ARTS Southeast’s forthcoming Ossabaw Island Artist Residency will be a semi-annual program that invites artists to experience the magic of Georgia’s third-largest barrier island.

The Ossabaw Island Artist Residency will provide artists the time and space for ideas to emerge and take shape among the island's 26,000 acres of maritime forest, tidal wetlands and wide beaches set on the Atlantic Ocean. An unspoiled place only accessible by boat and protected by the State of Georgia as a heritage preserve for natural, scientific, and cultural study, research, and education, Ossabaw has a rich cultural history and a more than 60-year legacy of hosting artists.

ARTS Southeast is excited to reinvigorate and expand upon the ambitious residency programs initiated in 1961 by former island co-owner, protector and matriarch Eleanor Torrey West and her former husband Clifford B. West. The Ossabaw Island Artist Residency will give artists the opportunity to unplug, immerse themselves in nature, and explore this unique locale’s rich cultural history and ecology. 

Photo credit: Artist Suzanne Jackson on Ossabaw Island. Photo by Imke Lass