Chasing Light - Painting and Teaching Within the Magical Landscape of Altos de Chavon

By Lily Olive (MFA 2015)

I spent this past August immersed in the magical environment of Altos de Chavon as one of the recipients of the New York Academy of Art ­ Altos de Chavon Artist and Teaching Residency, living and breathing what seemed to be some kind of mirage of an idealized ultimate painter's paradise. I along with three other NYAA alumni: Ivy Hickam (MFA ­ 2013), Ian Factor (MFA ­ 2014) and Alfonso Gosalbez Berenger (MFA ­ 2014), were given the fortunate opportunity to be selected to teach and work at La Escuela de Diseño Altos de Chavón, a design school in La Romana, Dominican Republic this Summer as part of an ongoing dialogue and exchange program NYAA and Altos de Chavon established last year. Chavon is an affiliate of Parson ́s School of Design in New York.

Ian and Ivy went down in June for the first residency round, and Alfonso and I followed in August for the second round. Ian instructed a class on anatomical drawing, Ivy gave a class on introduction to printmaking, Alfonso taught a landscape painting class, and I taught a class on art historical modalities and contemporary art, a brief survey of a variety of historical technical processes and painting exercises, lectures and several conceptual drawing exercises.

We all overlapped our time there by one week in the beginning of August. Ian and Ivy, along with the wonderful teachers and staff of Altos, helped welcome Alfonso and I to the school and showed us the lay of the land. It was very special to be able to spend that time together with each other painting outside, printmaking with Ivy and the students, taste­ testing delicious Dominican foods liketostones (fried green plantains!), and working on my Spanish language survival skills.

One night, we even ate fried parrot fish at Bayahibe, a beautiful nearby local beach, inside a gift shop surrounded by dresses, wind chimes, painted shells, and palm tee paintings, as torrential rain surprised us and had interrupted our dominos game and dinner on folding tables in the sand..the scramble to retreat inside away from the sheets of gusty rain, grabbing plates of steaming hot fish and cold Presidente beers wrapped in soggy napkins as we ending up moving our dinner from beach to open air gift shop was an experience I will not forget anytime soon.


I kept telling the other residents and teachers at the school that the stunning natural beauty was so overwhelmingly gorgeous, it was borderline saccharine. Certainly a nearly impossible feat to try to capture moments of fading suffused sunsets, jeweled sunbeams dancing and diving across frothy turquoise crests, mangos and coconuts weighing down above, hanging heavy amongst the medieval style architecture.

Bright yellow plums dotted the pathways, butterflies darted in and out of huge yellow, radiant magenta, pink and white tropical blossoms, and light flickered in and out of swaying palm trees.  Geckos and iguanas roamed in and out of our housing, and stray kittens mewed at us for scraps. “Cheese” the cat, a beautiful
mottled gray and white gregarious feline with emerald eyes befriended me quickly, and he spent days following me around, jumping into my lap and demanding attention and treats.



It was paradise realized as far as I was concerned. Perhaps we had landed in an episode of Lost or were living like Tom Hanks character in Castaway I mused, as I scrambled up trees to grab mangos and coconuts, victoriously smashing them open. Life existed everywhere I looked, cacti sprouting out of red rocks, orangey red flowers from the Flamboyant trees lining the roads, pathways, swimming pool, and lighting up the environment with their fiery chroma.
A brief background on Altos. Recreated as a 16 community, perched upon a cliff above the Chavon River. Construction of the village began in 1976 and the village was inaugurated in 1982 with the concert by NYC's one and only Frank Sinatra at the amphitheater. The village was designed by Dominican architect Jose Antonio Caro, and created by Italian master designer and cinematographer Roberto Coppa.The village, in addition to being home to the Altos de Chavon School of Design, also house shops, boutiques, fine art galleries, restaurants and an archaeological museum atop the picturesque cliffs.  The residency consisted of having art studios in a great thatched hut to work out of, and one week of leading and teaching a painting workshop; mine was called History of Painting Techniques and Contemporary Art.

The schools administration and staff were beyond welcoming, Carmen Lorente, the schools academic director, helped us realize and make possible the lessons and ideas we had for our classes and material lists. It was fantastic!
We had lunches together almost daily, and debriefed each other on how our students were progressing, what ideas we had planned for our class lessons, and often lobbying for trips to the beach to plein air.

As a teacher, the experience of having such hardworking and dedicated students was extremely rewarding, and it was a pleasure to push them and see the results. A week is unfortunately not nearly enough time to impart as much knowledge as one would like, but it is long enough to experience very intense immersions into a variety of techniques and experiences together as a class. I gave lectures, painting demos, assisted during lessons, and encouraged the students to keep pushing through the lessons, which were very challenging for them, but they stood up to the demands and dove into their work, with impressive results. It was not uncommon to spend quite a bit of time after class, sometimes hours, assisting the students in continuing to work through their paintings and assignments for that days class. I was touched with how much genuine dedication and love they had for their crafts.


After the classed ended, I spent the rest of my trip outside, plein air painting from life. The time escaped quickly, and I spent entire days working frantically to try to put down color and light and capture as much of the environment as I could.

The landscape, the students, the staff and the entire experience was beautiful and rewarding. We are all so grateful to have been given these opportunities, and I am looking for ways to go back and visit my new Dominican friends as soon as possible.



Mucho Gracias!
Lily


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Ivy Hickam (MFA ­ 2013), Ian Factor (MFA ­ 2014) and Alfonso Gosalbez Berenger (MFA ­ 2014) and Lily Olive (MFA 2013) spent their summer on an Academy sponsored teaching residency in Dominican Republic.

When Plan Change You Go With Them

By IvY HickAM (MFA 2013)

When plans change you go with them.  Instead of teaching my planned for week long monotype course I would be teaching a three day intensive workshop.  Last minute, Carmen worked her magic and I ended up teaching the most wonderful group of students.  I was lucky enough to have a few current students of the design school, going into their second year, and a handful of alumni who lived locally and wanted to be at Altos learning art again. I had painters, drawers, and installation artists.  I had the most engaged and engaging students a non-Spanish speaking nervous teacher could ask for. I had assisted teachers all through the past year in various community collages around New York but it was my first class to teach all on my own.

I had to restructure my class the night before, but with the level of artists I had in my class I was able to teach them just as much information in the intense short time we had together. Painting, scraping, drawing with sticks and q-tips--a whirl of monochromatic prints, watercolor, Japanese paper handprints and experiments in viscosity.  My students ventured outside to paint from life, using the beauty of their surroundings. They used themselves and each other, still life, found images, and their imagination.  I drilled image after image by Degas (an avid maker of monotypes and a favorite of mine) into their heads. I spoke about the importance of contrast, wiping out the lights, and about negative vs. positive. I showed them current working artists as well, showing them how varied monotypes can be.  They showed me, that even with a language barrier, I can show a class what I know and in return they will show me their voices as artists.  The students worked very hard and the amount of prints they made revealed their excitement for the process, leaving time to joke, listen to music and experiment with accidental prints of course.

The smile on everyone’s face as they lifted the paper from their plate, the moths diving into the water baths where the paper was soaking outside, the tables covered with an increasing number of prints--then suddenly the students hugging me and running to catch a bus, it was Friday and the workshop was already at an end.  I left feeling the students were as excited about the monotype process as I am…success! Everyone had helped everyone else, sharing paper and translating and critiquing each other’s work.  By the end they were helping each other print on their own and they didn’t need me anymore. They were self-sufficient printmakers. A far cry from the first morning when at the very beginning of my lesson on how the monotype evolved throughout history, I was interrupted repeatedly in the middle of trying to say the inventor’s name, Giovanni Benedetto Castiglione, by the local cat Cheese’s loud meowing.

Artist Portraits: Ivy Hickam (Class of 2013)

Ivy Hickam, Class of 2013

Studio location: 2nd Floor

http://ivyhickam.com/

Our Giverny Hamlet

August 13-26, eight Academy students lived and worked at the Terra Foundation for American Art-Europe in Giverny, France as part of a two-week Artist in Residence Program.  Daniel Bilodeau (MFA 2013), Adam Carnes (MFA 2013), Ivy Hickam (MFA 2013), Jacob Hicks (MFA 2012), Gaetanne Lavoie (MFA 2013), Robert Plater (MFA 2013), Amanda Scuglia (MFA 2013) and Valentina Stanislavskaia (MFA 2013) will continue to share their experiences here.

By Ivy Hickam (MFA 2013)

Tuesday, August 14:
Today I rode up a hill with a borrowed mountain bike to the edge of a farm field.  I could see little houses and valleys below.  On my way I met two horses, one black, one white. Irritated by flies in their eyes they kept nodding their heads at me.  I patted their warm brows.  A young French girl, who must have stepped out of a painting, walked over to me calling out the horses' names.  She was rosy cheeked and wore a dress the color of the sky.  I spoke to her in my broken French and she  patiently waited to understand.  When I said "Je suis Américain," she smiled.  She lives in a house down the way.  I wished I could paint her.  I said "À tout à l'heure" and hopped back on my bike.
An attempt at a landscape was made farther on up the hill.  A sweaty brow and spilt water decided when it  was done. I had fussed with it too much and the lights were muddied.  But with renewed excitement for watercolor and landscape, I decided I would try again the next day for I'm out of practice in plein air and I knew that's how the day's painting would go.

 

  

After first week's crit, leaving Le Hameau

The studio area the Terra Foundation gave us for the two weeks is called "Le Hameau." The studios are said to have a lot of soul.  They are rich in history; Lilla Cabot Perry, Frederick Carl Frieseke, Mary Wheeler, and Richard Miller all painted here.

"Lady in a garden," Frederick Carl Frieseke

The interior of my studio is always cool inside because of its thick walls.  It has an old fireplace and touches of paint from previous residents. I've contributed gesso marks to the floor and a large branch from a berry bush cut and left by the gardener.  The gardens hiding to the right of the building are a little wild; not too perfectly kept and lovingly overgrown. 

Blog post originally posted in Ivy's Blog (post: "Giverny" and "The Hamlet")

A Place of Beauty

On August 13, eight Academy students arrived at the Terra Foundation for American Art-Europe in Giverny, France to begin a two-week Artist in Residence Program.  Daniel Bilodeau (MFA 2013), Adam Carnes (MFA 2013), Ivy Hickam (MFA 2013), Jacob Hicks (MFA 2012), Gaetanne Lavoie (MFA 2013), Robert Plater (MFA 2013), Amanda Scuglia (MFA 2013) and Valentina Stanislavskaia (MFA 2013) will share their experiences here throughout their residency.

 

By Daniel Bilodeau (MFA 2013)

Giverny is a place of beauty. Replete with trees and flowers, filled with fresh air, the lifestyle in this small French village is at once both simple and sophisticated.

On the day of our arrival we were met at the train station in the neighboring town of Vernon by Miranda, our hostess and facilitator. Taking us into Giverny, she introduced us to the area and took us on a tour of the grounds. We chose rooms to live in, studios to work in, and bicycles with which to explore. Miranda has been truly kind and helpful to us. As a group we walked, visited Monet's outdoor grave, and ate our first residency meals.

Monet's gravesite

When I woke up yesterday I just lay there for a while listening to the birds sing. Eventually, there came the charming and unexpected bbbaaaaaa sound of a sheep bleating. It is kept nearby with emu and ostriches. We began the day with a trip to the Impressionist Museum right here in town. We had a nice guide who had a strong accent and a good command of English, but had probably never addressed a group of people for a long time in the language before. Her voice would begin to shake with nervousness, and we would seek to ease her with approving looks of interest and comprehension. The collection was great and unexpected. Afterwards, we moved our bicycles then went into Vernon by van to satisfy outstanding needs for supplies and personal snacks and wine. We had a lot of fun with french words, the radio, and potato chips in unfamiliar flavors such as roast chicken with thyme, cheeseburger and kebab. 

Today we went to Monet's house and garden first thing. Monet's extensive collection of Japanese woodblock prints was superb, and the garden beautiful. Best for sure is the large lily pond surrounded by so many beautiful trees and flowers; featuring two little bridges. I remained in this area for a long time, as it grew more enchanting as I stayed longer. I made two little drawings. As tourists passed me, they commented in a variety of the world's languages and about fifteen different parties took my picture, which was funny.

We are well taken care of here. The food has been excellent. In the morning there are various breads and cheeses and jams and fruit and of course, Nutella. For lunch we all meet at 12:30 in the museum cafeteria where we have a variety of fresh options including a new plat du jour and desert du jour each day. Chicken, pork, fish,french sauces, big salads. It is delicious fare, and comes with beer or wine or orangina, etc. and a desert from a long list of temptations including chocolate lava cake and numerous flavors of amazing ice cream. Add to it espresso or cafe creme, and it is a satisfying but lengthy operation; taking nearly two hours each day. The dinner is equally good, delivered by a chef to our fridge and only requiring that we set the table and heat it up in the oven. 

Everything in this picturesque village is very attractive, well attended by tourists, and well kept. I'm looking forward to biking around and exploring the natural outskirts some more. My studio space has an old European personality and opens into a beautifully manicured group of apple trees. I share it with Jacob, and we will be spending a lot of time in there. 

There is a great sense of appreciation amongst the group, and we all look forward to the nourishment, creation, and building of fond memories promised by an experience such as this.