How do you leave a monastery?

Dear Art Monastery friends, supporters, and Artmonks everywhere,

As of July 2013, I am stepping down from my position as Artistic Director of the Art Monastery Project. I am so grateful for my three wonderful years with the AMP. Being an Artmonk has allowed me the opportunity to live an amazing life filled with art, intentionality, and true community.

The challenges of living day in and day out in community have carved me into a new being, and ironically only because I have been through the fire of the Art Monastery am I now ready to leave the Art Monastery.  Artistically, I have been pushed, challenged, and encouraged. I will always be grateful to the team that pulled together the summer 2012 laboratory and each and every artist, friend, supporter, and donor who made the creation of Ad Mortem possible.

As Artistic Director, I have strived to push the AMP to new levels of artistic excellence while maintaining a nourishing community life; along this path, personal and collective successes and failures have created quite a journey of which, for better and for worse, I am immeasurably proud. I will take all the gifts of the Art Monastery with me into the next chapter of my life, in which I’m planning to move to New York and pursue my career as a theatre director and general research into human being-ness. I remain a huge supporter of the Art Monastery Project and all possible versions of its growth and future, and sincerely hope that someone continues to research what it is to be an Artmonk and what an Art Monastery could give the world. It’s important work that I still believe the world needs, but the work takes many different forms and I believe that everything must be allowed to change and grow.

If you’re reading this, I think it means you have some level of interest in the Art Monastery Project, and for that I’m grateful. Thank you for thinking the Art Monastery is cool, thank you for trusting me to be Artistic Director, thank you if you ever came to Italy, thank you for each time you gave $10 or $1,000, thank you for interest in what we’ve been doing over there, thank you for your encouraging support, thank you for your love.

Tante belle cose, sempre,

Liz.

P.S. At the Art Monastery, I began writing poetry. If you’re interested to read my latest poem about leaving the AMP, you can find it here – Long Nights in Monasteries.