About

DIY & SUSTAINABLE PRACTICES SYMPOSIUM

The Visitor Center hosted its first DIY Sustainable Adventure Art Symposium, August 15-24, 2014. We gathered to make art, share skills, exchange ideas, build community, and examine sustainability in life and in artistic practice. In tandem with our inaugural year, we founded the Ewen Arts Festival, which included an exhibition of local artists and Visitor Center artists, artist presentations, live music, raku firing and metal pour demonstrations, all open to the public. 

Other highlights included trips to nearby natural landmarks and swimming holes, the collective design and building of low-impact infrastructure for our camp's basic needs, 10-day intensive workshops in Local Clay and Metal Casting, and hosting independent projects for creative inquiry that embraced the Visitor Center's rugged setting and adventurous spirit. 

When we say rugged and adventure- we mean it! We offer a wilderness art-making experience. Accommodations include tent camping, an outdoor kitchen, composting toilets, and limited running water. While electricity is available only in our studio barn, our site has miles of hiking trails and great star-gazing!

HISTORY & MISSION

The seeds for a sustainable arts community at the end of Ewen Airport Road were planted in 2007 with the donation of a building from the nearby Sylvania Wilderness Area. Their gift of a 1960’s A-Frame to long-time Forest Service volunteer Cameron Coleman came with the stipulation that he remove it from the forest.  

That year, three artists from Minneapolis disassembled the building and transported its components to our current site. In 2008, a group of fifteen artists from across the country met to re-assemble it. This building was used as Sylvania's entrance station (The Visitor Center, as the sign reads) and it is the namesake and point of departure for the creative endeavor that has ensued.

Each following summer, artists have gathered on the land surrounding the A-Frame with the intention of building relationships between creative people, makers of all stripes, and the U.P. community. We seek to combine the experience of wilderness living and resourcefulness with a contemporary art and ecology conversation. Our goal is to promote creativity through skill sharing, sculpture workshops, discussion of sustainable practices in art and in life, and to encourage new ways of thinking about the world.