The
School
Overview
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Participants working on a performance on the lake, 2012
Participants during a filming session, 2025
Participants painting in the fresco barn, 2010
Participant performance on campus, 2026
Group studio visit, 2023
1 of 5
Participants working on a performance on the lake, 2012
Participants during a filming session, 2025
Participants painting in the fresco barn, 2010
Participant performance on campus, 2026
Group studio visit, 2023
What is it like being together for nine weeks, making, thinking, reading, and rehearsing?
Skowhegan is an art school located on a 350-acre campus in rural Maine. Each summer, a group of about sixty emerging artists from around the world and ten resident and visiting faculty artists engage in an experimental framework of learning that promotes the sharing of knowledge and skills between artists. With the aim of encouraging exchange and openness, we provide a transversal and intergenerational environment for production, risk taking, research, conversations, and critical thinking. During the program, each individual’s practice influences the collective endeavor as we explore together what “making” means to artists.
If you are interested in applying to Skowhegan, please read this section thoroughly. We understand our School as a space for a multitude of voices, disciplines, experiences, ethnicities and identities. We do not consider financial ability or circumstances during our admissions process. If you still have any questions regarding the School, please contact us at: help@skowheganart.org.
Skowhegan is a summer art school. We provide an open pedagogical structure in which knowledge and skills are conveyed in a critical, learning-centered manner. We encourage everyone to apply with a spirit of learning, listening and a desire to keep growing in their practices. Our community of participants, faculty, and staff live and work side by side. We emphasize how mutual care can be extended as another artistic practice, requiring daily rehearsals to navigate the possibilities—and also the challenges—inherent to communal living. However, we are a non-degree program outside the traditional academic structure.
There are no formal courses or expectations regarding outcomes and deliverables. Each year is defined by the interests and experiences of participants, faculty, and staff, alongside the freedom to manage your own time. However, this does not imply a lack of rigor. The most free learning spaces are undeniably the most challenging.
We expect our participants to be generous and willing to share; to listen to their peers and mentors; and to mentor others at the same time. In the end, we want each participant to feel “at home” as an artist, temporarily leaving behind the pressures of building a career and the standardization of a professional life that is driven by the contemporary art world. The best moment to come to Skowhegan is when you can be open and responsive to the community of artists on campus, and to the School’s remote natural environment.
Social media is not permitted during the nine-week program. We choose to focus on each other and observe what is around us in real-time so we can learn to listen as the key for a more communicative and intimate time together.
The School runs for nine weeks from early June to early August. Every participant must commit to being on campus for the full nine-week session. We do not permit absences to fulfill other personal or professional commitments.
Skowhegan’s 2027 Program will run from June 5–August 7, 2027. The 2027 Call for Applications is open from September 1, 2026 through October 16, 2026 (11:59PM ET).
The Program
The School is composed of participants, resident and visiting faculty, and staff (often former participants). As an intentional community, we avoid hierarchy as much as possible to maintain a state of generosity, believing that it is important to create a space where mistakes can be made and trust can flourish.
Each participant can dedicate time to their own practice in studios and a wide range of facilities to produce work, all of them accessible 24 hours a day. The program includes weekly collective studio visits conducted by our resident and visiting faculty artists and staff. We aim to keep these studio visits as a discussion among peers, rather than a critique.
The program includes other prompts and experiments, for example: workshops, conversations, reading groups, seminars and lectures that combine theory and practice, discourse and production. Workshops may take the form of a collective performance, a movement-based rehearsal, a roundtable discussion, or a scouting walk in the woods. The School provides the backbone for participants to push the boundaries of their practices and they are encouraged to suggest all types of programs to the group, designing the curriculum in reciprocal collaboration. The conversations that occur during meals, walks, and all the moments in between contribute significantly to the development of each participant.
Every week, resident and visiting faculty artists present a lecture or a conversation to share their knowledge in an intimate setting. These lectures are part of our archive, and they illustrate how information and life experiences are transferred from one generation to the next.
Faculty Artists
Each year, we invite ten artists to serve as resident and visiting faculty. They are selected for the distinctive practices, skills, and cultural perspectives they bring to the School, with the goal of creating a dynamic community that reflects a wide range of approaches to making art.
We also invite a Paul Mellon Distinguished Fellow who is not a practicing artist, but whose expertise and intellectual contributions introduce new theoretical frameworks to the conversations on campus. In addition, a small group of writers, poets, musicians and other creative practitioners join the program for several days to share their ideas and actively participate in the ongoing dialogue.
You can visit our Alumni & Faculty page to learn more about former faculty at Skowhegan.
2027 Faculty Artists
Melissa Brown was born in 1974 in Morristown, NJ, and lives and works in Brooklyn, New York. She explores themes of remembrance, perception and the experience of time in her mixed-media work. Melissa’s compositions transform familiar landscapes, interiors, and still lives into surreal tableaus that illuminate the obvious yet invisible symbolic structures in ordinary existence. Melissa works with a collage of painting techniques, including airbrush, impasto, silkscreen, and stencil, alongside plein air. She is interested in the hierarchical differences between how a memory is captured in the digital sphere versus how it is remembered in the body.
Recent solo exhibitions include Window Shopping at Derek Eller Gallery (2026); Flower Games, at Cellar Contemporary in Trento, Italy (2025); Rules of the Game at the Center for Book Arts in New York City, (2024), which was one in a ten year series of poker tournaments where the wager is art; Two Pair and Windows and Bars at Derek Eller Gallery in New York City (2023); West Coast Paintings at Anat Ebgi in Los Angeles (2022); and Thrift Store Find at Andrew Rafacz Gallery in Chicago, (2022). She is a Joan Mitchell Fellow and has been awarded residencies at the Joan Mitchell Center, Sharpe-Walentas, Yaddo, and Headlands. Her work is in the permanent collections of the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Brooklyn Museum, and the New York Department of Education.
Photo: courtesy the artist
Since 2008, Mary Reid Kelley and Patrick Kelley have collaborated on an internationally renowned series of short black-and-white videos with mythological and historical themes. Uniting Mary’s background as a painter and poet, and Patrick’s as a photographer and animator, the pair meticulously handmake the films in their upstate New York studio. Their work is distinctive for its wordplay-rich verse, painterly aesthetic, and deft combination of craft and technology.
Mary and Patrick’s videos been shown in solo exhibitions at Tate Liverpool; the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Boston; the Fabric Workshop and Museum, Philadelphia; the Baltimore Museum of Art; The High Line in New York; Kunsthalle Bremen; the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles; the ICA Boston; and Studio Voltaire, London. Group shows include SITE Sante Fe, the Front Triennial, Haus Der Kunst, Munich, CCA Warsaw, Fondazione Prada, Milan, and MACBA Barcelona. Their work has been reviewed in The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, The Guardian, W Magazine, La Reppublica, Vogue, The New Yorker, Artforum, Mousse Magazine, Flash Art, Frieze, ARTnews, Art in America, and Wallpaper. Mary and Patrick’s 2016 film, This Is Offal, won the Baloise Prize at Art Basel. Mary is a Guggenheim and MacArthur Fellow. Their most recently completed commission was for the National Portrait Gallery in London, and was on view through September 2026.
Photo: Mary and Patrick working in studio on When I was the Muse, 2025.
Elle Pérez is an artist working across photography, collage, and moving images. Their work depicts intimate moments, emotional exchanges, and visceral details within the love and violence of everyday life. Elle’s photographs balance casual observation with conceptual and formalist considerations: intentionally sequenced installations, collages that act as mind maps, and structuralist films that highlight the tension between social reality and poetic observation. Their work celebrates the ambiguity inherent to photography: a photograph is not an illustration, it can both resist discursive limitations and hold meaning beyond language. Elle made their first photographs as a teenager at punk shows in the Bronx, NY, and they have continued making artwork made for the audience it grows out of.
Recent solo exhibitions include the Des Moines Art Center, IA (2026); The American Academy of Arts and Letters, NY (2025). Group exhibitions include no existe un mundo poshuracán: Puerto Rican Art in the Wake of Hurricane Maria, Whitney Museum of American Art, NY (2022); the 59th Venice Biennale (2022); and the Whitney Biennial (2019), among others. Elle has received a Foundation for Contemporary Arts Grant to Artists (2026) and the Rome Prize (2023). They will have a solo exhibition at The Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis in the fall of 2027. Elle is Assistant Professor of Graduate Photography at the Yale School of Art.
Photo: courtesy Elle Perez Studio
Kameelah Janan Rasheed is a learner and a death doula in training. She explores the poetics and politics of non-compliance and disobedience across written, spoken, and visual systems of communication. In doing so, she considers the radical possibilities of noise, unintelligibility, discrepancy, and the refusal of frictionless perception. Across her practice at KJR Studios—an ecosystem spanning installation, publishing, pedagogy, performance, archival practice, and play, she studies the forms of life that manage to exceed systems designed for certainty, extraction, and linearity.
Recent solo exhibitions include High Line Art (2026), Henry Art Gallery (2025), REDCAT (2024), KW Institute of Contemporary Art (2023), Art Institute of Chicago (2023), and Kunstverein Hannover (2022). She has participated in group exhibitions at the MoMA PS1, Studio Museum, the New Museum, the Brooklyn Museum, Palais de Tokyo, MASS MoCA, The Kitchen, and the ICA Philadelphia, among others. Kameelah is the recipient of several honors, including a Guggenheim Fellowship (2021) and a Creative Capital Award (2022).
Photo: Walter Wlodarczyk. Kameelah Janan Rasheed at Pioneer Works, 2018.
Johanna Unzueta was born in Santiago, Chile, in 1974, and currently lives and works in Berlin, Germany. Her practice is rooted in an interest in the natural world and in the relationships between the earth, its resources, and the communities that depend on them. Drawing on her Chilean heritage, she looks closely at landscapes, local communities, and histories of labor, frequently incorporating organic materials with deep roots in Latin American culture. Working across drawing, weaving, installation, mural-making, and film, Johanna brings together humble and often repurposed materials, including wood, thread, felt, cotton, paper, and natural pigments. Through these materials, she considers the histories embedded in everyday objects and the networks of labor, production, circulation, and consumption that shape their lives.
Recent exhibitions include the 82nd Edition of the Whitney Biennial, New York, NY (2026); Soft Power, DAS MINSK, Potsdam, Germany (2024); The Sky’s the Limit, National Museum of Women in the Arts, Washington, DC (2023); In the Studio, Tate Modern, London (2023); Drawing in the Continuous Present, The Drawing Center, New York (2022); Tools for Life, Modern Art Oxford (2020, solo); and From My Head to My Toes, to My Teeth to My Nose, Broad Art Museum at Michigan State University (2019, solo.) Johanna’s work is held in the permanent collections of Tate, London; the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; the Queens Museum, New York; MSU Broad Art Museum, East Lansing; Frac Bretagne, Rennes; and Museo de Artes Visuales, Santiago.
Photo: courtesy the artist
2027 Visiting Faculty Artists
We will announce the Visiting Faculty joining us for our 2027 Summer Program later this year. Please check back for more information.
The Campus
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Overview of Skowhegan's upper campus
Participants watching a performance, 2025
Participant performance at the library, 2026
Participant in studio, 2026
Overview of the lake, dorms, and cottages at lower campus
Participants outside of the fresco barn and shop, 2021
1 of 6
Overview of Skowhegan's upper campus
Participants watching a performance, 2025
Participant performance at the library, 2026
Participant in studio, 2026
Overview of the lake, dorms, and cottages at lower campus
Participants outside of the fresco barn and shop, 2021
Our campus is large and beautiful, comprising 350 acres (141 hectares) of rural landscape including farmlands, forests, and lakeshore. Parts of the property were once the family farm of one of our founders, Willard “Bill” Cummings, and the environment plays a critical role in framing the experience of the School. From the beginning, artists sought out this remote location and could work away from the familiarity and distraction of daily life. Importantly, the campus is a protective shelter and buffer from external pressures, and a special incubation site for ideas that might be risky or untested.
The facilities include more than ninety buildings, among them a library, different shops for fabrication (including metal, wood, textiles, ceramics), fresco shop, media lab, flexible performance space, dining hall, community spaces for leisure time and activities, studios, and dorms. The property is divided into two areas by a main road. Upper campus is where all the working and learning facilities are located; and lower campus is the residential area with the dining hall, the dorms, the social commonhouse, and the lake.
Skowhegan’s campus is humble, with unpaved roads, natural paths and hilly landscapes. The distance between upper and lower campus is approximately 1 kilometer. For questions regarding accessibility please see our FAQ.
Participants live in communal lakeside cottages, and they have single and double rooms that are charming, but modest. Each dorm is equipped with a fireplace or wood-burning stove and fans, but they do not have central heating or air conditioning. All the bathrooms are shared. Social and community gatherings are held at the Palm Common House which is near the dorms.
All studio buildings are located on upper campus amidst woods and rolling pastures, and are open 24 hours a day. Each studio is approximately 10 feet by 13 feet in size. They are private, although they are all located in communal buildings. Some of these buildings are barns and sheds that date back to the campus’s previous life as a farm, but all have been updated over time. Each studio has tables and chairs and are prepared for all kinds of use and experimentation.
Our facilities are flexible and allow for many ways of working, producing, and developing ideas about art. They include: the Acquavella Sculpture Shop with tools for wood and metal, a spray booth, and many hand tools; the Pollock-Krasner Ceramic Studio; the Moffett-Gober Sculpture Pavilion for working outdoors at scale; and a sewing room. The Double Bet(y)(e) Media Lab has computers equipped with software for video, sound, and image editing as well as a large-format printer. It also offers basic photo, video, and sound recording equipment for checkout, along with a sound-conditioned, light-proof room for recordings. There is a Flex Space that can be used in multidisciplinary ways, including for rehearsals and movement-based events and workshops. It is an open barn with a large porch and a safe floor for movement, as well as a gridded truss with A/V equipment including theatrical lighting, sound, and projection.
Skowhegan’s fresco program dates to the 1940s. In the Looker Family Fresco Studio artists have the rare opportunity to learn and practice buon fresco technique, exploring a rich and ancient process that can inspire and accommodate a broad range of contemporary ideas.
The Robert Lehman Library is a space for independent research, or to host reading groups and theoretical workshops. The collection contains over 15,000 art books, cultural and political studies publications, catalogs, bound magazines, and the Skowhegan Lecture Archive. This extraordinary and extensive collection consists of nearly 800 recordings of lectures given by Resident and Visiting Artists since 1952 which comprise a unique art historical resource.
Our vast campus is an inextricable part of the Skowhegan experience. Preserving this environment, from the land itself to the historic buildings and new structures, is an important part of sustaining the School for future generations. Our property has expanded over the years to ensure that campus remains open and undeveloped; the setting invites us to honor and use the landscape in an ethical and sustainable way. Many of the decisions about how we live (for example, sharing bathrooms, disposing of waste) relate directly to balancing the intense use of campus with our rural ecosystem and delicate water systems. For many coming from dense, urban settings, living in nature is a new experience. We expect that you will respect the environment and hope that you take the opportunity to learn and observe from this setting.
One of the most visible and delicious ways that you will experience our commitment to place is through our food program. We offer three meals a day in the Gund Dining Hall and picnic area.To the greatest degree possible, ingredients are sourced from local farmers and suppliers, and meals are based on the notion that activity and creativity is best fueled by a healthy and sustainable diet.
Artists from around the world, working across all disciplines and mediums, are encouraged to apply to Skowhegan. We are especially interested in emerging artists who are committed to their practice and eager to immerse themselves in a community of peers. There is no single kind of artist who belongs at Skowhegan. We value experimentation, intellectual curiosity, generosity, a willingness to take risks, and an openness to dialogue and exchange. The ability to contribute to and learn from a collective environment is as important as artistic achievement.
The application process opens each year at the beginning of September and closes in the middle of October. If you are interested in receiving information about our future applications and other projects, we suggest you subscribe to our newsletter.
Our selection process is based on the ethics of consensus among artists. All applications are reviewed by a broad group of practitioners, composed of members of Skowhegan’s Board of Governors (all practicing artists), former and current faculty members, and invited alums.
We receive a large number of applications, and the selection process takes several months. An average of 60-65 artists participate in the program each year. The process involves several rounds of review including a first round of pre-selection and subsequent rounds of panel reviews. Finalists will be invited for a brief interview. Every application is seriously considered and your work will be reviewed by at least three professional artists. The process is need-blind and the selection committee is not privy to applicant’s names or financial circumstance.
About 80 candidates are selected for an interview. Of those, 60-65 are invited to participate in the program. Due to the high volume of applications, we are unable to provide feedback to applicants who are not selected.
Our application is entirely online. Please do not send any application materials via email or physical mail. We open our application period once a year in September and it runs through the middle of October. You are encouraged to check our website regularly for any updates or subscribe to receive emails about future application periods.
In general, we request 10 images or 6 minutes of video of your work, accompanied by explanations to facilitate context, and two references. Beginning in 2025, we also require a brief video narrative introducing yourself and sharing your interests as an artist. Application specifics may change from time to time, so even if you have applied before we encourage you to review the application when it opens each year.
You will be required to pay a fee when you submit your application. This fee is $25, and increases to $50 for the final two days of the application period. We encourage you to apply early for the less expensive option. Unfortunately, we are unable to waive the fee.
Please carefully review all our guidelines and FAQs before submitting your application.
Skowhegan is a need-blind school. This means financial circumstances are never considered during the admission process, and we have scholarship funds to distribute among accepted artists who cannot afford tuition.
Tuition for the 2027 program is $6,000 per person. As part of the application, we will ask you to consider what you can reasonably contribute towards tuition which helps cover all aspects of the School program, including lodging and meals.
Please do not be worried about asking for support. Your financial request will have NO bearing on whether or not you are accepted. If you are accepted and need aid, we will work with you to ensure that funds are available. In the past decade, more than 95% of participants have received full scholarships.
Encountering issues with the Application Website? Contact our help desk:
Email: help@skowheganart.org
Help Line: +1 (646) 681-6426
Hours: Monday–Friday, 10AM–4PM ET (UTC -4:00)
FAQ
All artists are welcome. Applicants are encouraged to choose the category that best reflects their practice, though this does not determine or restrict what they do on campus.
2D: painting, drawing, printmaking
3D: sculpture, installation
Photography: primary engagement with photographic mediums
Time-Based: video, film, sound art
Performance/Live Art: performance art, choreography, and other forms of art that may include live situations as part of the work
Social Practice/Ecological Art: art forms which involve people and communities in debate and collaborations.
Yes. You must be at least 21 years of age by the start of the program. There is no maximum age. However, we recommend our applicants to have some years of experience within their own practice to fully benefit from the exchange that the program provides.
No. Skowhegan is a school that is structured as an open learning environment. We are not, however, an accredited academic institution.
We are unable to assist with the application for a Visa or cover the associated expenses, but we can provide a letter of invitation upon request. We are not an accredited academic institution and cannot participate in the application process for student visas. The majority of our international participants come to Skowhegan on a tourist visa.
Yes. We provide grants toward travel expenses for our international applicants. We cannot provide financial assistance for travel expenses within the United States.
The common language at Skowhegan is English. It is important to have some knowledge of the language as all the lectures, workshops, and studio visits are conducted in English.
Applicants can only submit one application per cycle, but it’s possible to apply again every year.
Yes. Collective teams may apply; however, only two members may attend the program, with no exceptions.
Collaborators who are not accepted through the application process—as part of a collective or as individual participants—are not permitted on campus for any project, even for a single day.
We suggest selecting individuals who are able to convey the commitment and openness of the applicant as an artist, as well as their ability to work well in a collaborative setting. We may contact them if the application advances to the final round. We do not require letters of recommendation.
Yes, there is an application fee, and it cannot be waived.* This fee is $25, and increases to $50 for the final two days of the application period. We recommend you don’t apply at the very last minute. Please subscribe to our mailing list to receive reminders of the fee increase.
The application fee is processed by Stripe. If Stripe is not available, we will provide an alternative payment method. Applications submitted after midnight of the final deadline will not be considered.
*We have an agreement with Inklas Foundation in which we can waive the application fee for Indian artists younger than 35 who are living in India. Before submitting your application, please send us an email at help@skowheganart.org. You can also check the Inklas Foundation website for eligibility requirements. Proof of nationality, residency and age will be required to waive the fee.
If you are accepted and unable to pay any portion of the tuition, we will identify a scholarship(s) so you can attend. Our priority is that the School is accessible to all interested artists who are accepted, and our practice is that no accepted artists will be turned away for lack of funding.
After submitting an application, everyone receives an automatic email acknowledging receipt. We recommend checking your spam folder to make sure that email settings accept help@skowheganart.org as a safe address. Mail generated from our website is often blocked by spam filters (this is particularly true for those who use Hotmail, AOL, and Earthlink).
We generally notify applicants about 3 months after the application closes (January).
No. Acceptance is offered for a specific year and may not be deferred, except in extraordinary circumstances (generally limited to severe illness or visa rejection). The application fee is nonrefundable under all circumstances, including application withdrawal.
You should maintain your own health insurance throughout your time at the School, even if you do not need to provide documentation when applying. Skowhegan has a nurse on call in the event of minor injuries. Nevertheless, Skowhegan is not responsible for any hospital bills incurred during the program.
All of the program facilities and some of the residential buildings on campus are accessible; however, many of the paths and spaces between them are not easy to navigate. The campus is located in a natural environment that presents significant challenges for those with mobility or accessibility requirements: the rough terrain includes uneven surfaces, gravel paths, and hills. Please contact us if you have concerns or questions about residential and studio accessibility.
Attendance at lectures, workshops, and other activities is not mandatory, and participants are free to manage their own time on campus. It often takes a few weeks to discover how you want to structure your days, where to focus your energy, and which conversations, workshops, or activities you want to pursue.
Skowhegan offers an unusual degree of freedom, but with that freedom comes the responsibility of shaping your own experience. Deciding how to spend your time, what to commit to, and when to step back requires intention, curiosity, and self-discipline.
At the same time, Skowhegan is built around exchange. Learning happens through conversations, critiques, shared meals, studio visits, and the many unexpected encounters that unfold over the summer. If you are not interested in an environment where dialogue, feedback, and collective inquiry are central to the experience, Skowhegan may not be the right program for you.
Yes. When you are accepted, you receive several forms and a handbook with detailed information about the School, learning program, and community life.
No. Participants are expected to attend the entire program. Exceptions will be considered only in cases of serious illness or the death of, or a required caregiving commitment for, an immediate family member. No other requests for absence can be accommodated.
Skowhegan is intentionally structured as a nine-week, immersive, residential experience, and participants are expected to commit fully to the program. The program includes one scheduled Visitor Weekend during the first week of July, during which participants may leave campus for up to three days (Friday through Sunday). In addition, occasional day trips are organized as part of the program, and participants may travel to town or nearby locations with fellow participants.
Sometimes leaving campus for a few days may not seem like such an important thing, and many participants ask us why their absence could have an impact on the community. The answer is quite simple: if we say yes to one person, we should be able to say yes to everyone. Allowing participants to come and go throughout the nine weeks would gradually break and disturb this unique and intense moment of living and learning together.
Of course, if at any point you do not feel comfortable and realize that the experience is not for you, you can always leave campus. We will still love you anyway.
No. Studio visits are organized with resident and visiting faculty, staff, and participants. The program does not provide studio visits with external individuals such as curators or critics, since this is not part of the program’s scope. Skowhegan’s mission is to encourage you to share your work and projects with the members of the community on campus and to focus on your work and the work of your colleagues during the nine weeks. Sometimes we invite writers, poets, and other creative individuals to visit campus to give a reading or a workshop, but this is not related to studio visits.
Our rural environment is beautiful and peaceful. It is important to remember, however, that we are immersed in nature. The buildings are connected by unpaved roads and natural paths, and the campus is quite large, so all should be prepared for long walks on a daily basis. There is no air conditioning or heat in the studios, communal areas, and dormitories, so these buildings may be particularly hot or cold during the summer months. New England’s climate is also humid, particularly during this time of the year. Applicants should seriously consider whether Skowhegan is the appropriate program to attend if they are not interested in living in a natural environment with all its opportunities and challenges.
Participants traveling domestically furnish their own blankets, sheets, and towels. However, we provide them for international participants.
No. Despite our understanding that everyone would like to share this experience with their loved ones, we cannot have family members or friends on campus except for visitors weekend (this is typically during the first weekend of July).
No. Participants’ pets are not permitted on campus. Service dogs that are individually trained to perform specific tasks for individuals with disabilities are allowed, subject to prior approval and advance coordination with the program. Participants with questions or accommodation needs related to service animals should contact the program well in advance of arrival.
Participants may bring a car or a bicycle to Skowhegan. However, cars should only be used to enter or leave campus and not for daily travel through the grounds, even when you need to transport materials to your studio. Our roads are delicate, and the school is designed to encourage spending time in nature, moving slowly, and being attentive to the shared environment.
If you need to bring materials or other things to your studio, you can always ask a member of our staff for assistance, or simply wait until the designated times when moving cars around campus is permitted.
Many of our protocols may seem small or unimportant at first, but they are simply part of what it means to live together in a community. They help us care for the land, respect the rhythm of the school, and make the experience work for everyone.
During the rest of the year, the campus is closed. The school’s facilities crew takes care of the space, the buildings, and the natural surroundings during the fall, winter, and spring to prepare for the next summer program. Staff and faculty arrive a few days in advance to welcome the incoming class.
During the summer program you will be able to build work and use our natural surroundings to experiment and create installations. However, you should remove the installations and leave everything in its original state. You should also leave your studio completely empty. During the past 80 years, many artists have performed and produced fantastic works at Skowhegan. We keep photos in our archives, but we are not a collecting institution. It is important to keep the campus fresh so that future generations can experiment and imagine a new summer each year.