AiS Grantee Highlight: Elsewhere Studios

RedLine is a proud partner and administrator of the Arts in Society grant. This collaborative program provides grants to both individuals and organizations that use art as a vehicle to promote social justice and community welfare. 

We love highlighting our Arts in Society (AiS) grant recipients and all the unique and impactful projects made possible by their grant.

We’re excited continue this series with the 2022 AiS Grantee: Elsewhere Studios!

What is Elsewhere Studios?

Elsewhere Studios is a small art residency formed in 2010 in the rural setting of Paonia, CO. Elsewhere is an eclectic, imaginative space that values exploration and experimentation.

We provide a unique and fertile environment that nurtures artists with focused time and space and facilitates intentional community engagement. We are committed to generating accessible, equitable, and restorative creative experiences in the North Fork Valley.

We host artists from around the world and provide them with the opportunity to focus on their work in a unique and supportive environment. Elsewhere generally hosts four to six artists at one time, and has hosted over 300 artists from over 22 countries.

Elsewhere is open to visual artists, writers, musicians, and performing artists as well as scientists, activists, teachers, students, or any kind of creative worker interested in exploring and expanding their work.

Artists are supported in the creation of new work and ideas through dedicated time, focused space, and an environment that is both stimulating and nurturing. Residents have lots of freedom to structure their time how they wish: connecting with the community, exploring the outdoors, working independently, etc.

Artists stay for one-month durations, with the option to be in residence for consecutive months up to six months. Elsewhere generally hosts four to six artists at one time, and residents share their practice with the community through public Final Friday open studios.

Additionally, residents often host impromptu events, teaching workshops in the community or hosting interactive projects.

Elsewhere is focused on creating opportunities for underrepresented artists through our Parent Residency, Indigenous Poet Residency, Aging Creatively, and by offering scholarships for BIPOC and LGBTQIA2S+ creatives.

Elsewhere is committed to social and environmental justice through its everyday practices and specific projects such as INSPIRED: Art at Work and Art, Environment and Sustainability.

Follow Elsewhere Studios on Instagram >

Tell us about your mural project that will utilize your AiS grant. 

Elsewhere Studios has teamed up with The Learning Council and Arts for All, two other nonprofit organizations in the North Fork Valley, to create murals celebrating Latinx/a/o heritage on the Western Slope and centering the creative contributions of the area’s youth.

In the beginning of 2022, we put out an open call for regional high school students and recent graduates to apply to be paid members of the mural team and we selected three students from Delta, Hotchkiss, and Cedaredge. We then contracted a professional artist to facilitate the design and implementation of the mural, and our team was complete. 

This team traveled around the region to conduct interviews with various folks connected to the Latinx community, including migrant workers, business owners, locals, students, etc.

The content from these interviews was discussed among the student artists and distilled into visual themes that could be integrated into a mural.

Indigenous culture and myth, Our Lady of Guadalupe, and the region’s agriculture were the predominant threads connecting all of these conversations and are evident in the finished mural. 

 The team was overwhelmed by the community enthusiasm and engagement in Olathe, CO, and decided to pursue it as the first mural site. The owners of a bakery and carnicería were happy to make available an empty wall on the side of their main street business and painting began in earnest over the summer break from school.

We celebrated the completion of the mural with a community event where folks could stamp their handprints in paint on the wall surrounding the mural. That event generated a lot of interest in the project so we returned to Olathe for the Festival Agrícola in September and offered more art-based community activities.

With the Olathe mural complete and the student artists returning to school, the team returned to the planning stage for a second mural in the North Fork Valley.

Unfortunately, a terrible and recent tragedy shook all of Delta County and especially our Latinx community: a car crash killed two students and injured two others. The immeasurable loss of Eddie Carillo and Alexi Armendariz stopped all of us in our tracks (here are fundraisers for the families of Eddie and Alexi).

Our team was connected to Eddie, a North Fork High School student, and his family and wanted to do something.

We reorganized to include Eddie’s friends, family, and mentors and a grief counselor into our thought processes and collectively decided to pursue a memorial for Eddie in a mural near the intersection of Grand Ave. and Third St. in Paonia. This mural is currently in a collaborative design phase and we hope to begin painting in the coming weeks.

What's next in the pipeline for Elsewhere Studios? What other projects are you dreaming up this year, and how will your Arts in Society grant help to support these projects?

The memorial mural is at the top of our priorities right now, but we are also starting to announce our open calls for next season’s residencies, from June 2023 to February 2024.

The call for our main Residency is just getting underway, and we are excited to announce the call for our July Parent Residency within the month and the September Indigenous Poet Residency in early 2023.

We host a Final Friday Open Studio at the end of every month, and our next big public event will be a New Year’s Eve Fundraiser Party (back by popular demand – and you’re invited!).

To kick off the season, we’ll have graduate students from regional universities in residence through the Art, Environment and Sustainability program. We have several other initiatives underway that we are excited to announce publicly as soon as we can!

The support from AIS is indispensable to our mission of bringing accessible, equitable, and restorative creative experiences to the North Fork Valley.

Elsewhere is a grassroots, artist-run nonprofit with no institutional affiliations or endowments – we love this resourceful attitude but it can be a source of tension when it comes to projects that require a big budget. We firmly believe in fair pay for creative work and services and insist on high standards for ourselves; grant support helps us achieve more impactful goals.

Anyone who would like to support our scrappy organization is encouraged to donate through ColoradoGives – your contribution goes a long way!

Subscribe to Elsewhere Studio’s newsletter >

What was your experience like when applying for an Arts in Society grant? What tips would you share with other artists or organizations looking to apply for an AiS grant?

The application process required us to have a clear vision for the project and place a lot of emphasis on communicating how our goals were aligned with AIS’s. Getting feedback from a wide variety of folks was our biggest asset!

Meet Another Arts in Society Grantee: The Red Road Project

The Red Road Project began in 2013 by two friends, Danielle SeeWalker and Carlotta Cardana. The project aims to explore and document the Native American narrative and offer the viewer a contemporary and Indigenous representation of the American Indian perspective.

Through The Red Road Project, Native peoples and communities have a platform to utilize their own voices and be seen the way they want to be represented.

Learn more about The Red Road Project >