Art Talk: Artists in Residency

I just went to the Art Talk lecture that was centered upon residency programs for artists. Although the speaker herself was a musician, she focused on residencies that geared for visual artists. I found her description of the various places and programs of residency to be very informative. She stressed the importance of finding the right residency to the audience, speaking about residency location, program size, amount of community interaction, and funding. I began to think about the type of residency that I would be interested in attending. Ideally I would like to go to a fairly rural place for a few months with many different artists enrolled in the program. I was also interested in the programs that were environmentally and artistically focused at the same time. I think that this would be a excellent living situation for me, and in effect, a creatively nourishing environment for me to create.
Before this lecture, I had little knowledge of the quantity of programs existed. I was under the impression that residency opportunities were mainly geared to artists who were well established in their careers, and candidly, a bit elitist. During the lecture I was proved wrong. Many of the images shown depicted a harmonious social, creative place for for artists to work, and many of the photos showed young people. I especially liked the Art Farm residency in Nebraska. The speaker mentioned that it was 19th century living and 21st century art making. She also mentioned that this residency had a picture of a local tornado on the main page of its website.
...sign me up.