How I Spent My Week Long Summer Artist Workshop By Cecilia Wren

By Cecilia Wren

By Cecilia Wren 

The mountains of Aspen, Colorado might be known for their winter sports, but they are also home to Anderson Ranch, an artist summer camp and residency host. I spent a week there in the beginning of July after receiving a scholarship from the camp and from my University. I learned a lot about the scholarship process, travel, and sculpture for this trip. 

Applications

The application for the Summer scholarships opened in December the year before and had a short turn around. I heard about the camp from several of my professors attending workshops in the past and talking about the opportunities that they got from going. One of my professors told me about a scholarship opening up for sculpture students to go and thought that I would be a perfect candidate for it. I sent in a small portfolio of work as well as a paragraph statement about why I would need a scholarship. Two weeks later I was in! 

The scholarship from Anderson Ranch covered tuition, but I still needed funding for lodging, food, and travel. I sent an email and asked very nicely about getting access to a University research grant that would cover the rest. I had a meeting with the advisors and they approved my scholarship! I just had to pick out a workshop and find a way to get there. I work with a lot of found objects so I wanted something that would challenge me more to make something out of my comfort zone. I picked a workshop with Jilaine Jones, a professor at the New York Studio School. She works in a very abstracted formalist style with completely different mediums from me. Now that funding was secured and the date picked, I just needed to get there. 

Travel 

I had the option to use the majority of my budget for the trip on flying and dealing with airports, or enjoy the bliss of an interstate road trip. I love road trips. It was a no brainer. I started from Flagstaff, Arizona and stopped along the way there at Four Corners and Pagosa Springs, Colorado. Since the camp started early Sunday morning, I spent Friday driving to Denver so the drive would be shorter. 

Going from Flagstaff to Denver was 12 hours of hills and farmland to then crash at a hostel in the heart of Denver. I spent the Saturday before my workshop going to the Denver Museum of

Art and recovering from the 12 hour drive. The next day was the scariest drive I have ever done in my entire life. I drove through Independence Pass and its steep hills, hairpin turns with no railings, and sudden narrowing to one lane highways was one of the most terrifying things I have ever experienced in my life. 

At Anderson Ranch 

I spent a week at Anderson Ranch having an absolute sculpture brain melt. I swear there are only so many ways you can think of a still life and abstract it, but I was told there were endless possibilities. I spent hours in the studio looking at and zooming in and out of this still life, looking at the points of connection. How the crucible tongs balance on the wooden log, how the slope of the shovel connects to the ground gradually rather than the abrupt legs of the saw horse. Learning from our instructor, Jilaine Jones, was fantastic. I think one of the best things I learned from her was that you could be a practicing artist and still be successful, but only through true devotion to your practice. I asked Jilaine if there was anything that she did to “feed her practice” outside of sculpture, which is a pretentious way to ask if she does anything fun, and she said “no, just sculpture”. I would say that sculpture and art are my fun. I have to worry about my normal life outside of art where I have to go to my receptionist job or pay bills, to be only involved in art would be an absolute dream. 

The camp itself was very nice. My expectation was based on the summer camps I went to in high school where I had a very communal shower and had to pack my own sleeping bags. I was

not expecting to get little hotel soaps and have a private shower. The sculpture studio was very nice and staffed by interns working as studio assistants for the summer who were always happy to meet new people. Meeting everyone taking the workshop was the best part of the experience. I was the youngest person there and making friends in the art world that are older than you is intimidating since you don’t have the same amount of experience, but also exciting because I can see what I have to look forward to. I got to see art from other people who were established artists and professors in different mediums, but were trying sculpture for the first time. On the last day of the camp we finished critique and almost all of us went to the tiny smoking area at the back of the camp to have a celebratory cigarette. 

Journey Home & Reflection 

After a little under a week at Anderson Ranch, I started the journey home going through New Mexico. I stopped in Taos, NM to see a show on Adobe at the Harwood Gallery and stayed the night at the Santa Fe International Hostel (highly recommend it!). While in New Mexico I also saw some of the more tourist-y things, I went to the Earthships outside of Taos and Meow Wolf Santa Fe. I then made the shorter 5 hour drive home to Flagstaff, where I promptly went out with friends, had a few drinks, and lost at pool. 

I highly recommend this experience to every artist. Anderson Ranch has a robust scholarship program that you don’t have to be enrolled at a University to receive. Anderson Ranch is not unique in its summer residency/workshop programs. There are so many programs out there. The United States and Canadian National Parks have residency programs that allow artists to

stay and create. Workshops are even easier to find. Many art museums or centers for the arts offer workshops that can vary from a few hours one day to multi-month long. Check out the workshops available at Anderson Ranch at https://www.andersonranch.org/workshops/