Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
ANDERSON RANCH ARTS CENTER
throw pots on a colorado ranch
SNOWMASS, COLORADO
To create is human.
—motto of Anderson Ranch
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Besides its awe-inspiring Rocky Mountain elevation (the student handbook offers sug-
gestions on how to acclimate to life at 8,200 feet), Anderson Ranch is different from other arts-
and-crafts centers because it was started by a master artist who is internationally recognized
for his contributions to contemporary ceramics. Paul Soldner, who has exhibited from London
to Kyoto and created many innovations that potters from Peoria to Pensacola regularly use,
helped to found Anderson Ranch Arts Center in 1966 after locals in Aspen, Colorado, asked
him to teach them a thing or two about clay.
When developers of nearby Snowmass Resort offered the prospective art school a choice
of abandoned buildings, Soldner and his cronies opted for Anderson Ranch, an old sheep
ranch, because, as Soldner said, “It had more character.” The artists cleared out the barns for
studios, set up a gallery, and inaugurated informal workshops. “It was meant to be a full-time
alternative to graduate school: just as intense, but without academic degrees,” Soldner ex-
plains.
In the beginning, students lived and worked with their mentors, making and selling art-
work to defray the costs. Although Soldner, who served as the artist colony's first artistic dir-
ector, turned over the administrative reins in the mid-1970s, he still returns each summer to
teach one of the clay workshops. And he still leads students out to dig clay from nearby hill-
sides (and to pick dandelions for a batch of dandelion wine that next year's students can en-
joy).
Soldner is joined by the nation's most renowned craftspeople—prize winners, career
craftsmen, academics in the field—who flock to Anderson Ranch each summer to teach week-
end, one-, two-, and three-week classes in ceramics, woodworking and furniture design, art
history, photography, printmaking, digital imagery, sculpture, and painting.
