The Living Art Pavilion

Imagine living in a city - there are many gathering spaces in your town and your community is there. However, you have an opportunity to venture out into a more nature-based space for a gathering that intrigues you - perhaps it's about an artistic practice, or maybe it's moving you closer to a part of yourself whose presence you sense but have not yet found the way to fully know. And maybe you just need some quiet, or you're hoping to make soulful connections where you will be truly seen. The Wild Life Refuge offers this call to adventure and promise of respite. 

If you live in Madison, Wisconsin it's about an hour's drive, probably less, but just enough for the entire first half of your journey to feel like a letting go. In the remaining minutes you fill with anticipation and delight in the picturesque scenery. And then you arrive. The house is a cozy log cabin style, built into a forested hillside with a colorful meadow, waterfall, and fairytale-like pond that opens to an idyllic view of rolling hills with farmland and forest. The home has multiple spaces and a larger light-filled central room. It envelops one in the intimacy of gatherings that truly mean something in your heart.

On this day, however, you are here for a slightly different experience. You find the broad path curving through the meadow and garden, passing the whimsical pond and small art shed to reach the Living Art Pavilion. Nestled in an oblong clearing and lined with majestic windows that let the forest in, you enter what feels like a giant sculpture itself. Greeted by your hosts and meeting the quietly eager gazes of other visitors you settle in, ready for this … you are not sure quite what it is yet … this beginning. 

The Living Art Pavilion is built to support connection and creative transformation in a way that is not over-defined. It lets artists show up, feel held, and put their energy into creating activities rather than each time trying to secure the space for those activities. We can move from project to project with versatile ease rather than having to recreate the physical context each time. It supports many movement forms, messy art, interactive performance, and contemplative practices. It is a place that equally invites those who might not yet see themselves as artists but makes it clear that here they are home too and their creativity also transforms the world and helps them to meet themselves. 

The project's first steps will be consultation and logistical support, with Phase One producing a sturdy shell that's ready to use. Later stages will add more finishing touches, additional rooms, and features. The property has an inherent calming and healing energy. It calls for preservation and thoughtful stewardship. It is set on eleven acres that include about ten acres of forest with winding pathways over a small hill. The existing home is already an inspiring, beautiful space for art-making and small gatherings. However, by creating a new Living Art Pavilion we can intentionally create a more universally-accessible design and features - i.e. an ADA-compliant bathroom, space for guest artists, aerial dance rig points, a sprung dance floor - that will be welcoming to a broader range of visitors and activities. 

This Wild Life Refuge is a living sculpture; a collective going beyond just me. I will make art there and that expression will feel profound and joyful - yet at the same time these products pale in importance to its most durable and profound element: living connections among people. These bonds are constantly shifting and growing, and in need of tending and stewardship just as we will all be stewards of this land and these created spaces. The product is the process that never ends. We don't control it. It will surprise us and be too much, not enough, and yet always whole. And that is beautiful. It's what I'm here for. I want to connect with the people that are here for this too.

Future site of the Living Art Pavilion