Since the 1970s, artists from diverse backgrounds have found peace and productivity in residencies at the Hambidge Center for Creative Arts and Sciences. The Hambidge residency continues to this day at the secluded retreat in Rabun Gap in North Georgia. A new chapter for the center is underway, including new facilities and workshops. Executive Director Jamie Badoud and Deputy Director Ife Williams joined “City Lights” host Lois Reitzes via Zoom to talk more about the expansion.
Interview highlights:
A legacy of creators finding peaceful refuge:
“We’re fortunate to have many well-known artists,” said Badoud. “Just to share a few, Radcliffe Bailey and Fahamu Pecou are wonderful Atlanta artists. The musician Kebbi Williams was recently in residence. T. Lang and Laurie Stallings are dancers who have been residents. Writers have included Natasha Treadway and even Gregory McGuire, the author of “Wicked,” as well as John T. Edge … Our chefs include Stephen Satterfield, and Edna Lewis and Scott Peacock wrote their famous Southern cookbook at Hambidge.”
“Many of us have learned, even in the pandemic, how much noise there is in the world. And so to find yourself in a place where some of that noise dissipates, and nature inspires you in different ways, really allows the creative mind to find a new rhythm and really welcome the creative voice inside you to come out,” Badoud said. Williams added, “As a person who has relocated to our campus and lived with no cell coverage every day, I know that it changes the way you get in your car and drive around when you have to go off-campus. Because you have enough time to forget that you planned to do six things. You just focus on what’s around you.”
Creators in diverse fields sharing inspiration:
“My most fun scientist was the etymologist, who was just excited about all the different types of creatures that often people get, I would say, not excited about — loving finding every variety of bug that he could find,” said Williams. “It’s interesting to see how those scientists, the biologist or chemists, interact with the artists at the dinner table and discover that even though they’re here for science, they have creative approaches, and they have just as much to share as the artists do between each other.”
Hambidge’s new Antinori Village expansion:
“The Antinori Village expansion is going to be really transformational for Hambidge,” Badoud said. “We’ve been nurturing creativity for many, many years with small groups of artists. and this will allow us to really shift to a much broader constituency and welcome the public to experience the Hambidge magic that happens every day with the residency program.”
He continued, “Number one, [Hambidge residency artists are] an intimate community, just eight individuals, the perfect number that fit around a dinner table. And so, in the residency program, they spend their days in seclusion, really diving into their work, and then come together in the evening and share. The Village will be much more intentional in the time together. So it’ll be a collaborative experience, coming together to learn something or do something with a greater intention.”
“They’re really going to celebrate all of these creative disciplines that Hambidge nurtures in the shape of workshops. And those workshops could be anywhere from a weekend to a week or two weeks. The public will have an opportunity to sign up for these different workshops, and they’ll be going on throughout the year. And again, they’re going to be smaller workshops, with just eight individuals at the most. But they’ll also have the opportunity to stay on the property, and that’s what is really exciting and new.”
More information on the upcoming Antinori Village project and current opportunities at the Hambidge Center can be found at www.hambidge.org.
