Spend a Summer at Mildred’s Lane

Internships

Please inquire about these job opportunities and 

send a letter of interest to complexity@mildredslane.org

Available Internships 2026

  • Land Steward

  • Digestion Choreography

  • Ministry of Comfort

  • Officer of Complex(ity)

The Labor’s of Mildred’s Lane

Featuring images from The Labor Portraits Of Mildred’s Lane,
Rebecca Purcell, J. Morgan Puett, Jeffrey Jenkins
and Fellows of Mildred’s Lane 2013 & 2024

Workstyles of Mildred’s Lane are structured into seventeen Labors. The Labor Portraits are part allegory, part cartoon, and aggregate depictions of the poetic, aesthetic systems of maintenance in that environment called Mildred’s Lane. 

The Labors practiced at Mildred’s Lane are an ongoing collaboration with participants challenging traditional roles of domesticity and in the same, the corporate hierarchies of nonprofit organizations and institutions.

Land Steward

Labor Portrait: Jaquel Theis

The Land Steward is grounded — literally and conceptually — on site. Theirs is a role of deep attentiveness: to the landscape, its architecture, its projects, and the social life that animates it all. They carry the stories and histories of the site as conceptual tools, equipped to answer any question about its past and present, and to host and organize the social events that bring the community together.

Land Stewards are keepers of chaos — meaning order is made only provisionally, for safety and interpretation, never as an imposition. A gardener, a landscape designer, a lifeguard, sometimes all at once: the Land Steward protects the sensitivities of the site while keeping their sense of humor and social engagement light. This is not a role for a cynic. Stewarding requires genuine care and respect — a leave-no-trace comportment, inside and outside — alongside a willingness to be fully present in the wildness of the place. Multiple wild sides are not only tolerated at Mildred's Lane; they are tended.

The Land Steward is politically embedded in environmental activism. Working for the environment demands creative people willing to build new habits — social engagement now requires new ideas for environmental comportment as commons, and that is among the most critical creative practices and tasks at hand. 

Land Steward Labors include:

  • Ecological care of the environment —gardening, and general outside maintenance, with particular attention to trees, fallen debris, and weather damage

  • Yale Garden and Green Room Garden projects

  • Composting and pulling invasive species

  • Decluttering the landscape, including the PondHouseSpringHousePond projects

  • Animal management, live trapping and relocating creatures, Radical Apiary when active

  • Hooshing paths, hoses, and landscape tools — maintaining comfortable and safe access throughout; mowing and detailing.

  • Restaging landscape furniture in collaboration with the Master Hooshress and Digestion Choreographer

  • Gathering recyclables from the landscape

  • Cultivating pollination through extensive planting

Ministry of Comfort

Labor Portrait: Elizabeth Crawford, Isobel Lister

The Ministry of Comfort is an essential presence in the domestic life of Mildred's Lane — but comfort here is never merely housekeeping. It is a practice of care, a creative and rhetorical engagement with the everyday that keeps the communal site functional, welcoming, and alive. The Ministry prepares for incoming contributors and fellows, and most importantly guides everyone through the nuances of Workstyles — making clear that what might elsewhere be called chores are here understood as creative acts, as ethical comportment, as the very substance of the project.

The Ministry of Comfort is often the first contact a visitor experiences. Warmth and welcome are paramount — people are entering a new experience and may be uncertain. The Ministry sets the tone: open, generous, attentive. They establish the Comportment Protocols on site and embody them in everything they do.

Textiles are central to this Labor. The Ministry develops a deep understanding of the linens and their histories — which are antique, which are in circulation, which require repair, which carry specific protocols. Caring for textiles meticulously across all areas of the household is not incidental; it is a form of environmental and material literacy, and a challenge to all who pass through to engage with creative, inventive domesticating.

Ministry of Comfort Labors include:

Orientation and comportment:

  • Welcoming all visitors warmly; orienting them to water closets, sleeping quarters, and site protocols

  • Communicating the importance of comportment protocols

  • Textiles Management and demonstrating the adaptive reuse of textiles through the course of their day and existence

  • Instructing fellows in the full range of Workstyles possibilities and following up to ensure tasks are understood and completed

Digestion Choreographer

Labor Portrait: Cheryl Edwards

The Digestion Choreographer directs and guides all collaborations in the Kitchen Laboratory — and is often the guest chef. Food at Mildred's Lane is never merely sustenance; it is a social event, a creative act, a site of gathering and exchange. The kitchen is a laboratory in the fullest sense, and the Digestion Choreographer holds that space with skill, generosity, and a keen understanding of how meals become the connective tissue of communal life.

Because the role is so essential and so demanding — particularly when social events are underway — there will usually be a team of Digestion Choreographers working together, each bringing different strengths. They guide those who are comfortable in the kitchen and those who are not, making the space welcoming and participatory without surrendering its rigor. The kitchen is for everyone, and the Choreographer knows how to make that true in practice.

The Digestion Choreographer manages the larder but does not necessarily control food ordering — Mildred's Lane maintains its own relationships with local organic food suppliers, and those relationships are part of the project's ethics of place and sustainability.

Digestion Choreographer Labors include:

  • Planning and implementing kitchen laboratory systems and cooking teams

  • Collaborating with the Master Hooshress on settings and food event environments

  • Organizing clean-up and maintaining cleanliness of all appliances

  • Managing others to help in organizing recyclables and garbage responsibly

  • Maintaining the taxonomy of the kitchen — organizing and hooshing china, teacups, plates, glassware, jars, and all food and larder storage with care and conceptual intention

Officer of Complex(ity)

Labor Portrait: Clayton Lewis

The Officer of Complex(ity) is the essential co-director, co-curator, executive administrator, and public face of Mildred's Lane — the one who holds the gateway between the world and the project. They steward The Mildred Complex(ity) Project Space and Annex, the public-facing headquarters of Mildred's Lane, Inc., managing its day-to-day operations while keeping its character open, emergent, and true to the spirit of the greater project.

The Mildred Complex(ity) is a shape-shifting space — storefront, gallery, lecture hall, atelier — changing character as the needs of the project and the community demand. The Officer manages the flow of all people and things through these spaces, maintaining them as sites of genuine encounter rather than institutional presentation. Most importantly, they are the face that the public meets first: warm, knowledgeable, and deeply embedded in the philosophy of Workstyles.

The Officer tends the retail endeavors of The Mildred Complex(ity) — the store-keeping duties defined by the Department of Interstitchiaries — managing inventory, sales, consignments, and bookkeeping in partnership with the Ambassador of Transhistorical Agency. But retail here is never merely commercial. It is a creative and political act, an extension of the project's resistance to the commodification of art and labor, and a demonstration that a storefront practice is itself a form of optimism.

The Officer works collaboratively with all Labors but most essentially with the Ambassador of Entanglement, the Ambassador of Transhistorical Agency, and the Minister of Strategic Possibilities — together forming the connective tissue that keeps the project's internal and external lives in communication with each other. Occasionally, when larger groups or visitations require it, a Supervisor of Complex(ity) is engaged to support the Officer's work.

Officer of Complex(ity) Labors include:

  • Stewarding The Mildred Complex(ity) Project Space and Annex as the public face of Mildred's Lane

  • Managing day-to-day administration of Mildred's Lane, Inc. — correspondence, communication, and promotion

  • Co-curating Town Fridays and other public events at the project space

  • Overseeing installation maintenance and repairs at The Mildred Complex(ity)

  • Keeping the project space clean, organized, and ready for emergent possibilities at all times

  • Light bookkeeping in collaboration with the Ambassador of Transhistorical Agency and the accountants

  • Supervising all project installations in collaboration with the Department of Interstitchiaries

Ambassador of Transhistorical Agency

Labor Portrait: Natalie Wilkin

The Ambassador of Transhistorical Agency moves across all Labors, wearing many hats, occupying the spaces between — sometimes administrator, sometimes archivist, sometimes fugitive. This is the central communications and numbers position at Mildred's Lane, and numbers here are understood as a universal and transhistorical language: units and devices that hold the project together across time, distance, and the inevitable complexity of a living communal enterprise.

The ATA is the core bookkeeper and budget point person, working in close collaboration with the Officer of Complex(ity) and the Ambassador of Entanglement. They handle all invoicing, reporting, and financial correspondence, maintaining the fiscal health of the project with the same care and attention that the Ministry of Comfort brings to the domestic sphere. In a horizontal organization that resists hierarchy, someone must hold the numbers — and the ATA holds them with both rigor and generosity.

Beyond administration, the ATA manages all communications with Sending Institutions, gathering and preparing the materials and protocols required for receiving fellows. They update spreadsheets, coordinate arrivals, and ensure that every visiting artist and student has what they need before they come up the long dirt lane for the first time. This is detailed, exquisite work — the kind that makes everything else possible and is rarely seen.

  • Ambassador of Transhistorical Agency Labors include:

    • Central bookkeeping and budget management in collaboration with the Officer of Complex(ity) and Ambassador of Entanglement

    • All invoicing and financial reporting to the Officer

    • Managing communications with all Sending Institutions — gathering, preparing, and disbursing materials and protocols for incoming fellows

    • Updating and maintaining all spreadsheets and visitor data

    • Website design and maintenance

    • Posting Barn Lyceum events and public programming

    • Supporting the Ambassador, The Archon, The Officer, and Minister of Strategic Possibilities in administering outreach and institutional relationships

    • Carrying the project forward in whatever form is needed — this Labor, more than most, shapes itself to what the moment requires

Archon of Entanglement  

Labor Portrait: J.Morgan Puett

The Officer of Complex(ity) is the essential co-director, co-curator, executive administrator, and public face of Mildred's Lane — the one who holds the gateway between the world and the project. They steward The Mildred Complex(ity) Project Space and Annex, the public-facing headquarters of Mildred's Lane, Inc., managing its day-to-day operations while keeping its character open, emergent, and true to the spirit of the greater project.

The Mildred Complex(ity) is a shape-shifting space — storefront, gallery, lecture hall, atelier — changing character as the needs of the project and the community demand. The Officer manages the flow of all people and things through these spaces, maintaining them as sites of genuine encounter rather than institutional presentation. Most importantly, they are the face that the public meets first: warm, knowledgeable, and deeply embedded in the philosophy of Workstyles.

The Officer tends the retail endeavors of The Mildred Complex(ity) — the store-keeping duties defined by the Department of Interstitchiaries — managing inventory, sales, consignments, and bookkeeping in partnership with the Ambassador of Transhistorical Agency. But retail here is never merely commercial. It is a creative and political act, an extension of the project's resistance to the commodification of art and labor, and a demonstration that a storefront practice is itself a form of optimism.

The Officer works collaboratively with all Labors but most essentially with the Ambassador of Entanglement, the Ambassador of Transhistorical Agency, and the Minister of Strategic Possibilities — together forming the connective tissue that keeps the project's internal and external lives in communication with each other. Occasionally, when larger groups or visitations require it, a Supervisor of Complex(ity) is engaged to support the Officer's work.

Officer of Complex(ity) Labors include:

  • Stewarding The Mildred Complex(ity) Project Space and Annex as the public face of Mildred's Lane

  • Managing day-to-day administration of Mildred's Lane, Inc. — correspondence, communication, and promotion

  • Co-curating Town Fridays and other public events at the project space

  • Overseeing installation maintenance and repairs at The Mildred Complex(ity)

  • Keeping the project space clean, organized, and ready for emergent possibilities at all times

  • Light bookkeeping in collaboration with the Ambassador of Transhistorical Agency and the accountants

  • Supervising all project installations in collaboration with the Department of Interstitchiaries