Creative Connections Resident

The Caselberg Trust has announced its inaugural Creative Connections resident in 2012 will be Wairarapa artist Megan Jane Campbell.

Ms Campbell is a painter, and was a finalist in both the 2009 and 2011 Wallace Art Awards, a finalist in the 2011 Waikato Contemporary art awards, and also recently had worked published in Gregory O’Brien’s Back and Beyond, Art for the young and curious, which won the 2009 non-fiction award in the 2009 New Zealand Post Book Award for children and young adults.

The Caselberg Trust announced the funding for its new Creative Connections residency back in June, and applications closed at the end of August. The residency is the first offered by the Trust which offers a stipend of $6000, as well as accommodation at the Broad Bay Dunedin Caselberg house.

The Trust was looking specifically for projects that reach out, and make links, across a variety of creative media, professional disciplines, and/or to communities relevant to the planned project.

Ms Campbell will spend 3 months at the Caselberg house in the earlier half of 2012, and will be working on 2 specific projects as part of her residency.

The first relates to her strong family connections to the city of Dunedin, where both of her parents Jean and Alex, grew up and lived until their early 20’s. Ms Campbell’s mother, who recently died one month short of her 90th birthday, was brought up in Caversham. In 2010 Ms Campbell undertook a road trip to Dunedin with her mother, where they revisited her earlier life.

Ms Campbell states “She told me that most of her dreams were now located in that early time in Dunedin, and her meeting with my father Alex. I intend to chronicle and record my mothers early life”

The second part of Ms Campbell’s Creative Connections project relates to her professional training in mental health, and her fascination with old institutional buildings. In the past she has painted Fire at Seacliff and Nurses home at Seacliff, and so she is planning to spend time visiting the old Seacliff Hospital site to research and collate data for a new series of work.

Creative Connections selection panel Chairperson, Robert West said “We were delighted with the range and quality of applications we received in this first year, and are very happy that Megan will be our inaugural Creative Connections resident in 2012”

The Caselberg Trust purchased the Broad Bay, Dunedin home of the late John and Anna Caselberg in 2006, with the aim of hosting creative residencies in the house. Since inception, the Trust has held a variety of creative projects and events, as well as hosting a number of well-known New Zealand writers and artists at the cottage. In May 2011 the Trust announced it was hosting 2 Christchurch writers, whose homes had been destroyed by the February 2011 earthquake.

Applications for the 2013 Creative connections will open later in 2012.

Media release: Caselberg Trust