Hi everyone! My name is Rush Johnston, and I’m a queer, disabled artist based in Brooklyn, NYC. I’m so excited to announce that I was accepted to an artist residency for queer, disabled artists in Ireland! I’m so beyond excited for this opportunity; however, it was a very fast turn around from acceptance to traveling over seas which means I haven’t had much time to save funds for air fare or other costs associated with the residency. I’d love your help in raising funds to make sure I can take advantage of this amazing international opportunity. Thank you always for your shares and support!
About Rush:
Rush Johnston (they/them) is a Brooklyn-based multimedia choreographer, performer, filmmaker, and movement researcher. Rush creates at the intersection of visual and performing art, often exploring modes of artistic expression beyond the binary. As a queer, Native, neurodivergent artist, their work often plays with perception and identity, inviting viewers to question proposed truths of self and social misunderstanding. Social justice work is a key element of Rush’s creative vision, often encompassing themes of political turmoil, queerness, and mental health.
Rush is the founder and artistic director of Kaleid Dance Collective, an interdisciplinary artistic platform for creative experiments and exhibitions.
About the residency:
The residency creates an immersive sanctuary where disabled and non-disabled participants can move alongside disabled performance artists and live artists, sharing in rich, communal movement rituals that center joy and nourishment. Through this collaborative cultivation, we aim to grow new possibilities for embodiment, connection, and creative expression that honor the full spectrum of human experience.
Set within the living landscape of Milford House, the artists will work intimately with the surrounding plant life and trees, allowing the land itself to become a co-creator in cultivating these visions. The natural world will serve as both inspiration and collaborator, reflecting themes of growth, adaptation, and the beautiful complexity of diverse ecosystems.
The program weaves together guided workshops and activities with time for self-directed exploration and reflection. Throughout the residency, we maintain Live Art Ireland’s Vulnerable Adult Protection Policy, ensuring a safe and supportive environment for all workshop leaders and participating artists.
A mentored workshop forms the heart of the residency experience, offering structured space for deepening practice, sharing discoveries, and collectively tending to the emerging visions that grow from this unique intersection of queerness, disability, artmaking, and environmental connection.
Why now:
I have been making work in NYC for the last three years that was initially catalyzed by a residency in Vienna, Austria. That residency gave me the confidence and choreographic skills to make a life for myself as an artist in New York. Now it’s time to expand my reach and spend time researching movement within a queer and disabled lens and there’s no better place to do it! I will be researching the mycelium of mushrooms and how it can inform our lives and artistic practices as queer and disabled people. I’m so excited and would live for this dream to become a reality!