Creativity and nature flourish in tandem at an illustrious artists' residency program

Story by Barbara Drake

Head eastward in Central Florida to the Volusia County coastline, and you run smack into the most fecund estuary in North America: the Merritt Island National Wildlife Refuge/Indian River Lagoon. Here, at the juncture where the rivers meet the sea, more than 4,300 species of plants and animals co-inhabit a dazzling array of ecosystems, and wildlife lives, feeds and breeds with abundance. And it's here, on 69 protected acres bordering Turnbull Bay, in New Smyrna Beach, that an equally as magnificent human creativity is being fostered in its own unique sanctuary: the Atlantic Center for the Arts.

Like the marine estuary that sustains the wildlife around it, the nonprofit Atlantic Center for the Arts provides a nurturing oasis for the creative spirit. This first-class artists-in-residence facility provides space and technical support for artists to create in unparalleled freedom.

Five to six times a year, the center opens its doors to three world-renowned artists (Masters) - visual artists, composers, dancers, writers, and others - who encourage, guide and sometimes collaborate with up to 10 developing artists (Associates) each from the U.S. and abroad. Unlike some artists-in-residence programs, however, the emphasis is not on churning out masterpieces but on reinventing the creative process and learning from other artistic disciplines.

It's an approach that inspires nearly every artist who immerses him/herself in it, including New York-based composer John Corigliano, who attributes portions of his opera, Ghosts of Versailles, which premiered at the Metropolitan Opera, to time he spent at Atlantic Center. "I believe that the combining of techniques is vital to artistic growth," Corigliano notes. "[And it] perhaps points the way to entirely new forms."

If Atlantic Center sustains such a high level of inspiration, it's largely due to the vision of its founder: the late painter, sculptor and environmentalist Doris Leeper (1929 - 2000). In the 1970s Leeper vowed to establish an interdisciplinary residence facility in her own Florida wilderness, "where you can't see anything man-made, where people, if they wish to think creatively, can." With strong local support, Leeper founded Atlantic Center for the Arts in 1977 and broke ground for the facility in 1981. Over the years, the center has been sustained by a variety of funding sources, including the Rockefeller Foundation, the State of Florida, National Endowment for the Arts, The Pew Charitable Trusts, local organizations and deeply committed individual donors.

From the beginning, Leeper insisted that the buildings at her artists' utopia fit comfortably into the environment. To this end she enlisted leading architects to create modern, Zen-like cedar structures that seem to float above the mangroves. Today the center includes the Leeper Studio Complex (consisting of a library and five discipline-specific studios), an administration building and gallery, a library, a workshop, three Master Artist cottages, Associate Artist housing, a 200-seat outdoor amphitheater, and a black-box space. Each structure is connected by elevated boardwalks that wander through scrub oak, palmettos and pine trees. The effect is harmonious and respectful of nature --"reverential," notes Atlantic Center CEO Paul Markunas - qualities that strike a deep chord with artists and visitors.

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