Our Artist Fellowship program was created to give creatives the space they need for uninterrupted work in the middle of the woods. The hope is that artists can use the quiet and the natural beauty around our cabins to inspire their creative projects. We’re excited to feature several of our fellows from the past few months and the work they have created at Getaway.
Hayley Tanasijevich has been drawing for as long as she can remember and even studied graphic design and illustration at the University of Michigan. After college, she realized her passion for travel drawing and has found a place to sketch everywhere from Scotland to Southeast Asia. Most recently, Hayley escaped to Getaway New York for some creative time. Drawing her inspiration from a treasure trove of children’s books, Hayley says she one day hopes to make her own.
“I hope someday to have a little studio where I can draw animals with eyebrows wearing funny clothes as much as I want,” Hayley said. “For now, I take each day one at a time and keep drawing and improving to never stop creating.”
Ali Williams has been passionate about public art ever since she created her first mural in art school. Her dream would be to create a mural abroad with a mission she’s passionate about. In the meantime, Ali draws her main inspiration from her fellow women artists and celebrating their accomplishments.
She took to Getaway DC this winter to focus her creative energy and work on some sketches. When she’s not on a Getaway, Ali says she likes to escape to the ocean.
“I’m fortunate to live near the ocean, and I work remote, so for a quick get away I walk to the beach as much as I can,” Ali said. “Unplugging is still a challenge, that’s why I like yoga so much! But with good people around it makes it much easier to shut all that down and enjoy the present moment no matter where you are.”
While Joanna Guest has been artistic for most of her life, she says her current work is mostly driven by the deep love of art her parents, who met in art school, have always had. In 2017, Joanna began collecting all the notes her father had written to both her and her brother. Since then, she has been creating collages to pair with her father’s words and has been sorting them into a book set to publish in 2019.
Joanna recently took to Getaway New York to inspire some of her canvases. However, the Brooklyn-based artist tries her best to find ways to disconnect even when she can’t get to the Catskills.
“I like to go to Maine. If that’s not in the cards, I love to cook, with good music in the background and a glass of wine,” Joanna says. “There’s nothing ‘away in nature’ about that, but boy can it make this Brooklyn-born kid feel free.”
We created our Artist Fellowship Program to help creative people find the space and inspiration they need to bring their ideas to life. We hosted photographer, Wendy Song, in November at Getaway Big Bear outside of LA. Here’s what she had to say about her creative process, her relationship to nature, and her Getaway:
On Creativity
Personally, I’ve worked in the Operations then Sales & Marketing roles in the Tourism/Hospitality Industry (in hotels and a local tourism board) for a total of over 8 years. Now I am the Co-Founder and CEO of Evolusen, a Creators Marketing Agency for the Tourism/Hospitality Industry. Creatively, I am a published freelance travel photographer. It’s both work and fun for me. I started my journey by taking photos of sunsets with my phone and applying Instagram filters before sharing them on social media. Now I am working with tourism boards and travel brands in the US photographing and promoting destinations.
On Nature
I love how calm nature makes me feel, no matter the weather we’ve encountered so far. We head out to shoot when the weather is calm and stay in and chill when it is not. I try my best to convey that calm feeling in my work and my daily life, since I may not be the calmest person you encounter.
On Escaping to Nature
I really loved the messages I got before my visit, especially with the fact that there is no need to plan and it included a list of things near the outpost, just in case. Planning sometimes is not the most fun activity. Especially when work is more consuming now with WFH, so not having to plan takes a load off my mental plate and I felt more chill for the whole trip and created more content than I normally would.
We created our Artist Fellowship Program to help creative people find the space and inspiration they need to bring their ideas to life. Earlier this year, we hosted illustrator, Liana Finck, at Getaway Eastern Catskills outside of New York. Here’s what she had to say about her creative process, her relationship to nature, and her Getaway:
On Nature
I️ grew up kind of near Catskill, in Orange County, NY. We lived at the foot of a mountain far away from the closest neighbor, and I️ spent most of my free time outdoors looking at things and walking around with my dog. I️ still do, although it’s different in the city.
Visiting Catskill brought back old memories. I️ remember going to a zoo called the Catskill Game Farm when I️ was a kid. And I️ feel so at home in the beautiful, soft, old mountains. I️ remember realizing when I️ was maybe eight, that the soft blue and purple zig-zags on the horizon weren’t just part of the sky. I️ hadn’t seen them since my family moved away when I️ was fourteen.
On Creativity
I️’ve always drawn. My mom is an artist, and she encouraged me. I️ started liking New Yorker cartoons and graphic novels when I was in high school, and have wanted to make them since then, besides a painful detour in art college. I️ use a Muji .38 gel pen (the old kind they stopped making) on slightly higher-end printer paper. I️ trace a lot. It’s my way of editing, instead of using pencil and then inking later, which is what most comics artists do. The paper is slightly translucent, easy to trace. When I️ draw on thicker paper, I️ use an LED light box (cheap and portable).
I️ went there with my boyfriend on his first birthday while we were together. We didn’t have a car, so we just stayed close to the house and wandered around. We looked at horses, made s’mores, and drew. It was a great birthday. We went back a year later, this time in a car and with our new dog, Penny. She loved it – the first time we’d brought her to the woods.
Anna Tullis has been all around the US. Born in Colorado, she moved to Kansas City to work for a non-profit before relocating to Los Angeles to attend college. These days, she finds herself in New York City, recently having completed a graduate degree at The Juilliard School of Drama.
As an actor, writer, and photographer, Anna enjoys crafting anecdotes about the people, passersby, and surroundings she observes. Informed by her photography, these ideas morph into short stories, vignettes, and poems that feed her expression on the stage and screen.
After four rigorous years of graduate school, she is mindful to allot time to escape it all. To get away from the bustle of New York City, Anna enjoys traveling upstate, visiting her home in Colorado, people watching in Washington Square Park, or sitting at home in her room and rediscovering serenity.
As an Artist Fellow, Anna integrated the solitude and peacefulness of our New York Outpost with its opposite: the constant, taxing presence and pressure of the crowds in New York City. One of her goals was to find inspiration and quiet in nature, to be still, listen, observe, and nurture her innermost self and refuel.
She produced a series of photos and written pieces formatted on her typewriter, capturing nature’s expressiveness through the stillness, aromas, animals, and colors of the Catskills and her tiny cabin in late fall. Enjoy one of her ethereal creations here.
We created our Artist Fellowship Program to help creative people find the space and inspiration they need to bring their ideas to life. Earlier this year, we hosted photographer, Amber Canterbury, at Getaway Big Bear outside of LA. Here’s what she had to say about her creative process, her relationship to nature, and her Getaway:
On Creativity I’m a freelance photographer and artist based in Los Angeles. I grew up in Florida and studied business and marketing in college. I was the quiet kid with ever-changing hair colors among a room of eager young professionals. I began experimenting with photography my senior year and completely fell in love. I learned how to shoot film on my late grandfather’s Canon AE-1 with a shutter button that only worked half the time. I’d lose hours in the darkroom, headphones in, watching images slowly appear in the developer. It felt like magic. I changed course and moved to L.A. with two suitcases and no contacts. It’s been 11 years and I’m so grateful for the life I’ve made here.
On Nature I feel most at home in the natural world. I think nature is the ultimate artist; it is all at once delicate and fierce, vast and microscopic. It continually amazes and inspires me. I often look for ways to incorporate elements of that in my work. Nature is also a great healer, I spend time outdoors to decompress and feel grounded. Trees are like medicine.
On Disconnecting My Getaway was absolutely lovely and so needed. I left any agenda at home and just allowed myself to play. I brought books, tree oracle cards, a journal, cameras and film, and my guitar. The first night I slept with the shade on the big window wide open and looked out on trees bathed in moonlight as I fell asleep. It sort of felt like all of the benefits of camping, but with a cozy bed and a hot shower.
Kuzu Creative was born out of an artistic collaboration between Sera Boeno and Fredric Freeman. After completing their first project together back in 2017, Sera and Fredric knew that if they combined forces, they could unlock so much more creative potential. Thus, the creative services agency was born.
Drawing inspiration from their environment, Sera and Fredric took their skills to our Artist Fellowship program at Getaway’s DC outpost. Our Getaway cabin and surrounding foliage became their canvas for elaborate projection mappings. We were totally in awe of what they were able to create using such simple surfaces as inspiration.
We sat down with Sera and Fredric to talk through their creative process and how they get away.
Kuzu Creative House cabin projection mapping
Hi Fredric and Sera. Please introduce yourselves.
Fredric: Hey it’s Fredric. Pleasure to meet you. I have a pretty varied background. I’ve been everything from a reputable underground music artist, to award winning agency animator, professor of virtual reality, and pizza delivery professional. My current professional endeavors have focused on exploring more augmented, extended, and virtual realities.
I grew up in Maryland. Born in Baltimore, only a few hours aways from our Getaway stay near the Blue Ridge Mountains. I can remember visiting this area a few times as a kid. Flying along Skyline Drive losing my mind from how beautiful it looked.
I’m currently based in Philadelphia, working as an adjunct professor of animation at Jefferson University. I also do non-profit work serving as the President of the Philadelphia Area New Media Association, a tech agnostic organization that promotes diversity through education.
Sera: Sera Boeno here. Born and raised in Istanbul, Turkey and currently residing in Baltimore, MD, by way of Hanover, NH. I am a sculptor, installation artist who also dabbles with digital design and curatorial work. I just earned my M.F.A degree in Sculpture from Maryland Institute College of Art’s Rinehart School of Sculpture. Currently, I am an artist-fellow at the Hamiltonian, DC, and I work as the Asst. Creative Director of KUZU Creative. The KUZU title is a broad-spanning type of hat, having a broad spectrum of expertise helps with that.
Kuzu Creative House cabin projection mapping
How did Kuzu Creative come to be?
Fredric: At the end of 2017, a fashion school in Philly approached me to do a projection installation. I was in need of a person who can wear many hats from research and conceptualization of creative projects to organization and production to help out with the project. At that point Sera and I had been acquainted, and knew of each others work; I approached her to see if she would be interested in co-creating this installation. The work was a huge success and was followed by inquiries of more work, which was a sign to institutionalize our working relationship. We wanted a flexible structure through which we can leverage, and provide for our individual creative networks. This mindset turned out to be a great way to work, as we now have the opportunity to curate a specific team of contracted creatives that we trust according to the specific needs of any project from projection installations for children to animated music videos to product design.
Kuzu Creative House Tree Projection Mapping
Where do you go or what do you to to feel inspired?
Sera: I either do something completely unrelated for inspiration, like going swimming. Or I go to art spaces and museums, visit other artists’ studios or peruse a good book/documentary around a subject I am thinking about.
Fredric: I agree with Sera. Positive distractions.
How do you recharge?
Fredric: Nature. It’s the easiest way to recharge. One of the things I love about the Getaway is its ethos- the idea of unplugging and enjoying the space you are currently residing in. I’m a strong believer of taking walks in the woods. Sometimes it’s easy to forget that nature provides all the stimulation we need.
Sera: Agreed with Freddie, nature is a good way to come back to ground zero. I also find it really important to make space and time for self-care routines; mine are, in no particular order, exercising, reading fiction, making and eating good food, baths, meditation, and Skype dates with friends on the other side of the Atlantic.
Kuzu Creative House Projection Mapping
Can you take us through how you created these incredible projection mappings? Step by step if possible.
Fredric: We started with a concept: Lost Digital Civilizations.
Sera: This is how we usually start, we muse about the possible response to a space/prompt we are given. After the concept is loosely set, we start collecting “assets”; in this case, zoom-in photographs of micro-chips, stock photos of archaeological artifacts, etc.
Fredric: We then created digital imagery and animations infused with these photos of ruins, microchips, cultural icons, etc. to create images of, say, Digital Gods Descending or something like that…
From there we did some test projections in Sera’s studio. We also took some time to build concrete objects to project on. Then we packed everything up and hit the woods. From there we scoped out a few areas we thought might create a nice composition and mapped our images on to these spaces. A huge reason things came together was the fact that we just went with it. We projected onto everything from tree trunks, to branches, to rocks, to even the front of our cabin.
Sera: I agree. I think most of the time our concepts are starting points but chance happenings have a big part in how the end-result is shaped. We welcome such opportunities to end up with things that we did not necessarily foresee. I personally believe it’s best when the work is one step ahead of you.
Kuzu Creative House cabin projection mapping
Where do you go to get away?
Sera: It’s tough to get away when you are in the creative hustle, because most of the time that means you are juggling multiple jobs/contracts while also trying to maintain an active studio practice. The two strain each other quite a bit. My solution is finding art residencies away from the city. For example, I spent some weeks in Steuben, WI, at ACRE residency where there was barely any cell phone reception. The surrounding area was so isolated that the moon shone bright enough to create shadows. I committed to making work here away from urban life, and while practicing to focus on doing so without thinking about to what end. That was my get away. Though, when I am able to travel, spending time in Istanbul, at home with family, usually serves as the ultimate getaway.
What is your dream creative project?
Sera: I would love a client to come to us with endless budget, space and time to commission an art project.
Fredric: Currently I think it would be to direct a music video for the Turkish rapper, Ezhel.
What are you most proud of?
Fredric:The journey Kuzu Creative is on.
Finish the sentence. At Getaway…
Kuzu Creative House made some pretty cool projection installations in nature.
For more information and to see more art from the Kuzu Creative House, you can visit their website or follow the artists on Instagram @seraboenostudio and @fredric_fresh.
Feeling stuck in a rut and out of ideas? Maybe Mother Nature has the solution to your lack of imagination.
People who don’t identify as creatives are often caught in a cycle of repeating phrases like I’m not creative or I don’t know how to draw—effectively, they’re stuck in this mindset.
A good way to combat this pattern of thinking is to actually remove yourself from your own everyday routine for a new perspective. Shifting your routine, where you go, how you spend your days, off time and weekends could be a key way to inspire some creativity. As creativity is often times described as making or discovering previously hidden connections, it makes sense that diverting from your daily routine could help you do just that.
Whereas city life can be swamped with patterns, ruts and cycles of doing what is expected; nature can be a powerful source of creativity.
A 2012 study explored the consequences of more time spent with media and technology over nature found that backpackers who spent a few days hiking showed higher levels of creativity in a word association test than before they immersed themselves in nature.
The Science Behind Nature + Creativity
Why is nature so beneficial to the brain? Scientists believe the state of “soft fascination” – in which you can find yourself as you appreciate your surroundings on a hike or watch the water of a river flow by – is believed to calm the prefrontal cortex, allowing the brain to access other regions that can lead to insights and new ideas.
Spending time in nature also inspires a sense of awe. This feeling that the world is so much bigger than you can comprehend leads to “expansive thinking,” which allows us to consider different perspectives and can lead to innovative ideas. This could explain why so many artists – from Ansel Adams to Henry David Thoreau to Georgia O’Keefe – have found spending time in nature essential their work.
Technology Versus Nature
In everyday life in the city, your brain can easily get overwhelmed, making it hard to focus. A simple way to combat the war for our attention is to simply take a break: turn off your phones every now and again. This is especially important if you’re trying to reap the benefits of nature: a study showed that people walking through an arboretum while talking on their cell phone had brain activity levels “consistent with attention overload” while those who strolled among the plants without their phones had higher recollection of detail.
Even a simple walk in the park can boost your creativity, but longer escapes are more beneficial. Three days out in nature seems to be the sweet spot for fully letting your mind calm down from a fast-paced life.
Try getting out of a rut and give your brain a break by taking a deep dive into the outdoors. What patterns can you break? Unplug from everything. Switch up where you sleep and spend a night (or several) in a tent or a cabin in the woods. Explore new natural terrain, watch the sunset and look at the stars – without Instagramming the view. Connect with the world through your eyes instead of through a lens for a while. Bring along your paintbrushes or pencils, and see what being in nature inspires.
Once you get back to daily life, your old routine will feel new again, which is key to sparking your creativity.
Line Johnsen is an Art Director at Joan Creative and Andreas Bjørn Hansen is designer and animator at Buck Design, and together they created this illustration during their stay at one of our cabins:
The Brooklyn-based couple moved to NYC over three years ago from Copenhagen, and we chatted with them about how they maintain balance in their busy lives.
What occupies most of your time during the day? Line: As an art director I spend most of my day ideating and coming up with visual concepts for brands. Andreas: I spend most of my time, designing or animating for all kinds of brands.
What occupies most of your time during the weekend?
The weekends are no work zones.
Some weekends we are better at it than others, but we try to focus our free time on resetting our brains and do things that gets us inspired. We live right in between Prospect Park and the Brooklyn waterfront, so we always try to go to one or the other. Each month we plan to get out of the city and our favorite place to go is Upstate New York. In the summertime we go camping and in the wintertime we either go skiing or find a nice and cozy cabin.
What do you wish you had more time to do? We wish there were more three day weekends that existed. Then we could go a little farther away and get to see even more places. What is your favorite non-digital activity? Hiking is our favorite. The combination of physical activity, fresh air and nature is always super exciting and shakes off any stress and negativity.
We both get inspired when we travel to new places, especially nature places. It’s almost an instant boost of creativity that hits us.
Ideas start flowing and we always come home with new ideas on things we want to make.
What’s your best tip for getting away? Block out weekends ahead of time in your calendar. Even though you haven’t booked or rented anything yet, just make room for it to happen. It will remind you that it’s time to get out there.
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