Saratoga News

Photograph by Carol A. Amador

Looking over plans for the 'Orchard of Artists' program at Villa Montalvo are (from left) Patrick Gleeson, composer and jazz musician, Nellie Soloman, artist, and Jim Monday, a Dan Solomon associate.

Villa Montalvo chooses artists for studio cottage collaboration

By Sarah Lombardo

Officials at Saratoga's Villa Montalvo announced last week they have chosen artists to participate in its "Orchard of Artists" program. In what officials say is the first project of its kind, the artists have been teamed with architects to design 10 new cottages for Villa Montalvo's Artist Residency Program.

"Our artists and architects come to us with excellent credentials and experience," said Donald Stastny of Portland's StastnyBrun Architects. Stastny is the invitational process adviser for the project. "I feel this project will be a historic encountering for all parties involved."

The artists and architects come from all over the state of California, and their works are spread throughout the country.

Craig Hodgetts and Hsin-Ming Fung, of Hodgetts + Fung Design Associates in Santa Monica, will be teamed with Lisa See, a novelist from Los Angeles; Jim Jennings, of Jim Jennings Architecture in San Francisco, has chosen to work with sculptor Richard Serra and poet Csezlew Milosz; Mark Mack, of Mack Architects in Venice, Calif., will work with conceptual artist David Ireland; Adele Naude, of Santos and Associates in San Francisco, will team with visual artist Doug Hollis; and Daniel Solomon, of Solomon Inc., Architecture and Urban Design in San Francisco, will collaborate with composer and jazz musician Patrick Gleeson and visual artist and architect Nellie Solomon.

The artist/architect teams will each design two cottages that will be expected to be both an expression of environmentally sustainable art and functional living space. Four of the cottages will house studios for visual artists, two will be for composers or performers and four will be designed for writers. Stastny, working with Portland artist Ted Savinar, will design the commons building, which will house a large kitchen, lounge and meeting rooms, office area and laundry room for use by artists in the Artist Residency Program.

The residency program is designed to provide artists of all kinds with a calm, placid setting in which to simply create and explore their talents. Montalvo executive director Elisabeth Challener calls the program a gift of time for artists.

Artists are accepted for the program for one to three months at a time.

Begun in 1942, the program is the third oldest in the United States and the oldest such program on the West Coast.

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