Elvira Clayton
January 2025
Multi-media Artist: Textile and Sculpture
My 2025 Shillim Institute /One Landscape Artist Residency project centered on community engagement and creative collaboration. Dr. Manjusha introduced me to Seema Chorghe, who shared stories about her community's quilt-making rituals, such as using remnants of old clothing from grandparents to make the quilted textile that a newborn would be wrapped in for the first five days of their life. She told me this sacred quilted work would remain in the family through the generations. In preparation for the workshops, I self-crafted and warped several looms using recycled cardboard, and I set up a weaving workstation for their children. I soon realized that Seema had taught her younger daughter how to create a weaving from start to finish, and she was able to assist the other children while I focused on teaching the women. It was an honor to be invited into their homes, and community, it is a memory that I will keep.
Sanju Jain
January 2025
Painter
Constantine Beacher and Rebecca Walden
February 2025
Choreographer and Dancer
Shatabdi Malik
February 2025
Odissi Dancer
Jignesh Sheth
February 2025
Musician
Tanya Marcuse
January 2024
Sacred Grove
The tenderly conserved landscape at Shillim transforms at night. Twilight falls fast in the Sacred Grove, the tall trees shading the understory. The majesty of the landscape becomes intimate, as views of the distance fall into darkness. I used lighting to both reveal and transform that closer space, working to describe the lyrical gestures of vines, layers of shallow depth, and even, at times, lighting the thickness of the air.
An orb of light opens up a portal that can work as both positive and negative space, both an absence and a presence.
Though I created these effects, I felt like I was beholding a glimpse of the unknown, an experience I hope to impart to viewers.
Photographer
Ann de Forest
February 2024
Walking Artists and Writer
Kushala Vora
February 2024
Multimedia Artist
Erin Gee
2016
Composer
Shillim Quartet
While exploring the landscape of Shillim, I often heard a bird timing its vocal entrance to coincide with the silence left between the periodic calls of another species. By the third or fourth time I heard this, I was no longer doubting. They were listening to each other. One month after returning home, I created 28 species of imaginary birds with my own voice. This made me feel a new relationship to the frequencies of vocal production.
Some months later, Aaron Mendonca, a fellow member of the One Landscape Collective, spoke to me about how “sounds can activate biodynamic energy”, including possibilities for sounds to stimulate regrowth within a damaged old-growth forest. I realize now that the biofeedback process that Aaron described had happened to me. The sounds of the ravine activated a dynamic change in my understanding of what vocal sound production is, and so it ruffled the way I think about my work and creative life going forward. This is not a matter of imitating the sounds themselves but rather manifesting their qualities within newly healing and growing organisms, including oneself.
Joel Gordon
2016
Sound Engineer
Shillim Morning Chorus
While at Shillim, Joel Gordon, a master sound engineer, recorded approximately 25 hours of sound in the forest during the early morning hours. This material has been incorporated into the audio archive of the Cornell Bioacoustics Conservation Laboratory, where it is used in ongoing scientific studies.