Palmer Awarded NYSCA Grant for CV Water Project

CHERRY VALLEY—Angelica Palmer, founder of The Telegraph School, announced last week that she has received a Support for Artists grant from the New York State Council on the Arts to support her creative work. Sponsored by New York Folklore, this award will fund “Sacred Waters,” the next chapter of the Cherry Valley Water Project.

“It is an honor to have been selected for this prestigious grant from NYSCA,” Palmer said in an e-mail. “I am excited to dive in and will use this opportunity to build bridges between worlds: the ancestral home and the American home, the mundane and the magical, the water and the land.”

Sacred Waters will be a new community water ritual created for Cherry Valley that draws on the indigenous Slavic and Animist traditions of Palmer’s ancestors from the Biebrza River Valley in Podlasie, Poland. The Cherry Valley Water Project is a multi-year exploration of how to develop sacred, caring relationships with our local waters through community and the performing arts.

Angelica Dzeli Gosiewska Palmer is a social practice artist and ritualist working at the intersection of nature, community and ancestral wisdom. Rooted in Slavic and Animist traditions, she uses music, storytelling, and somatic practices to create participatory experiences that foster reconnection with self, others, and the living world. Visit dzeli.com to learn more.