Impact: Contemporary Artists at the Hermitage Artist Retreat

Impact: Contemporary Artists at the Hermitage Artist Retreat Since its establishment in 2002 on nearby Manasota Key, the Hermitage Artist Retreat has provided an unusual environment for creative thinkers and makers working in the visual and performing arts to take time within a natural setting to recoup, refocus, and recharge their creative energies. Unlike artist residencies that mandate the productivity of each individual’s time, the Hermitage asks only that artists determine their ideal balance between work and nature, with the sole obligation being a free public presentation about their work for the community. For most Hermitage Fellows, this radical change of environment and routine typically represents an unexpected rupture with their daily lives, irrespective of where and how they live, and this in turn affects their art in unpredictable ways. Writing from the perspective of someone who had the honor of serving for ten years on the Hermitage Artist Retreat’s National Curatorial Council, and the privilege of being a guest resident for a pair of transformative three-week stretches, there is something to be said about the physical impact that occurs when a hard-working creative person, whose typical working environment is likely a noisy metropolis, and whose typical day is a string of deadlines and interruptions, wakes up on their first morning at the Hermitage—or their eleventh morning—face to face with the splendor of the Gulf of Mexico stretching out to the horizon, and the contours of the day ahead beckoning as a mystery waiting to be revealed. In recognition of the Hermitage’s unique contribution to the national arts scene during its 22 years of existence, I was invited by the Sarasota Art Museum to select ten Hermitage Fellows from the visual arts to return to the Sarasota region. Their return will take the form of a public presentation of their art within a group context that loosely addresses the thematic parameters of visual expression today. Within a broad range of media—painting, sculpture, installation, photography, video, music, performance, conceptual art, ceramics, weaving, and printmaking—each invited artist makes a distinctly persuasive case in their work for expanding beyond conventional boundaries of style and discipline, and to touch upon themes and subjects that have affected their own lives, and through which they aspire to have a different kind of impact on their communities. Early on in the curatorial process, the overlapping use of the word “impact” to describe both the Hermitage’s effect on artists, as well as those same artists’ aspirations to reach a public outside the confines of the contemporary art world, made the title seem almost inevitable. Of course, the word “impact” is tossed about somewhat flippantly in present-day idiomatic English, with the result that its two distinct but interconnected meanings often become blurred. In its most common application, an object, force, or living thing comes forcibly into contact with something or someone else, as in the case of the impact of my big toe hitting a chair. In its second definition, an action, person, place or