In the prime of her life, renowned textile artist Mary Hambidge, born in Brunswick in 1885, kept a popular New York shop stocked with gorgeous weavings created by Northeast Georgia women and filled a Smithsonian Institution exhibition with her woven designs. But considering her legacy four years before her death in 1973, she looked to the land
“I think we want to keep one spot pure,” she said of the 600-acre forested sanctuary where the Weavers of Rabun produced their celebrated work. She purchased this Rabun County hideaway down winding Betty’s Creek Road in 1934 and in her later years transformed it into a retreat for artists, craftspeople and friends.
“That’s what I’ve been working for — not for the money, but for the permanency of making something out of this place,” she continued in a 1969 interview recorded by Eliot Wigginton of Foxfire. “And if we make something wonderful out of it, it will be unique in the world.”
Her vision endures at Hambidge Center for the Creative Arts & Sciences. Here, nine studios, built between 1920 and 2003 and ranging from rustic weathered clapboard cabins to a modern craftsman cottage, serve different disciplines — one with kilns for potters, another with a Steinway grand piano for musicians.
Since 1973, more than 2,500 creatives from all 50 states and 30 countries have dug into Hambidge Creative Residency Program fellowships ranging from two to eight weeks. Artists work in solitude during the day in their individual studios — which are separated by dense woods, each roughly a five-minute walk to the next — free from distractions including Wi-Fi and cellphone service. At night they gather for a group dinner at Lucinda’s Rock House, a stone lodge built in 1920.
Being here is an honor: Hambidge accepts some 150 artists each year from 600 applicants who are selected by a changing panel of peers within each discipline. Fellows pay $250 per week for their stay.
Creatives are drawn here to focus deeply on their work amid the pristine property. They are free of any pressure to publish, exhibit or perform as a product of their residency, or to even document their progress. Instead they can clear their minds by exploring seven miles of hiking trails, springs, creeks, waterfalls, wildflower meadows and a beaver bog.
Managing this natural cathedral was a challenge for Mary Hambidge in the winter of her life, but even today, funding — derived from benefactors, foundations and arts grants — has never flowed freely.
Now there is an ambitious new plan called Hambidge 2.0 that aims to grow the center’s offerings and make them more available to the public while generating income for the nonprofit that has struggled financially off and on for more than eight decades. Sustainability is the mantra behind a $3.4 million capital campaign, the nonprofit’s first broad fund-raising drive, led by a $1.45 million gift from Atlanta philanthropist Susan Antinori and the Antinori Foundation.
Progressing nicely when the COVID-19 pandemic put it on pause in March, the campaign will support Antinori Village, featuring three buildings with a total of eight guest rooms, and a fourth structure, the Village Commons. The latter will feature a large common room for workshops and a full kitchen.
The goal is to create a place for Hambidge fellows and other experts to lead workshops for the public on a variety of subjects from photography and songwriting to pottery and cooking, and to give guests a place to lodge and dine. Between workshops, the facilities can be used for corporate retreats and by fellows working on collaborations.
So far $2.7 million, 82% of goal, has been raised, with construction projected to begin in third quarter 2021 and expected to last eight to 10 months.
Designed by the Atlanta architectural firm BLDGS, Antinori Village features panoramic indoor and deck views of the lush landscape while referencing National Register of Historic Places structures including Mary Hambidge’s dogtrot cabin. The compound will be sited next to the Antinori Pottery Studio and have its own driveway entrance.
Credit: Handout
Credit: Handout
A separate driveway sounds like a minor detail, but here it can be taken as a sign of the board and staff’s determination to protect the perfect peace artists enjoy. That quietude is everything at Hambidge, allowing the accomplished guests to achieve things unimagined amid endless duties and distractions back home.
Atlanta sculptor-painter Kevin Cole was astounded at how much work he was able to complete during his recent residency — six individual wall sculptures and two preliminary models for a major sculptural commission at the Brigitte Harris Cancer Pavilion in Detroit.
“I had been trying to start on this piece for two weeks,” Cole says of the models, one of which will now serve as the basis of a 14-foot-tall by 28-feet-wide aluminum sculpture still to be cast. “I was able to get them done in three days. I think it was the solitude, away from the hustle and bustle, looking out the window on the beauty of nature, taking what God created and making something of your own.”
More than 20 years after Scott Peacock shared a fellowship at Hambidge with the late chef extraordinaire Edna Lewis, he remembers what an important ingredient the retreat was in the creation of their classic cookbook, “The Gift of Southern Cooking.”
“It was summer and hot as blazes, but our time there was very important,” the Alabama chef and author says, repeating for emphasis, “Very.”
Mary Hambidge “remains an inspiration to me to this day,” Peacock adds, “and if circumstances allow, I would be delighted to return to Hambidge.”
Jamie Badoud, Hambidge’s executive director since 2009, can proudly cite similar testimonials from artists at different stages of their careers across the eight disciplines that the center brings together — visual arts, music, ceramics, writing, culinary arts, dance, the sciences plus arts and culture administration.
Credit: Howard Pousner
Credit: Howard Pousner
While artists understand the value of the center, potential funders often do not. “People can’t wrap their head around an artist retreat,” Badoud says. “They say, ‘That sounds great. I don’t have any money right now, but you keep it up.’ That’s really been the mountain that we’ve been climbing for many, many years.”
It doesn’t help that Hambidge, tucked in the Appalachian foothills more than two hours north of Atlanta, suffers from being “out of sight, out of mind,” the executive director says. In practical terms, its location well outside the metro area makes the center ineligible for funding from many Atlanta-based foundations.
Beyond creating a stronger business model, broadening funder appeal, supporting additional staff and restoring the historic campus, Badoud wants Hambidge 2.0 to help foster a stronger connection with former fellows.
“We’ve been around 86 years, and people come from all over the world and have revelations here,” he says. “What we want to stop being is just a ripple in the pond (for them), and then it’s over.”
To that end, Hambidge will open an Atlanta satellite early next year at Uptown, formerly Lindbergh City Center, to reengage some of the 500-plus residency program alumni living in the city. New owner Rubenstein Partners has offered 18,000 square feet of free street-level space that Hambidge expects to turn into eight art studios and a gallery in what it is calling the Uptown Cross-pollination Art Lab. Other ideas include presenting workshops and performances (online until such gatherings are safe). The deal is for nine months but could be extended.
When Badoud arrived at Hambidge, Susan Antinori approached the CPA by training who had turned around the Atlanta-based periodical Art Papers, about the possible expansion to complement the Antinori Pottery Studio opened in 2003. But there had been four leaders in six years before him, and the center was carrying a maxed-out $75,000 line of credit, struggling to make payroll.
Badoud asked for time. He has since retired all debt and doubled Hambidge’s annual budget to $800,000.
Several years ago, when the tiny house movement arrived, Antinori began discussing a donation ballparked at $200,000, to build a small compound of them at Hambidge. Badoud determined that the cost would be far higher. That led to further board discussions, rounds of feedback from former fellows, supporters and other stakeholders and advice from professional fundraisers that led to grander ambitions with a price tag boasting more zeroes. Soon, Susan Antinori’s $200,000 offer morphed into a $1.45 million seed gift.
“Yes, the amount of money the Antinori Foundation thought would be sufficient changed drastically,” Antinori acknowledges. "But Jamie was positive that the board could raise the additional money, and our gift was predicated on that promise.
“Our thinking was that with Hambidge’s solid reputation, now international, an investment like this would solidify and ensure a lasting legacy for another 75-plus years.”
FOR MORE INFORMATION
Hambidge Center. Betty’s Creek Road, Rabun County. 706-746-5718, hambidge.org
MORE ON MARY HAMBIDGE
Atlanta History Center. Nearly 1,200 textile items by Mary Hambidge and her Weavers of Rabun are housed and preserved here. A sampling is on display in the exhibition “The Weavings of Mary Hambidge” on view in the Rountree Visual Vault through March 1. 130 W. Paces Ferry Road N.W., Atlanta. $21.50 adults, $18 students and seniors 65, $9 ages 4-12. 404-814-4000, atlantahistorycenter.com.
Famous Hambidge fellows
Radcliffe Bailey, mixed media artist, painter and sculptor
Benny Andrews, painter, printmaker
Lucinda Bunnen, photographer
Fahamu Pecou, interdisciplinary artist
Lonnie Holley, self-taught artist and musician
Cecylia Arzewski, former Atlanta Symphony Orchestra concertmaster and violinist
Gregory Maguire, “Wicked” author
Natasha Trethewey, U.S. poet laureate and Pulitzer Prize winner
Lauri Stallings, founding director of dance group Glo
Edna Lewis and Scott Peacock, chefs and cookbook authors
Steven Satterfield, James Beard Foundation’s Best Chef Southeast, 2017
Rick Berman, ceramicist
Natalie “Alabama” Chanin, fashion designer
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