With the hustle and bustle of city life, we know it can be hard for artists to find uninterrupted time to create. That’s why we created our Artist Fellowship Program, to give creatives a space in nature to work on their projects. We love seeing what our artists come up with and we’re excited to share some of our recent fellows.
Julia Kuo has been sketching since college, and you can find her with a travel sketchbook wherever she goes. She often finds inspiration in the day-to-day, by seeing something beautiful – in nature, people, occasionally buildings, and wanting to capture it herself.
Julia headed to Getaway Beaver Creek with her boyfriend, two friends, and two dogs. They ventured out to Beaver Creek State Park, hiked the Vondergreen Trail, and settled into their cabin to roast veggies over the fire and listen to the frogs croaking into the evening.
That change of pace is exactly what Julia would want for a dream creative project. “My dream is to follow a team of researchers to McMurdo Station in Antarctica and record everything they do in drawings,” she explains.
Katie Commodore knew she’d be an artist from a young age. When she was in elementary school, she recalls imagining she’d be an astronaut, testing low gravity paints by being the first to paint the Martian landscape.
She currently resides in Rhode Island, where she works across a variety of subject matters – from our embroidered landscapes to tackling subjects like identity and sexuality.
As for her dream project: “I love designing wallpaper and patterns. I’d love to create an immersive environment where the patterns are all-encompassing, but at the same time allow for a moment of calm for the viewer. There is a bit of peace that seems to happen when you’re surrounded by chaos and color, where, as your eyes wander and try and absorb everything your brain has a moment to only focus on what you can take in and the constant worries of the day don’t have space to run around your thoughts.”
“When you have a solid studio practice, you wind up always working towards the next show/the next commission/the next project, and you never have time to do something really different than what you normally do. I do use embroidery in my studio practice, but I haven’t done a landscape in probably 15 years.” Of her Getaway, she notes, “It was a wonderful reminder that not everything I create has to be for something or have a further purpose. I can just create little moments and have them just be that.”
Looking for a creative break? Book your escape to nature here.