Founded in 2004 by a group of artists and writers and situated in the Southern Catskills on a 200-acre campus, Denniston Hill is an artist-centered interdisciplinary arts organization that, through its residency, public programs, publications and commissioning opportunities, offers artists the support they need to take creative and intellectual risks. The organization is focused on LGBTQ artists of color, particularly those whose work engages with questions of social change and expanded cultural awareness in a nuanced and critical way.
Denniston Hill
The Denniston Hill barn and studio. Summer 2019
Based on the strong belief that artists’ voices should be heard, nurtured, and protected; Denniston Hill is dedicated to fostering dialogue through our core programs. The artists we support fearlessly challenge mainstream understandings of gender, identity, and race while working tirelessly to bring attention to the critical issues of our time. We are committed to amplifying under-the-radar voices, and encouraging conversations among and beyond our community of artists striving for change and cultural awareness. IMAGE CREDIT: WHITNEY BROWN PHOTOGRAPHY
Eric Rasmussen, Robbie McCauely and Tina Ruan perform at the Annual Open House 2019
Robbie McCauley, the recipient of Denniston Hill’s inaugural Distinguished Performance Artist Award (DPAA) for 2019. She’s also a recent recipient of the IRNE (Independent Reviewers of New England) Award for Solo Performance, and selected as a 2012 United States Artists Ford Foundation Fellow, has been an active presence in the American avant-garde theatre for several decades. Also lately, she directed a critically successful Roxbury Repertory Theater production of “The Glass Menagerie” by Tennessee Williams. She received an OBIE Award and a Bessie Award for Outstanding Achievement in Performance for her play, Sally’s Rape.
She is widely anthologized including Extreme Exposure, Moon Marked and Touched by Sun, and Performance and Cultural Politics, edited respectively by Jo Bonney, Sydne Mahone, and Elin Diamond. One of the early cast members of Ntozake Shange’s for colored girls who have considered suicide when the rainbow is enuf on Broadway, Robbie went on to write and perform regularly in cities across the country and abroad. IMAGE CREDIT: WHITNEY BROWN PHOTOGRAPHY
“Poor People’s TV Room” was a public performance by Okwui Okpokwasili, recipient of Denniston Hill’s inaugural Distinguished Performance Artist Award (DPAA), performed at our first Annual Open House in August 2016.
As part of the DPAA award, Okpokwasili staged a “collective embodied performance” with a number of guests who volunteered to participate in the piece. The work, led by Okpokwasili, drew on material from a new performance Okpokwasili was developing while in residence at Denniston Hill. Poor People's TV Room, which premiered last fall, is a multi-media performance rooted in the kinetic history of collective action in Nigeria. It references two historic incidents in Nigeria: the Women's War of 1929, an anti-colonial resistance movement led by women, and the Boko Haram kidnappings which launched the Bring Back Our Girls movement. Poor People's TV Room not only excavates these historical events but underscores the ways that women of color have historically been--and continue to be--a catalyst for social change throughout the world.
Writer, choreographer, and performer Okwui Okpokwasili creates multi-disciplinary projects in partnership with Peter Born, her long-time collaborator. Their work has received numerous awards including a 2010 and 2014 New York Dance and Performance "Bessie" Awards for Outstanding Production for Pent-Up: A Revenge Dance and Bronx Gothic respectively. IMAGE CREDIT: TIMOTHY GERKEN
Visual art and artists are at the center of our work. We believe in the intrinsic value of experimental artistic practice and promote artistic participation in cultural conversations at the highest level.
The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts