ONTONAGON, MICH. -- Calling all artists: If Mother Nature is your muse, then one of the Midwest’s largest tracts of wilderness has a residency just for you.

Porcupine Mountains Wilderness State Park is currently seeking applicants for its Artist-in-Residence program for spring, summer and fall 2020, as well as winter 2021. In its 14th year, the program awards residencies to writers, composers and visual and performing artists whose work can be influenced by the Porkies’ wild natural beauty.

The residencies are a minimum of two weeks and include lodging at a rustic, remote, two-story timber-frame cabin surrounded by hemlocks along the Little Union River. Artists are also given an optional three-night backcountry permit for further immersion into the park. Each artist is permitted to bring one guest to share the stay.

In exchange, the artists are asked to contribute an original work representative of their residency to the permanent collection of the non-profit Friends of the Porkies, in addition to hosting one demonstration, talk, or workshop during or at the culmination of their stay.

“This gives creative people the opportunity to really immerse themselves in the Porkies and tell that story through their art and then share that art with the public," said park supervisor Michael Knack.

Located in the western Upper Peninsula, the 60,000 acre state park -- Michigan’s largest -- encompasses 25 miles of Lake Superior shoreline, four inland lakes, multiple rivers and waterfalls, 35,000 acres of old-growth forest, and a dramatic escarpment that rises from Lake Superior and plummets into the Carp River valley.

“It’s such an iconic place of beauty, from the large panoramic vistas down to finding tiny agates in the surf,” Knack said. “We’ve have had artists do everything from the night sky to the flora and fauna down to micro lichen and mushroom species. It’s a little bit of everything.”

Knack said they receive a high number of applicants for the program each year. Typically about six artists are chosen for the residencies, based on uniqueness, their medium, and other factors.

The deadline for applications is February 14; the selections will be announced in April.

More information about the program, application materials, and a selection of works created by previous Artists-in-Residence can be found on the Friends of the Porkies website.

An artist working at the residency cabin in Michigan's Porcupine Mountains Wilderness State Park.

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