MSDUE Class of 2019–
Artist and Filmmaker.

Isaac Green Diebboll is an artist, documentary filmmaker and a co-founder of an educational non-profit, ENGN (“engine”) Civic Creative Center, 501(c)3 based in Sullivan County, NY.

His work encourages human connection, collaborating intergenerationally between urban and rural communities, supporting ways in which neighbors, both local and global, can listen to one another’s stories.

Isaac holds BFA in Interdisciplinary Sculpture from the Maryland Institute College of Art, and MSDUE  (2019). He teaches as part-time faculty at Parsons School of Design, also serves on various government, planning, non-profit and community boards, and is also a volunteer fireman in Hortonville, NY.

What do you currently do and what are your interests?

I am an artist and filmmaker living in Callicoon, NY. I am engaged in several long term documentary film projects with marginalized communities and indigenous peoples. I live on my family’s farm and am developing a land practice on 42 acres, to serve as a home base for neighbors, friends and family to connect, explore creative nature and develop self-sustaining behaviors and mutually supportive life-systems. My work:

1) Encourage human connection and compassion through filmmaking and storytelling;

2) Support programs and development of spaces that allow for the exploration of creative nature;

3) Question urban systems of dependence; and

4) Promote conscious behaviors and decision making that consider non-human and human life equally.

How did the program change or complement your former/future practice and profession?

MSUDE program gave me the time and resources to research various histories, including Indigenous and African American histories, from the region that I call home. This has helped me make decisions as a citizen, neighbor, consumer and creator that are more compassionate and considerate. I have been able to restructure my value systems, lifestyle and civic creative practice to be more aligned with activities and transitions that I believe are essential to the well-being of the environment and to the future creation of living systems that encourage healthy connection with neighbors, non-human and human.

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