Peninsula State Park Residency

Photo by Kasey and Ben

Program Overview

Beginning in 2024, PenArt and Peninsula State Park partnered to offer a residency experience that puts both art making and the environment at its center. Drawing upon the expertise of both organizations, artists-in-residence are provided with ample studio space and resources, as well as Peninsula State Park’s diverse landscape, unique ecosystems, and knowledgeable staff. Artists are invited to explore the state park through the lens of their individual research; discovering new connections in their practices, creating site-responsive works alongside community members, and gaining a deeper understanding of this particular place and its environmental circumstances. 

This program is generously funded by the Friends of Peninsula State Park. 

Summer 2026 Artist-in-Residence

Annie Hejny

Annie Hejny is an environmental visual artist and community climate leader rooted in the freshwater landscapes of the Midwest. Her work centers on personal and collective relationships with water in the face of a deepening climate emergency. Annie’s multidisciplinary approach weaves ecological research, material science, artistic improvisation, stewardship practices, and community engagement.

Working across painting, sculpture, installation, and video, she re-situates substances gathered from the environment - water, sediment, road salt, snow, and bark - into visual forms that carry both scientific and emotional meaning. The labor of collecting these materials is intentionally slow and often inconvenient - a contrast to our convenience-driven culture.

Her work has been supported by Minnesota State Arts Board Grants, the Kolman & Reeb Gallery Project Space Grant, and artist residencies including Pine Needles at the St Croix Watershed Research Station with the Science Museum of Minnesota. As a certified Community Climate Leader, Nature and Forest Therapy Guide, and Minnesota Water Steward, her artwork reflects our human connection with nature through freshwater protection and climate action. Annie lives and works between Minneapolis, MN and Brooklyn, NY.

www.AnnieHejny.com

2026 Community Programs

  • Forest Bathing Walk

    Thursday, August 13
    10am-Noon
    at Eagle Terrace & Sentinel Trail

    Peninsula State Park Artist-in-Residence Annie Hejny will guide participants on a slow moving walk with invitations to connect with the natural world through our senses. Please wear weather-appropriate clothing and footwear. We will walk rain or shine, except in extreme conditions. Ages 12 and up. No pets please. Spaces are limited, please call PenArt at 920.868.3455 to reserve yours. Meet at the Picnic Area at Eagle Terrace before walking the Sentinel Trail together.

  • Papermaking with Lake Michigan

    Sunday, August 16
    Drop-In 3-5pm
    at Nicolet Beach

    Annie Hejny will teach participants the basics of papermaking at the shoreline of Lake Michigan. Participants will be able to make sheets of handmade recycled paper to take home. All materials provided. All ages welcome. 

  • Dreaming of Our Future

    Tuesday, August 18
    Drop-In 10am-Noon
    at White Cedar Nature Center

    Peninsula State Park Artist-in-Residence Annie Hejny will host a creative station as part of The Climate Dream Network where participants are invited to remember the climate future that we can still create. This is a drop-in event to reflect on and share your dreams through words, pictures, and collage. All materials are provided. All ages welcome. 

Alumni Artists-in-Residence

Amanda Lovelee

Summer 2025

Amanda Lovelee is a civic artist whose work bridges public art, environmental science, and systems change. She creates large-scale, cross-sector projects that use empathy and play to shift conversations about community, equity, and our shared future. Amanda’s practice is rooted in collaboration - with scientists, planners, government agencies, and residents - making the invisible visible and translating between institutional systems and lived experiences. From a city-run popsicle truck gathering urban planning input to love letters that helped change park policy, her work invites people to fall in love with their home. www.AmandaLovelee.com

Tomiko Jones

Tomiko Jones’ photography and multidisciplinary installations explore social, cultural, and geopolitical transitions, considering the twin crises of too much and too little in the age of climate change. Her ongoing project These Grand Places explores public land and constructed national identity; initially prompted by the administration’s list of federally protected public land to be reviewed for de-regulation. Supported with a mobile research studio, a live/work studio using renewable solar as the power source, Tomiko traveled to the most urgent sites under review to gather visual and verbal material. These immersive, temporary residencies are essential to understanding place, people, and the politics of protection.
www.TomikoJonesPhoto.com

Summer 2024
Summer 2024

Maysey Craddock

Best known for her visceral gouache paintings of ephemeral landscapes, Maysey Craddock examines the dualities and mysteries of nature and those relationships to space and time. Through saturated earth tones and translucent elemental layers, she depicts the spaces in between, the interactions of nature and architecture, and what happens beyond the grasp of human control. Her imagery is dense and fluid, with trees, watery surfaces, and roots figuring prominently as metaphors of the eternal cycles of death and rebirth, and the inevitability of entropy. www.MayseyCraddock.com

PenArt is an active
member of the Artist Communities Alliance.

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