I-Park’s 450-acre campus.

Selected through a competitive, juried process from a field of more than 600 applicants, the six artists represent diverse backgrounds and a varied range of artistic pursuits:

Lindsay Drager, a Michigan-based novelist, employs what she calls “experimental fiction” to explore issues of grief, loss and endings.

Visual artist Azita Moradkhani grew up in Tehran and now resides in Boston. Inspired by her first visit to a Victoria’s Secret store, she uses exquisitely drawn images of ladies lingerie to comment on issues of violence against women and political upheaval.

From her home on a 3,000-acre cattle farm in Australia, visual artist Anna Louise Richardson creates evocative drawings that explore humankind’s relationship to animals and the natural world.

Composer Harry Stafylakis creates orchestral music that draws upon his Greek heritage and his background in both classical and heavy metal music.

Spanish-born composer Octavio Vazquez now resides in New York City, but his compositions borrow from diverse sources, including a concerto written for the Galician gaita— a Spanish variation on the bagpipe.

Landscape architect Senbo Yang was born in China but now lives in California. His work often plays with perception in the landscape, culminating in projects that put ceramic donuts in a public square in Providence and California rolls on the streets of San Francisco.

“We continue to expand upon the traditional definitions of art, to introduce a broader array of disciplines to our program,” said I-Park co-founder and Executive Director Joanne Paradis, in a written statement. “This group is a representation of the varied art forms and backgrounds, making for a fascinating and, we hope, synergistic mix.”

During their fully-funded residencies at I-Park, each artist will enjoy a private studio and shared accommodations in a c. 1840 farmhouse. Each individual is free to pursue projects of his or her choosing, with minimal distractions except the lure of nature and the camaraderie of their fellow residents.

I-Park is both an open-air and a closed-studio laboratory for individual artistic pursuits in the fields of music composition and sound art; the visual arts; architecture; moving images; creative writing; and landscape, garden and ecological design.

From insights developed in the laboratory setting, it also develops and sponsors specially themed crossdisciplinary projects of cultural significance — and brings these discoveries to light in the public domain.

I-Park supports these individual and collaborative investigations through its international artistsin-residence program, the aesthetic engagement of its natural and built environments, and with on-site exhibitions, performances, symposia and special programs that facilitate artistic collaboration.

Since its founding in 2001, I-Park has sponsored more than 800 fully-funded four-week artists’ residencies.