FREE | Every Friday: May 9 - September 19 | 5 PM - 6 PM
Join us throughout the residency season for our free public series of short and informal artist talks, readings, and presentations. We’ll learn about works-in-progress from our artists and scholars-in-residence with informative and inspiring presentations in all disciplines. This is a wonderful way to kick off your weekend! Bring a friend, all are welcome.
Location: Main Campus. Look for Craigardan Event sign at the end of Main Campus driveway (two “doors” west of the farm store, towards Keene). Google Maps Link
Holly Hanessian
Holly Hanessian is Craigardan’s 2025 Master Artist. She uses her internal compass for making art that is tied to connecting people together and community building. Past projects ranged from hurricane mitigation, designing sustainable water systems, to investigating agricultural justice issues. These artworks addressed historical and structural problems that require us to change the ways we think about water scarcity in the environment or who grows our food.
I am now redirecting my gaze to making art that holds locally grown food and is placed in handmade vessels to celebrate the collaborative power of food and community. My background in education, leadership, mutual aid, and ceramics will support communities, gather neighbors, and celebrate each other. My past achievements include Professor of Art at Florida State University, Past President, and Fellow of the Council for the National Council on Education for the Ceramic Arts. I am an active member of the International Academy of Ceramics, Artaxis.org., Access.Ceramics.org, and was part of the Socially Engaged Craft Collective.
Rachel Berggren
Rachel Berggren is a community builder and systems thinker who helps create and strengthen networks that enhance a community's ability to work together in developing regionally sustainable and accessible ways of nourishing each other. Operating from a foundation in sustainable food systems, non-profit leadership, strategic planning, innovation, and organizational/community capacity building, Rachel engages at the individual, community, and systems level as a food systems and community development consultant. She is deeply passionate about facilitating collective processes to co-create communities and ways of being that are resilient, equitable, and rooted in the needs of the whole from the earth to the people.
With the perspective of an Anthropologist and the soul of a spiritual journeyer, Rachel loves to engage in many ways of connecting with people, from leading song circles to blogging and podcasting about the human experience, to participating in and leading embodiment processes. She is currently training in a somatic psychotherapy program as well as a retreat process modality focused on cultivating more aliveness, healing, and connection. She aims to bring all of these threads together to create communities and spaces that support us all to thrive. Her ultimate vision is to create an eco-village, regenerative farm, retreat center, and educational facility that experiments with innovative and ancient ways of being, providing people with opportunities to re-awaken to their connection with themselves, each other, the earth-home-land we are part of, and the spirit that flows through all of us.