Meg Hunt Artist Residency Program

Overview

The Wrangell Mountains Center (WMC) is a nonprofit organization whose mission is connecting people with wildlands through art, science, and education in Alaska. The Wrangell Mountains Residency Program aims to support artists of all genres, writers, and inquiring minds. Our organization and community will provide a unique and rustic workspace located in the heart of the nation’s largest national park.

We invite applicants with creative and inquisitive minds who will both add to and benefit from the interdisciplinary efforts at our community hub in McCarthy, Alaska and the surrounding Wrangell-St. Elias National Park and Preserve. Artists and writers of all genres and stages in their career are encouraged to apply for one of several two-week residencies. Artists from the global majority, who are underrepresented, marginalized, Alaska Natives, etc. are especially encouraged to apply. The WMC will make selections through a competitive admissions process. We hope to encourage emerging and mid-level career voices as well as mature professionals.

During the residency, the artist will be asked to share their experience with the public by demonstration, talk, or other means. The presentation will depend on the artist’s medium, interests, and experience.

The Setting

The Old Hardware Store (OHS), located next to McCarthy Creek at the end of main street McCarthy, is the heart of the WMC where meals are prepared and shared among staff, volunteers, and program participants. The OHS was built in 1911 as a town general mercantile and was converted into a community hub for arts and sciences in the 1980s. This 100 year old building is currently on the National Register of Historic Places. Across the street from the OHS is Porphyry Place, a former homestead cabin, where artists, scientists, and locals give public lectures and weekly youth programs take place. Located behind Porphyry Place is one of three gardens at the WMC, including a small greenhouse, which supply the WMC kitchen with fresh greens throughout the summer months. Residency participants will have the opportunity to experience and contribute to the sustainable living system at the WMC.

Each resident will be provided with a private and furnished live/work space. The smaller of the two is a cozy 12’ x 12’ standalone cabin with a small wood burning stove, desk, and twin size bed. The slightly larger studio is located on the second floor above a small workshop and includes a small propane heater, work tables, and queen size bed. There is an outhouse located just a few paces from both spaces. The studios are not equipped with electricity, but the long Alaskan summer days provide ample natural light for many hours and small electronics can be charged on our solar power system at the OHS. Residents will have access to common areas on campus and simple, healthy meals (mostly vegetarian) will be provided and shared communally with WMC staff, students, and visitors.

Our campus, located in the center of McCarthy, a small mountain community, and within the boundaries of the nation’s largest unit of the national park system (over 13 million acres), provides a unique natural and cultural environment for the WMC. Positioned near ice-capped mountains, the roaring Kennicott River and McCarthy Creek, and the raw terminus of the Kennicott Glacier, the local landscape is a dynamic laboratory for ecology, glaciology, and geology. The town of McCarthy was established during the copper mining period in the early 20th century. After the local copper mines were abandoned in the 1930s, the once booming community virtually became a ghost town, but as the national park was established in the 1980s and with the growth of local tourism, McCarthy has been rediscovered by everyone from Alaskans to international travelers. Many historic sites and buildings in McCarthy and Kennecott combine to make the area a rich cultural environment, hosting vibrant communities full of character and dynamic narratives. It is an ideal place for contemplation and creative endeavor.

2024 Applications Now Closed

REad about our 2024 artists

Star Padilla is a visual artist, painter, high school art educator and muralist creating public art with and for people of all ages. 

“Every drop of color is a meditation, decision, willful preparation, a flinging of the wrist or vicious scribbling; sometimes erasing other times frantically adding, wiping away then adding again. I never really know what I’m starting off with or even what I’m doing. I just know a specific mood sets me off as it translates into color, where layer upon layer mirrors every thought and mood of the passing day. I create more in color than themes, the work builds upon itself tiny conversations between dots bubbles and dashes. After families of color palettes convene together into a happy vibration, an elemental feeling tone, a vision emerges, at times a face or body, other times a ray of light or moonlit sea scape. I consider myself an Impressionist, who loves Surrealism and creates Abstract Naturalis.”

In 2024 we are hosting to residency cohorts during the summer. The first from June 5-19 (for two residents) and the second from July 30 - August 13 (for two residents).

To apply please submit the following by February 12, 2024 through the Call For Entry application portal (application portal closes at 11:59 Mountain Time). There is a $25 application fee. Artists from the global majority, who are underrepresented, marginalized, Alaska Natives, etc. are especially encouraged to apply. Please direct any questions or concerns to Artists@wrangells.org:

• Artist statement (1000 characters)

• Please upload your resume or CV (limit your resume to 1-2 pages).

• Why is this residency important to you? What do you hope to accomplish during your two weeks at the Wrangell Mountains Center? (2000 character limit)

• One goal of our residency program is for artists and writers to share their work with our community. Examples of such outreach include giving a slide lecture, teaching a short workshop, and/or having a public performance or exhibit. Are you comfortable sharing your work in a public setting? Explain what you propose to do to give back to the Wrangell Mountains Center and our community during or after your residency. We recognize that these plans may change and develop leading up to and during the course of a residency. (2000 character limit)

• Tell us about your workspace needs. (1000 character limit)

• Our setting is very primitive with limited water and electricity. We operate off the grid with a communal approach to sharing resources. Tell us about your experience living and working in remote locations and your comfort level with this challenge. (1000 character limit)

• Optional response: Artists from the global majority, who are underrepresented, marginalized, Alaska Natives, etc. are especially encouraged to apply. Do you identify with any of these groups of people? 

• Optional response: Is there anything else about your background or practice that you feel is important for us to know?

• Work samples: Please submit the following based on your area of focus. Visual Artists: 6-10 images of your work. Performance, video, dance, and music artists: please submit links to samples of your work online (for example on Vimeo, YouTube, or a personal webpage or blog). Please keep the time to about 15 minutes. Writers: upload up to 10 pages.

Selection Process:

Artists will be selected by the following components:

• Artistic merit

• Importance of the Wrangell-St. Elias/McCarthy experience to the artist’s work

• Need or benefit to artist

• The artist's proposed plan to engage with the community, e.g., workshop or performance

• Feasibility of plan and ideas

• Diversity of backgrounds and disciplines represented in the program overall

We plan to make selections by mid-March, 2024

Other Info

2023 Artists in Residence

Read about our past residents from 2014-2022