INTO THE WOODS
THE TURNING POINT WAS KATRINA, AS IS SO OFTEN THE CASE when you’re asking questions in New Orleans, trying to get to the heart of the matter. A Studio in the Woods is located on a plot of land purchased by Lucianne and Joe Carmichael in 1969, comprising 7.66 acres of endangered forest in the Louisiana wetlands. Says Ama Rogan, NOLA native and the studio’s managing director, “These bottomland hardwood forests are what surround us in New Orleans. Not the cypress forest, but a little bit higher wetlands, because of the proximity to the river. They’re beautifully adapted to hurricanes, and an important part of the cycle.”
In fact, the mission of A Studio in the Woods, a uniquely situated artist residency half an hour outside of New Orleans’s city limits, is to protect and preserve those hardwood forests, and to “provide a tranquil haven where artists and scholars can reconnect with universal creative energy and work uninterrupted within this natural sanctuary.” As Rogan puts it, “Prior to Katrina we were hosting residencies for artists of all disciplines, but we didn’t have any kind of programmatic direction. The most significant way that [the residency has] changed came with the change that we all experienced post-Katrina. Immediately after Katrina, we hosted residencies for local artists coming back home, called ‘restoration residencies,’ and we gradually came to realize the importance of our place
