Green Acre: A Bahá’í Center of Learning

09/08/2026

Three pieces by Gary Heise from “Migration – A Journey Towards Oneness”
www.greenacre.org > THE ARTS > Migration

“This Soft Earth,” Ink and watercolor on rice paper, 13.5 x 13.5 inches
https://www.greenacre.org/participant/this-soft-earth/

While groups often lean into an “us-versus-them” mentality, culture has always thrived on exchange. We constantly adopt new ideas, flavors, and technology, reshaping them to fit our own lives and needs. My artwork reflects this synthesis. This watercolor is one of a series of three semi-abstract landscapes painted in ink and watercolor on rice paper.

“Rocky Overlook,” Ink and watercolor on rice paper, 13.5 x 13.5 inches
https://www.greenacre.org/participant/rocky-overlook/

While groups often lean into an “us-versus-them” mentality, culture has always thrived on exchange. We constantly adopt new ideas, flavors, and technology, reshaping them to fit our own lives and needs. My artwork reflects this synthesis. This watercolor is one of a series of three semi-abstract landscapes painted in ink and watercolor on rice paper.

“Nocturnal Shadows,” Ink and watercolor on rice paper, 13.5 x 13.5 inches
https://www.greenacre.org/participant/nocturnal-shadows/

While groups often lean into an “us-versus-them” mentality, culture has always thrived on exchange. We constantly adopt new ideas, flavors, and technology, reshaping them to fit our own lives and needs. My artwork reflects this synthesis. This watercolor is one of a series of three semi-abstract landscapes painted in ink and watercolor on rice paper.

Heise

09/08/2026

Artist Call: Haven
An invitation to Artists
https://www.greenacre.org/event/artist-call-haven/

A haven can be defined as a place of safety, shelter, and refuge, and/or renewal and inspiration.

We invite you to use your artistic expression, whether in painting, photography, sculpture, poetry, music, dance, live performance and other forms – to explore these questions and spark meaningful conversations and creations related to the theme of Haven:

Personal Experience

• What is the experience of seeking for a haven, of moving from being lost to finding a place where you discover what you’re searching for?

• What is a place that gives you the strength and direction to build something new, even amidst challenging conditions?

Building Havens

• How might a family, neighborhood, or community be a haven, a place where people support each other to have the physical, emotional and spiritual elements one needs to thrive?

• How might a haven be a place to seed and grow something better? How can we build long-lasting community havens?

Arts as a Haven

• How can the arts be a haven for healing, peace, dignity, and community resilience?

• How can we create havens for our relationship with the source of creativity?

In our previous show, Migration, we asked artists to explore the nature of people moving between places and what it means to be welcomed in a new place, and to reclaim voice, culture, and dignity there. A dimension of that experience is the search for a haven, a place of refuge and belonging.

Personal Experience of a Haven

Imagine a time you were lacking vision, faith, or a sense of purpose. Recall the feelings of restlessness and the feeling of an unmet need for something.

Picture the experience of finding a haven, some way that a light of clarity, truth, inspiration, or direction comes in. You may meet someone or enter a home, neighborhood, or a community environment where the qualities of fellowship and warmth awaken your spirit and restores a sense of belonging and connection. In that experience, you may find respite and safety, like a ship anchored in a harbor.

Offer a safe haven to every fearful one, and bring comfort and solace to every dismayed one. Gladden the heart of every sorrowful one, and bring joy to every tearful one. Be as refreshing water to every thirsty one, and as heavenly food to every hungry one. Become the cause of glory to every abased one, and the source of blessings to every poor one. —‘Abdu’l-Bahá

“My home is the home of peace. My home is the home of joy and delight. My home is the home of laughter and exultation. Whosoever enters through the portals of this home, must go out with gladsome heart. This is the home of light; whosoever enters here must become illumined.” – Abdu’l-Bahá

Building Havens

In these times of divisions and tensions in our communities and world, we each can be a protagonist in building havens, places where people can prosper or grow that are nurturing and confirming.

“…with every passing day, we see the condition of the world grow more desperate, its divisions more severe. The escalating tensions within societies and between nations affect peoples and places in a myriad ways. This demands from every conscientious soul a response…. Heartfelt concern must prompt sustained effort to build communities that offer hope in place of despair, unity in place of conflict.” – Letter from Universal House of Justice, 2024

Arts as a Haven

The creative process and artistic expressions can be a haven for the individual and arts can play an integral role in growing peace, dignity, and resilience within community life.

“Indeed the arts as a whole, so integral a part of the development of a community from the start, stand out in such settings as an important means of generating joy, strengthening bonds of unity, disseminating knowledge, and consolidating understanding…”
— Universal House of Justice, 30 December 2021

Important Dates

• Submit art for review by Monday, September 21st, 2026 | Midnight.
• The curating team will review submissions and respond to artists by October 4th, 2026
• Final electronic file or physical piece(s) to be received at Green Acre by October 19th, 2026
• The show will open November 7th, 2026

Artist Call: HAVEN - A place of safety, shelter, and refuge, and/or renewal and inspiration

09/04/2026

Women Being – An inclusive dance performance that honors women and children, presented by 7 Quebecois women and their 7 children.

We explore the cyclical life of women and the shifting roles we embody throughout our lives. From our own birth to the birth of our children, we gather moons and drops of blood, moving through cycles of darkness and light, becoming and unbecoming ourselves along the way. From the heartbeat of our mothers to the tears of our children, something within us is continually lost, transformed, and illuminated. We experience a life shaped by chaos, breathing freely to its own organic rhythm.

This is the migration of womanhood. This is what it means to be Women Being.

Friday 9/11 @ 5:00 pm – 7:00 pm

An inclusive dance performance that honors women and children, presented by 7 Quebecois women and their 7 children. We explore the cyclical life of women and the shifting roles we...

08/26/2026

“My Throat Hurts,” by Angela Denise, Acrylic on canvas and Poetry, from “Migration – A Journey Towards Oneness”
www.greenacre.org > THE ARTS > Migration

Each day I wake in a twilight dream, forced to relive the same day again.
My compliance and kindness taken advantage of.

My physical pain and mental strain overlooked because the world cannot see the invisible illnesses I carry.

Inside my throat burns a quiet fire of words I swallow.
I open my mouth and my voice is kind, but inside my soul rages like a volcano waiting for release.

I swallow the fire again and again, because tired Black women are still expected to be strong.

One day the fire will become a supernova of truth and healing.

Until then I breathe. I write. I rest.

But for now...
my throat hurts.

—Angela Denise Lee

08/20/2026

REGISTRATION NOW OPEN!!!
seachangeconference.org

Celebrating 5 Years of SeaCHANGE—2022–2026!

Friday, September 11th - Sunday, September 13th

Welcome to year five of SeaCHANGE! A conference like no other.

We gather creators of different identities, races, and ages for meaningful experiences of connection and creative expression, exploring big questions.

This year’s conference is about how we can awaken, empower, and activate a deep well of creativity in community.

We’ll discover answers to this question: How can we empower, resource and expand artistic creativity?

In this time of such heaviness and overwhelm, it’s good to remember we get strength from each other.


In times of disintegration, the source to draw on to “build the good” comes from creativity and community.

The SeaChange Conference is not just talking about ideas, it’s exploring processes, practices, and tools and learning from each other about what works to bring creative ideas into form.

You’ll enjoy time in conversations on this question… workshops with amazing artists… an open mic night and dancing… and relaxed space to make genuine human connections and cross-pollinate ideas in a beautiful setting.

Day 1 looks at how people’s artistic creativity is empowered, drawing insights from our personal lived experiences.

Day 2 explores how we can grow communities that activate, resource, and expand artistic creativity.

Day 3 gathers ideas and sparks collaborations for how to bring this experience back home to grow creative communities.

We create an environment where people experience being seen through the eyes of dignity and encouragement. The creative spark in each person is enkindled. Each year the weave of community connection deepens as people return and new people join.

It’s about living “what community can be.”

We hope you’ll join Theater for the People, Green Acre, and Kinship on September 11, 12 & 13 at Green Acre in Eliot, Maine.

More details coming soon!

08/20/2026

“Mundos Imaginarios Aquí y Allá” (Our Imaginary Worlds Here and There), by Melinda Salazar, Ph. D, Watercolor painting, 30 x 28 inches, from “Migration – A Journey Towards Oneness”
https://www.greenacre.org/participant/mundos-imaginarios-aqui-y-alla-our-imaginary-worlds-here-and-there/

The migratory patterns of flora and fauna follow seasonal changes for warmth, food and survival. Humans move in response to forced persecution, violence and conflict, ecological or economic instability. Gender discrimination and inequality impact girls and women differently with increased risk for gender-based exploitation, s*x trafficking, abuse and forced labor.

Women’s stories are woven with common yarn of many colors and women’s narratives are painted from similar palette of diverse hues. We live in imaginary worlds, worlds our ancestors left behind and worlds we strive to make meaning of.

Upon arrival in the U.S., our identities become halved and we are divided into parts. We are called hybrids, half-breeds, mixed, and masala. We are blended, exoticized, and intersectionalized. We piece fragments, shards and remnants of memories carried here from there by our abuelas, abuelos, tias, tios, primas y primos. Some of us are acculturated, some of us resist. But we all are storytellers, who like the rocks and minerals, change under pressure from heat and over time, we emerge anew. We re-claim, re-imagine, and be-come a generation of women who transform the very fabric of global society for the peace and prosperity for our children, grandchildren and their children for seven generations.

Each of these 200 women have My-gration story. Each woman’s story is her own and each woman’s story comprises a collective, shared story. My-gration ancestral story begins with Julita Manrique Salazar who, dressed in mourning black, journeyed to New York City from Bogotá, Colombia with my mother, Ana Cecilia and her 4 siblings when my grandfather, Francisco, was murdered. My-gration ancestral story on my paternal side begins when Celia Brodsky departed from Odesa, Ukraine, before the 1917 Russian Revolution and settled in Newark, New Jersey while her many siblings embarked on a ship headed to Australia. I am the first born of Cecilia Salazar, Julita’s oldest daughter, and Michael Kaplan, Celia Brodsky and Julius Kardonski third child.

I stand among the many who live siempre aquí y allá. Always here and there.

08/18/2026

Two pieces by Antoinette Schultze from “Migration – A Journey Towards Oneness”
www.greenacre.org > THE ARTS > Migration

“Ode To A Friend,” Black granite, spruce, glass, wax, 31 x 13 x 8 inches
https://www.greenacre.org/participant/ode-to-a-friend/
A combination of colors, shapes, and texture having the feeling and presence of my new and very young friend. He is a lovely combination of color with a bright and happy soul.

“Time Marker,” Black granite, bronze, glass, cherrywood base with white paint, 55 x 19 x 13 inches
https://www.greenacre.org/participant/time-marker/
Etching in the stone to mark time and movement. The blue glass catching and reflecting light, evoking the feeling of truth and the source and spirit in life. The mounds and recurring angular shapes and the cherrywood base left with its bark and painted white. Together having a strong sense of place.