Artist Residencies at the Motherhouse
Posted on December 1, 2022, by Eleanor Craig SL
The Loretto Community at the Motherhouse is partnering with the Kentucky Foundation for Women (KFW) to offer artist residencies of one to three weeks. The residencies are open to feminist artists who are residents of Kentucky and who have demonstrated achievement in creating work high in artistic merit and based on social justice issues. The first 10 residencies were offered between mid-June and late August, totaling 74 nights. Painters, writers, and multimedia artists received a stipend from KFW and funds for room and board which Loretto provided. Housing was in the Valley House and in Jeanne Dueber’s Rhodes Hall apartment. The second round of artists’ residencies began at Loretto in October and will continue through the spring of 2023. For further details and testimonials about the summer residencies, go to www.kfw.org.
Poet Jayne Moore Waldrop shared the following piece, composed during her residency at Loretto.
Loretto Haiku
August 20-27, 2022
The view to Badin captures full beauty of place and then reflects it back.
Rain comes down in sheets thunder, lightning, the full works — All hail, rainbow wisp.
Water and clear light encircle the hill, shine like a halo of hope.
Sister Jeanne blankets the world with beauty and gives us so much to see.
Sister Jeanne, a small build, a big heart, wide-angle vision searching life’s details.
Countless feet have crossed these treads on paths well chosen for earth and heaven.
Cow bawling, calling as she brings new life—a calf drops, stands, fresh, complete.
This home on the hill feels closer to earth and sky, the quick and the dead.
Love given as care — tending people, land, Earth-healing as duty.
Milkweed pods breaking, spilling seeds, reaching the ground, feeding future wings.