How A Former Trader Turns Luxury Villas Into Free Art Education
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The Ani Art Academy Waichulis sits atop a steep hill in Bear Creek Village, Pennsylvania. A cluster of maple and oak line the driveway, giving way to a pair of traditional taupe-sided bungalows at the crest — one residence, one studio. Cars are parked three deep.
Entering the dimly lit atelier, the first things you see is a plaque, reading:
“Great artists aren’t born, they’re educated”
Fitting — artist Anthony Waichulis never expected to become a teacher. During his time as a student at The Schuler School of Fine Arts in Baltimore, he wondered: “What is art education?” He began to explore this notion, sharing his discoveries and attracting the curiosity of his peers.
Upon graduating, Waichulis returned to Pennsylvania and opened The Waichulis Studio. What began as “two to three people working side-by-side” blossomed, laying the foundation for something bigger — teaching found him.
Tim Reynolds, co-founder of Jane Street Capital, a firm of 400 that says it engages in $8 billion worth of trades on its busiest days, found himself on a journey of his own. After reading “The Agony And The Ecstasy” and “The Lust for Life,” both by Irving Stone, the notion that Michelangelo and Van Gogh were more hard working achievers than born geniuses was a revelation, sparking the desire to become an artist himself.
Reynolds began studying with artist Timothy Jahn, eventually commissioning a piece from his teacher. The result demonstrated a significant leap forward in ability. The difference? Jahn himself began studying with Anthony Waichulis.
Immediately recognizing the opportunity, Reynolds took a leave of absence from Jane Street, and approached Waichulis with his vision of an educational effort on a global scale. In 2010, The Waichulis Studio merged with The Ani Art Academies project to create a new entity — The Ani Art Academy Waichulis.
Two years later, realizing the scope of what they were creating, Reynolds’ leave became permanent — there was much to be done.
Ani Art Academies
‘Ani,’ a play on the Swahili word ‘Andjani,’ means the “path ahead” — apropos indeed. Ani Art Academies is a non-profit organization, offering a free art education to emerging artists around the globe. Three of the academies are uniquely paired with award winning, luxury villas in Anguilla, Sri Lanka and Thailand — a fourth of this kind will open next year in the Dominican Republic. Nightly rates begin at $3,500 and go as high as $16,125 during peak season.
The Ani Art Academy family also includes the domestic flagship, Ani Art Academy Waichulis in Pennsylvania, and a soon-to-open outpost in Red Bank, New Jersey. The latter has been built solely for disabled veterans. Ani Founder Tim Reynolds explains, “My original mission for the academies was to help ambitious people stuck in countries with limited opportunities to excel. The more I read about how poorly we have been treating our veterans, the more I felt a need to help. I am a paraplegic myself, and understand how daunting serious injuries can seem — but since my car accident, I’ve learned to draw and paint, so I know the psychological lift that comes with empowering abilities like painting. We’re teaching veterans coveted skills that will be the envy of their able bodied friends and families.”
Though each academy varies slightly, the basic structure includes fifty students, and two teachers — all graduates of the program. The academies boast two studios, a fifteen easel dark studio, computer lab, storage lab and dining facilities. As part of the program, each student receives a free lunch — certainly a perk any artist would appreciate. Prospective students can apply online, and are accepted based on both artistic merit and regional eligibility.
The Ani Art Academies are fully funded by Ani Villas and The Tim Reynolds Foundation. Will outside funding come into play? “I’ve had offers from people who found out what we are doing and would like to contribute,” says Reynolds. “Fortunately, the foundation is well-funded and the villas are doing well — so the schools are secure for a long time.”
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The Program
Waichulis’ Trompe L’Oeil revolution began with curiosity, and the discovery of a void in art education.
“When I was young, I took a range of music classes —piano, percussion, guitar. I realized, regardless of the teacher or the instrument, all of the fundamentals of music stayed the same. Arpeggios, scales, cadences — it didn’t matter if you were on a guitar or a saxophone.”
Waichulis continues, “Now when I went from art class to art class — this was not the case. It seemed that the fundamentals of each class were governed by the aesthetic preferences, and personal experiences of the teacher. Art education lacked a standardized lexicon. So, I began looking for the connective tissue inherent to all of these different programs. I eventually whittled it down to the most basic elements.”
When you walk into any Ani atelier, you will find students working on a variety of projects, ranging from intricately detailed drawings, to simple visual exercises. Artists sharing the same studio are often at different stages of the program.
“We begin with basic primitives, like marks and lines, and began organizing them into shapes, adding variables, and developing form,” Waichulis notes, “So you are slowly building complexity from rudimentary primitives. Once you go beyond these low-level, automatized operations, you are now flirting with aesthetic and higher cognitive issues.”
The curriculum provides each artist with the tools to discover their own visual language. The early results began to spark interest. “We started getting emails from universities saying, ‘Is there any way you can make a 16-week adaptation of drawing 1, or drawing 2, or a painting program?’ These iterations have been very successful.”
Based on countless requests from educators, the techniques developed by Waichulis have been synthesized into a K-12 curriculum. Visual Language One, Two and Three; as well as detailed lesson plans are available for download online.
Why is it free? Waichulis declares, “One thing that keeps information from where it’s supposed to be is cost. And this curriculum needs to be out there.”
To further document and distribute Waichulis’ system, a series of DVDs have been created in-house.
“It was a far greater project than I could have imagined,” Reynolds points out, “Ultimately, we put together seven full-length DVDs and supplemental DVDs with additional materials. That information exists and it is available for posterity. I was always afraid skills like this would be lost.”
The Virtuous Circle
“This effort is a virtuous circle. The villas support the academy. The academy supports the artists. The artists create the art. The art hangs in the villas. And our affluent clientele have the opportunity to meet the artists, and bring home a one-of-a-kind keepsake,” explains Reynolds.
The artists retain 100% of the sales made through the villas, and with early sales achieving price points of $2500 or higher —the impact is significant. “For many of our students, that’s a fortune,” states Reynolds, “in most families, both parents are working for $7 a day total, so some of these families have never seen a check of that magnitude.”
The virtuous circle continues to grow.
“The art that remains will end up in one of the many local galleries sprouting up as a result of the program,” Reynolds notes, “A tourist destination with gorgeous beaches and a strong cultural footprint will attract a different type of tourist, bringing greater revenue to the town as a whole, inspiring the creation of new restaurants and other tourist attractions.”
In exchange for a free education, the artists in the academy are asked only to put forth their best effort, and are challenged to give back to the community upon graduation. Point in case — when the Ani Art Academy opens in Sri Lanka, Timothy Jahn will be taking the reins, and an Anguillan graduate will be taking over the Ani Anguilla.
The program has been architected to create both artists and teachers.
The Results
To date, here are some of the most successful students, with their affiliation noted: Timothy W. Jahn (TWS/Ani), Kate Sammons (TWS), Edward Dillon – (TWS/Ani), Brian O’Neill (TWS/Ani), Joel Carson Jones (TWS), Rodney O’Dell Davis (Ani), Adam Vinson (TWS), Jay Davenport (TWS) and Terese Rogers (TWS/Ani).
But, as Reynolds points out, “The academy is still in the early stages.”
In four years, there will be between 200-250 full-time students. In ten years, the Academies will have at least that number of students, but will also have 500-700 graduates. This is when the true impact of the program will be apparent, in communities and galleries across the globe.
How will the Academy be measured in the future? Reynolds declares, “Our success is not measured by revenues. Our success will be measured by how much great art was created, and by how many people this program has touched.”
For the record, while the matter is a source of some debate — Reynolds is responsible for the quote at the front door.
Keep up-to-date with the Ani Art Academy on their official news page.
Click here to view original web page at www.forbes.com
February 24, 2016