Sedona Summer Colony Cover Story

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M O N T H LY ART CAMP

JUNE 2017 U.S./CANADA $3.95

100 ARTISTS FROM AROUNDTHE WORLD GATHERAT VERDE VALLEY SCHOOLFOR THESEDONA SUMMERCOLONY

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POWER PLAY POPCULTURELIGHTSUP THENIGHTAT THE NEONMUSEUM

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Artist Goes to Camp

JUNE 2017 SEDONA M O N T H LY

From July 16 through Aug. 5, 100 artists working in every medium you can imagine will descend on Verde Valley School in the Village of Oak Creek during the second Sedona Summer Colony. Their days will be spent creating art, swimming in Oak Creek and exploring the red rocks.

Think of it as boho summer camp for adults.

By Erika Ayn Finch

THIS SPREAD: (From left) Sedona Arts Center Executive Director Eric Holowacz, Verde Valley School Head of School Paul Amadio and Sedona Summer Colony Program Director Carol Holyoake at the chapel at Verde Valley School.

Photo by Deb Weinkauff

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Like many good stories, this one begins with a bottle of wine.

THIS PAGE: Ceramicist Autumn Higgins drove to the colony after graduating with a master’s of fine arts degree from Louisiana State University.

OPPOSITE PAGE: (Top) Ernesto Kunde is a Miami-based Brazilian painter; (bottom) musician Anqwenique Wingfield from Rhode Island performed a recital at the VVS chapel.

t w as Oc t o b er 2 015 , a nd E r i c Holowacz and Paul Amadio had recently moved to Sedona; Eric relocated from Baton Rouge, and Paul had most recently lived in Dallas. Eric was the new executive director at Sedona Arts Center while Paul had taken on the role of head of school at Verde Valley School. A member of the VVS faculty suggested they meet, so the two men and their wives gathered for dinner at Paul’s house on the VVS campus in the Village of Oak Creek. They quickly realized they shared a passion for the arts. Paul has a background in performing arts, and Eric has experience with artist residencies, festival production and arts facilities. “There was a creative side to Eric that was exactly what I expected to find in Sedona,” says Paul.

One bottle of wine led to another, and the duo came up with the idea of an artists’ residence program that would take place in Sedona in the summer. Eric’s career includes 15 years of experience with residency programs, which he describes as “hospitality for the creative process.” VVS is dark during the summer months, and with its kitchen and dormitories – not to mention stellar red rock views – hosting the colony at the school was a no-brainer for Paul. “It was this concept of two of the oldest organizations in the community coming together with a common cause that would benefit Sedona,” says Paul. The Sedona Summer Colony was born.

BUT FIRST…

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ittle did Paul and Eric know that their organizations shared a connection dating all the way back to the 1950s. Verde Valley School was founded in 1947, on the heels of World War II, as a multinational private boarding school.

(Side note: Town and Country magazine recently named the school the 15th best boarding school in the U.S.) VVS recruited an Egyptian sculptor from Boston by the name of Nassan Gobran to head the school’s art department in the early 1950s.

After a few years, Nassan felt driven to create something for the community of Sedona, and in 1956, an early version of Sedona Arts Center – then called Sedona Summer Program – began. The nonprofit was incorporated as SAC in 1961, the same year it purchased the Jordan Apple Packing Barn, now known as the Art Barn, for $900.

That wasn’t the two organizations’ only link. German-born Dadaist Max Ernst taught art classes at VVS in the 1950s.

According to Eric, Max and his wife, artist Dorothea Tanning, held a show in the Art Barn when it first opened. “Max would

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invite his European modern artist friends to work on their art from his home in Sedona so he could show them what was here and give them inspiration that can only be found in Sedona,” says Eric. “It was an early form of the Sedona Summer Colony.”

INAUGURATION DAY

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ric and Paul decided the first colony should take place in summer 2016, but they were in need of someone to come in and take the reins when it came to organizing all of the logistics. Paul reached out to his friend from New Hampshire, Carol Holyoake. Carol, who is originally from Australia, has a background in event management, cultural festivals and nonprofit organizations. She was intrigued by the idea of the colony, so she packed up and moved across the country Memorial Day Weekend, just six weeks before the program was scheduled to begin. (Carol is the colony program manager as well as VVS’ director of legacy programs and communications.) “I thought the guys had a fabulous vision, and the position took all of my skill sets and combined them into one job,” says Carol. “I went into it with an open mind and no set boundaries.”

The result was the inaugural Sedona Summer Colony, which began June 19 and ran through August 10. SAC invited more than 125 artists from as far away as Manitoba, Canada, and Hobart, Tasmania, to live on the campus from one to four weeks at a time, free of cost.

The artists just had to get here.

They lived in the dorms, were provided two meals a day prepared by VVS Chef Michael Briggs (often using ingredients from the school’s beautiful organic garden), worked in the school art studios and took excursions to locations like Grand Canyon National Park, Arcosanti and Montezuma Castle National Monument.

Participants were not required to produce a final product, though some did. Instead, spontaneous exhibits and performances kept happening throughout the summer, lending to the festive atmosphere. “We had choreographers and dancers creating work in the creek,” says Eric. “There was an opera singer who gave a performance in the chapel and filmmakers and anime artists who showed movies. We had an exhibition in Brady Hall. One artist did a ghostly performance piece where she walked around the campus at night with a flashlight.”

Carol says she had some initial trepidation about so many artistic mediums and artists from all over the world inhabiting one space. Would there be conflict? Would they have anything in common? (Carol and Eric were on campus every day of the colony.) “It turned out that the diversity brought cooperation,” says Carol. “Because there was no structure, it worked, and because many of the artists had already been to residencies, they were flexible and open to what was going on.”

And it also turned out that the artists and their artwork

Opposite page: (Top) photo by Kelli Klymenko; (bottom) photo by Eric Holowacz. This page: photo by Kelli Klymenko.

“WEWANTESTABLISHEDANDEMERGINGARTISTS,BUTTHEY ALL

HAVETOBESERIOUS ABOUTTHEIRWORK.”

Eric Holowacz, Sedona Arts Center Executive Director

“WHAT HAPPENS AT THE SEDONA SUMMERCOLONY

IS WHAT SHOULDHAPPENINTHEWORLD.”

Paul Amadio, Verde Valley School Head of School

did have something in common: Sedona. “The landscape brought people together,” says Carol. “The scenery out here is so spectacular – it couldn’t help but have an impact. For many, it took almost a week to acclimate to the elevation, land, heat and the bohemian mix of culture. For those who stayed longer, we started to see elements of the landscape in their work. This was an opportunity for them to learn skills and work with materials they’ve never had in the cities and even in other rural areas. Bits of red earth or tree bark would appear in paintings.”

That’s exactly what happened to Key West artist Nellie Appleby, who stayed at the colony for four weeks and is planning on returning this summer. It was Nellie’s first visit to Arizona, and it was her fourth artist’s residency. The videographer-photographer-sculptor spent her time in Sedona creating cyanotypes, an early form of photography.

“People talk about the rocks in Sedona, and I became intrigued with the rocks myself,” says Nellie, who was preparing for an exhibit in Key West of the body of work she created in Sedona. “The natural beauty was stunning, and I was so moved by being in a different landscape. The palette was so different from what I’m used to, and so were the materials.”

KUMBAYA

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aul says the Sedona Summer Colony is almost a mirror of the VVS culture. VVS is comprised of 120 students from 18 countries and 18 states, all studying, working and recreating together. That same concept came together at the colony. “What happens at VVS, what happens at the Sedona Summer Colony, is what should happen in the world,” says Paul.

The Sedona community got in on the action, too. The colony hosted Sunday community potlucks where local residents would bring a dish and share a table with the artists. The artists, in turn, would open their work spaces to the diners.

Eric says the VVS dining hall was packed every Sunday evening, and it quickly became one of the most popular aspects of the colony.

Nellie says she left the colony with a whole new set of friends from around the world. She gleaned inspiration from the other artists as well as the Sedona landscape, and she left feeling like she’d had a cultural experience. “The trips we took to see cave drawings and the natural wonders of the area – the Hopi festival in Flagstaff – taught me to be an investigator,” she says. “The colony wasn’t a superficial experience.”

AND NOW…

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his year, approximately 100 Sedona Summer Colony artists were chosen through an application process.

The artists will live on the campus for one-, two- and three-week intervals from July 16 through August 5. This Opposite page: Photos by Kelli Klymenko. This page: photo by Nellie Appleby.

year they will also need to pay a fee: $65 per day. Paul says he hopes one day the colony will receive grants to offset its costs, but until then, the organizers needed to do something to make sure the program was sustainable. “We aren’t looking to make money, but it’s been our intent all along that the colony pay for itself,” he says.

Though artists were invited to apply for the colony, there was still a vetting process, says Eric. “We’re looking for diversity,” he says. “Diversity of age, race, gender and creative disciplines. We want established and emerging artists, but they all have to be serious about their work.

Last year, we had some artists under the age of 25 who were producing incredible work. We also had artists in their early 70s.”

The other new component to the 2017 colony is the chance for local artists to spend the day creating work on campus. For $30, an artist can take advantage of everything the full-time colonists receive minus the overnight accommodations. “Last year’s missing ingredient was the local artists,” says Paul. “They wanted to be involved, and we wanted to create an opportunity for that to happen. It was amazing to see how the artists last year inspired each other, and I think that will happen even moreso when you add locals into the mix.”

The weekly excursions will continue this year, as will the private, half-day tours of Museum of Northern Arizona’s Easton Collection Center, part of the museum’s Research Campus.

Artists will also be on their own for dinner twice a week, something Eric calls Dinner on the Town. Transportation will bring the artists into Sedona where they will have the chance to dine and shop. The popular Sunday potlucks are back, too.

Those happen every Sunday, 4-6 p.m., and are open to anyone in the community who wants to share a dish and meet international artists.

Just like last year, there’s no requirement for artists to produce a finished piece during their Sedona retreat, a concept that is confusing for some art lovers but liberating for most artists. Some 2016 participants did produce a final product while others are still working on concepts developed at the colony. There are at least two books in progress. Eric, Paul and Carol say they’ve heard feedback from multiple artists about the effect Sedona had on their creativity. The colony’s Facebook page is full of heartwarming anecdotes.

“For people who find themselves here, they seem to experience something profound,” says Paul. “They can’t help but leave feeling inspired, moved and impacted by the beauty, the terrain – even the stars. There’s something about this place that makes an artist commit to labor further and make something lasting about their time here.”

For more information, visit www.sedonasummercolony.org or call 928-282-3809. •

OPPOSITE PAGE: (Top) Payton Hurley is a Florida-based singer and arts organizer who participated in the 2016 colony as an intern with the Peace Paper Project; (bottom) Hawaiian wood carver Keoni Bigno demonstrates the preparation of kava in the VVS quad.

THIS PAGE: Tumbleweed Owl cyanotype photo on paper by Nellie Appleby.

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