STONELEAF RETREAT

2022 BAXTER ST FAMILY RESIDENCY AT STONELEAF RETREAT

We are proud to announce Nandita Raman as the 2022 awardee of the Baxter St Family Residency at STONELEAF RETREAT. The two-week program, started last year with inaugural awardee Nona Faustine, provides lens-based artists who are also mothers with an unrestricted grant of $2,500, focused studio time, one-on-one critiques with members of Baxter St’s Art Advisory Board, and family accommodations on STONELEAF’s 22-acre property in New York’s Catskill Mountains. The residency is a partnership between Baxter St, a 137-year-old organization renowned for its critical support of emerging lens-based artists, and STONELEAF, an artist residency and creative space for women and families, and is made possible by the generous support of 7|G Foundation and the Howard & Sarah D. Solomon Foundation.

“The convergence of time, space and an atmosphere of relative ease brings about thinking and making for me.” says Raman. “As a parent it’s incredibly challenging to be in both places of making art and making play with my daughter. I really appreciate Stoneleaf and Baxter Street for this support where the two can coincide.”

The Baxter St Family Residency  at STONELEAF RETREAT grew out of conversations Baxter St President Michi Jigarjian and STONELEAF Co-Founder Helen Toomer had regarding the increased difficulties of working and parenting during a pandemic. As working parents, Jigarjian and Toomer wanted to provide time, space, and support to artists who are juggling families, artistic practice, and, often, a day job, and simply do not have the time or resources to do it all. 

“While the traditional residency model of escaping to a bucolic environment to singularly focus on artistic practice can be a well-intentioned dream, for most artists who are also mothers, leaving family behind is often not an option,” said Michi Jigarjian. “The Baxter St Family Residency is intended to drive home the notion that motherhood and artistic practice do not have to be mutually exclusive.” 

“We’re honored to continue this collaboration with Baxter St to increase this necessary support of artists with children and we cannot wait to welcome Nandita and her family to STONELEAF.” said Helen Toomer.

The Baxter St Family Residency at STONELEAF RETREAT continues Baxter St and STONELEAF’s shared commitment to serving the evolving needs of their artistic communities. Artist grantees are jointly and unanimously selected from a pool of nominees. The Family Residency is intended as a purely supportive and experiential experience, and does not impose required deliverables upon the selected artist. 

ABOUT NANDITA RAMAN

Nandita Raman is from Benaras (India) and works with a range of media including photography, video, drawing, and language. Raman’s work has been exhibited at George Eastman Museum, Museum of Moving Images, Center for Documentary Studies, Duke University and Columbia University. She has curated group exhibitions in New York and Varanasi. Her work has been written about in the New York Times, British Journal of Photography, the Hindu; and published in MIT Press’s Performance Art Journal, and the Documenta 14 volume South as a State of Mind. She has been a resident at Baxter St Camera Club of New York, and a recipient of Alkazi Foundation’s Documentary Photography Grant. Nandita earned an MFA from the Bard College-International Center of Photography and teaches photography at SUNY Purchase College.

The construction of a picturesque landscape, the subsidiary framing of human figures as a measure of scale next to magnificent architecture, and the absence of women holding themselves with agency are some of the traits of nineteenth century photographs that continue to shape and inform contemporary aesthetics. Raman looks at archives to rethink and dislodge these historical representations. Her work reflects on aspects of human nature: the affinity to defining emotions and things, to resisting all things that lie outside of the 'normal', and, most urgently, on imagining all relationships through the framework of use and extraction. The studio is a space and a site of spaciousness for her, where she can let her guard down, think, and make without being in view. She says, "I consider this a privilege, and think if people at large could afford to slow down, it would enable a less self-conscious, reactionary life, potentially leading to a different imagination of relationships with human, non-human beings and our environment."

ABOUT BAXTER ST

Baxter St at the Camera Club of New York supports emerging lens-based artists at critical moments of their careers. Founded in 1884, Baxter St is one of New York’s oldest artist-run nonprofit spaces, and has long been a catalyst for innovative creation within the artistic mediums of photography and video practices. Through exhibitions, workspace residency programs, and conversations series, Baxter St is a hub for a vibrant community deeply engaged in the art of lens-based contemporary practices.

ABOUT 7|G

7|G Foundation champions organizations and individuals that challenge inequality in human rights, education, art and culture. By partnering with organizations, artists and community facilitators we seek to build strong community bonds that elevate local culture, while supporting cultural change founded upon our core values of social impact and sustainability.