Federal shutdown cancels artists’ residency for two Eugene poets

Eugene poets Eve Müller and Kelly Terwilliger were looking forward to their artists’ residency at Arizona’s Wupatki National Monument this fall.

They didn’t have a specific project in mind, and were excited to see what being in the desert, with a rich Indigenous history, would bring up for them. 

The two would have stayed on Wupatki grounds to reflect on the natural surroundings, like they did for their joint poetry book “Water Questions,” which they created after swimming in wild Oregon waterways. They were excited to explore a desert environment, a 180-degree subject matter change from their previous work.

Then came the federal government shutdown, which closed government offices nationwide and left myriad workforces reeling. That includes the National Park Service and the parks and monuments under its jurisdiction, including Wupatki.

Like other parks administered by the federal government, Wupatki is partially operational. Some outdoor areas remain open to the public. But its offices and buildings, including the house Müller and Terwilliger would have stayed in from Oct. 16 to Nov. 6, are closed.

So their residency was canceled, which was confirmed by a furloughed National Park Service ranger who spoke with Lookout on the condition they not be named.

The art that they would have made, in part a reflection on being two women in their late 50s inhabiting their bodies in nature, is paused.

“It’s heartbreaking on so many levels,” Müller said. “For me personally, but also just the feeling, there’s an unraveling that’s happening for our wild spaces and our support for the arts.”

A landscape to explore

The residency is part of the Artist in Residence program, administered by the National Park Service and the nonprofit Friends of Flagstaff National Monuments.

Müller and Terwilliger heard about the opportunity at Wupatki while on another residency, at PLAYA in Summer Lake, Oregon. They were put in touch with a Wupatki park ranger who told them about the residency.

Müller and Terwilliger knew each other from growing up around Coos Bay but didn’t become friends and collaborators until both had moved back to Eugene, Terwilliger in 1996 and Müller in 2022. They wanted to work on something together and landed on a project centered around swimming in wild places in Oregon, first envisioned as a zine but later expanding to a full book, with the two women skinny-dipping in Oregon waters each month of the year.

“What we were hoping to do at Wupatki was refigure the way our bodies were in that landscape,” Müller said, “Allowing our bodies to become part of the landscape and a body that wasn’t necessarily being looked at, but just being lived in. Somehow to become more intimately part of that landscape, rather than someone looking at the landscape as a viewer, to become part of it ourselves, was a goal for me.”

To aid that, Terwilliger and Müller made a series of three garments for the desert, made of sheer muslin with champagne-colored slips beneath. One garment tethers the two women together with feet of fabric, part of a reflection on artistic collaboration.

The two poets have hopes for a rescheduled residency, potentially next spring, or a more informal visit later this year. But for now, the residency being canceled meant they had the muslin garments with nowhere to go. They instead went to the Oregon Coast for a chilly photo shoot.

Terwilliger said losing the residency because of a political tussle thousands of miles away was at first personally disappointing, but she’s since regrouped.

“It has made me aware in a really personal way of how things are changing so abruptly and quixotically in this country,” Terwilliger said. “I feel much more connected in a visceral way with people that I read about in the news, who are losing jobs or being furloughed at the drop of a hat.”