Artist-in-Residence at Glen Deven Ranch
When Dr. Seeley and Virginia Mudd donated their 860-acre Glen Deven Ranch to The Big Sur Land Trust (BSLT) in 2001 in perpetuity for public benefit, it was Virginia’s heartfelt wish that one day artists would come to the Ranch and be inspired by the extraordinary landscape of Big Sur. In 2006, that dream became a reality when the Land Trust partnered with the Big Sur Arts Initiative to initiate a collaborative Artist-in-Residence Program at Glen Deven Ranch. Located just north of Palo Colorado Road atop a narrow spine of Garrapata Ridge, Glen Deven features a spectacular 360-degree panoramic view of the mountains, canyons, sea and sky, offering to all who visit the chance to stand in the center of nature’s incredible palette. For working artists, spending time at Glen Deven is a powerful opportunity to experience afresh the creative fundamentals of color, texture, form, and light.
The goal of the Artist-in-Residence Program is to support professional California artists from outside Monterey County with a small stipend and an eight-week residency with free housing at the ranch’s private artist studio. The program focused on supporting emerging or mid-career visual artists who were seeking an opportunity such as this to substantially boost their career and who were attracted to work in nature and in Big Sur. The goal of the residency was to provide the artist with the time, the space and the inspiration of Big Sur to develop a body of work, bringing creative vitality to Monterey County and specifically to the community of Big Sur. The Land Trust was pleased to collaborate with the Big Sur Arts Initiative on this important venture; the arts are an economic pillar of Big Sur and have long played an important role in the vibrant mosaic of our Central Coast communities.
Two artists, Susan Thacker and Laura Diamondstone, have served as Artist-in-Residence at Glen Deven, working in the studio that Virginia Mudd, an artist and writer, created apart from the main house. While in Big Sur, Thacker developed a series of paintings entitled “Sede,” or seat, which was inspired in part by Henry David Thoreau’s Walden and explores the idea of land as a seat from which to view the world. Diamondstone created mixed-media work using site-specific, nature and land-based pigments, drawing both inspiration and the raw materials for her art from the spectacular setting of Glen Deven. For both artists, the experience of being Artist-in-Residence was unforgettable. As Diamondstone observed, “To be in this experience is to be the luckiest artist and person on earth.”
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