Ask 250 people what they'd like to celebrate Saturday, the country's 250th anniversary, and you might get 250 different answers. If you'd like to celebrate creativity and also the spirit of collaboration, Mount Sequoyah in Fayetteville has a Saturday, July 4 opportunity for you. For the past two weeks, more than a dozen artists from here, but also from as far away as South Africa, have been creating during a residency on the mountain. Roslyn Imrie, program coordinator for Mount Sequoyah, says the idea of an artists residency on the mountain launched in 2019 but was a casualty of the pandemic.
"So it had kind of been sitting on the back burner. Very much a dream, but very much needed some little spark to ignite it. So this partnership with Tass came about and we were like, this is the time. It's finally time to make this dream a reality."
The alternative art school, or Tass, is the partner helping bring the residency to life. Amber Imrie, community programs and manager at Tass, says this residency is two weeks here, then one year online.
"It's about connecting deeply in person and then deeply online following that, you know, in person bonding experience."
The alternative art school specializes in bringing artists from around the world together. Amber says there are participants from 25 countries meeting weekly online.
"It's accessible for artists of all levels to be able to join our school. Our median age is 45, so we're not a bunch of young kids. We're a bunch of working artists, um, just positioned all over the globe, coming together to network and build the future in the art world that we want to see."
Such online gatherings can provide so many chances for artists from around the world to work together, but both Roslyn and Amber say they really wanted to bring artists from other places here to work with artists already working on Mount Sequoyah, for in-person support of each other and for collaboration.
"Yeah, we're already seeing artists collaborate together. We have an artist up here doing a project capturing people's screams for a piece called The Silent Scream. And so she's been having different residents scream off the top of the mountain, recording them. And there's another artist working on a collaborative zine to bring together the stories of folks engaging on the mountain. There's been people who have found out they went to the same undergrad at the same time, and just didn't know each other 20 years ago. Um, and there's people that found out they live 15 minutes from each other back in their hometowns."
The first week of the residency included immersion in Ozark culture, field trips with the artists traveling together to explore many perspectives of the Ozarks — a swimming hole, Crystal Bridges, 21C, a visit with Ozark folklorist, writer and historian Brandon Weston — all fitting since the residency was created with the theme Ozark Storytelling.
"And so the kind of question we're all asking is what is storytelling and how is it unique to a certain region? What makes a story unique? What are the similar myths or archetypes that keep floating up? And so they're all from their own positionings and their own regions, you know, able to kind of reflect off of what is Ozarks and then what is — what is where I'm from as well."
So the immersion was the first week. The second — this week — it's reserved for working on the pieces we'll all be able to see this weekend.
Last Saturday morning, several of the visiting artists were in Yancey Hall, some making breakfast, others contemplating what work they'd be spending time on later that day.
"Elizabeth Shiori Jones, I am from western Massachusetts."
"Elaine Angelopoulos and I'm from Brooklyn, New York."
"Hi. Colette Copeland from Lake Granbury, Texas."
"Hi, I'm Bev Butkow. I'm here from South Africa. Johannesburg."
"Emily Lynch from East Lansing, Michigan."
Colette Copeland from Lake Granbury, Texas, says a week in, she's loving her time on Mount Sequoyah. She says she lives in a more rural spot of the country than many other artists, and she's embracing the opportunity to explore with fellow artists in several different media.
"I really look for residencies where there is a communal interaction, and so I really like the structure of this residency, which is very different from most residencies. Most artist residencies, artists go and work independently, and yes, they might have other cohorts, but there aren't necessarily workshops and activities that are planned altogether. And so this is unique. I kind of think of this as a workshop retreat style, you know, so where you can — and really it's like art camp for grown ups, like who wouldn't love to go, you know, to art camp as a grown up."
Colette's work these two weeks expounds on previous work. She's the artist mentioned earlier, delving into the catharsis, posture, and healing of screams.
"It's a two part process, first working one on one with another person where as a facilitator, I am creating a safe space for someone to access their authentic voice. And my prompt always is to think about a time when you have felt silenced or haven't felt like you could speak."
She's been recording screams at — where else — the overlook on Mount Sequoyah, with much of downtown Fayetteville as a backdrop.
"And then the second part, I'm going in and editing out the actual sound. And so then it just becomes about the facial gestures and the body language of what screaming looks like."
For Elizabeth from western Massachusetts, the mountain is feeding her desire to work with textures, gaining inspiration from the natural Ozarks and the materials used to construct the buildings on the mountain decades ago.
"Have these textures in them that I'm — that I pulled with clay. I like, patted clay into the textures and pulled it out. So we have that being fired soon, and that will be able to be seen at the end. And then I'm making mobiles with that. So lots of like fibre flowing and interacting outdoors with the trees."
For a visiting artist from more than 9,000 miles away, the chance to create far from home is thrilling. It's a chance to see what a different part of the world can provide, but also an opportunity to see how distinctly different places like the Ozarks and Johannesburg can inform each other.
"The theme of this residency is around storytelling, but with the question of what is Ozark storytelling? So obviously that doesn't resonate with my personal context, but what do I learn about being in the Ozarks and thinking about storytelling here that makes me understand storytelling at home that much better? And I think just to have a radical change of environment and change of people, that you with change of ways to think and ways to make. I came with no art materials as an example. So this concept of foraging, um, has become a major theme because I'm having to forage materials from everyone and everywhere. So all the co-op bags that people are throwing away, I'm taking on the charcoal from the campfire we had is being used as a material."
The artists will exhibit the work they've created during the residency on Saturday afternoon from 2 until 4. Roslyn Imrie, program coordinator for Mount Sequoyah, says it will be an immersive experience.
"Where you come and we'll have a little map and you'll get to walk around and see the different artists, what they've done, what they've created in different spaces all across the mountain. So bring some walking shoes, dress for the weather because it will be scattered out. I know one artist is installing something in a tree, someone else is making a recording and that's going to be displayed on a screen. So it's going to be really wide. The types of art, the types of art that you experience in the spaces that you experience them in."
All of this talk about a residency suggests, understandably, a welcome possibility to concentrate solely on the creative process while gathering inspiration from nature and fellow artists. But there are deadlines — like the showcase on Saturday — for Emily Lynch of East Lansing, Michigan. Those deadlines do exist, but she says the past two weeks have delivered more muse than pressure.
"I am finding myself being in this lush, beautiful space, um, feeling at ease to, to, um, to write to, to get my materials together to, to think. Um, time is moving both fast and slow. So it's been a, a treasure to be in that liminal, um, magic space."
And you can experience the work created during the residency Saturday afternoon from 2 until 4 on Mount Sequoyah for free. And you can find out more about the alternative art school at thealternativeartschool.com.
Ozarks at Large transcripts are created on a rush deadline and edited for length and clarity. Copy editors utilize AI tools to review work. KUAF does not publish content created by AI. Please reach out to kuafinfo@uark.edu to report an issue. The audio version is the authoritative record of KUAF programming.
