February 25 - March 3, 2018 was the 50th Anniversary of the Festival, featured a reunion of artists and participants, and the dedication on March 2nd of the new Orme School arts center, which has been named after its founder, and hosted an Exhibition of her works and those of several of the other Festival artists. The Reunion and Re-Dedication of the Festival was an enjoyable gathering of some of the past workshop leaders and a potential boost for the continuing improvement of the Arts program at Orme. It is hoped that the spirit of that dedication will continue throughout the history of the Orme School as it continues its mission to inspire students and teachers alike.

• History or Origin Myth
• Artists of the Fine Arts Festival
• FAF Programs and Brochures (incomplete - help needed)
• The Orme Fine Arts Collection (incomplete - help needed)
• The Basic Principles / Rules of the Festival
• The Devil's Claw!!

For years, Dot Lewis had attempted to make art a more vital part of the Orme School curriculum, an effort which was again and again stymied by the Scylla and Charybdis of art programs everywhere: Money and Academic Accreditation. But let's go back a little earlier, back to an earlier, simpler time, just a few years after World War II.

Crossing the Cattle Guard

From that first day in 1951, when she drove in her Chevy convertible down the road to the Ranch, Dot Lewis hoped to make Art a more vital part of the Orme School curriculum. After all, she was an Artist! But she was also a young Southern woman, with a whiny 3-year-old in tow, and just one of several young teachers, in her case, not even formally trained as an educator. True, she was an instructor --- flying and horses --- and at least the "horse" part fit the Orme program well.

And she had been a good student in college, majoring in zoology. And she had been a proctor at the prestigious New York Art Students' League. So the Orme School, at that point directed by Chick, Mort and Charlie Orme took a chance on her, hired her, and she embarked on her career at Orme, teaching virtually all the classes offered other than language: all the sciences: physics, biology, chemistry, the various histories: ancient to modern. She arrived at an institution that was quite a contrast from the central realities of her earlier life --- her female independence, her art studies. But it provided what she worried was missing for her son, plenty of good masculine role models, as she sought to reestablish her life after separating from her husband, a good man, but one whose background in the Old South clashed too mightily with her need for independence and escape from the old southern traditions. She headed west and arrived, on the recommendation of a friend, at the Ranch.

The Orme School, on the Quarter Circle V-Bar Ranch, is an institution founded on a vision of an earlier day --- when men like Chick Orme tamed the wilderness and women like Aunt Minna gave unwavering support and moderated the hard work ethic with pieces of culture, music and some art, delivered as a respite from the hard necessities of traditional life. In fact, Minna was an amateur astronomer, and became the real cultural source for much of the Orme community, her contributions being recognized in 1989 by the Arizona Women's Hall of Fame. (link)

Strength, Courage, Hard Work, Persistence, Responsibility --- these were the virtues which were honored. When the school started, seeking academic instruction for the children of the Ormes, it was the basics which were the foundation of the curriculum, basics defined in traditional ways. With the death of Kate, Chick and Minna's daughter, it was the three Orme men who most defined what the Orme School was meant to become: Chick, Mort and Charlie. The Orme Experience reflected that reality: tough, hard-working, male.

Dot soon became a part of the school family, not quite fitting the traditional model as a single woman, but proving rather invaluable --- her graphic art skills were quickly appreciated in the production of school publications, the school yearbook, and her skills as a horsewoman met the needs of the Ranch. In addition to her teaching duties: Chemistry, Physics, History, Table Manners, she kept at her own art, sketching up and down creek, up on the mesa.

But Dot's background was always somewhat at odds with the traditional setting, which became more somber and narrowly focused with the sad death of Mort Orme due to a foolish medical error. Mort, who had an artistic side himself, had helped with the Orme yearbook Hoofprints, fashioning and using the QCVB cattlebrand to burn into the yearbook cover. His wife Lynn, who artistic leanings found a natural bonding with Dot, left the ranch. Later on, Mort and Lynn's daughter Lynly returned to the Fine Arts Festival as a workshop leader, having became a fine artist.

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The Terrible Twins

For these reasons, it was commonly believed that the consequence of setting more than a little time in the curriculum for Art, or spending actual money on Art, would naturally result in either a slow or a quick death of the institution. The Orme School, founded in 1929, carefully and slowly growing since then, was ponderously determined to make it into and through the 60's.

A Different Approach

This approach is difficult for a pure scientist. If you do not have a working theory of how to obtain a scientific discovery, or more importantly, the tools to give you working results, progress does not occur. For the artist, although usually very well versed in such "scientific" things as color theory, cadence, or anatomy, the lack of a defined concept or a measurable pathway poses no perceived barrier --- you simply use a feather, or try your thumb, or something totally unexpected, perhaps a purple as a shadow in the midst of a pure white body.

And if you can't teach Art, because it is not "academic", why not consider the History of Art? Is not THAT a proper academic subject? Of course "Art History" was an odd piece of academia in 1950s US --- not normally tested as a subject on standardized tests, but having the odd habit of suddenly appearing . . . a question using the word "Picasso" . . . or some reference to the Sistine Chapel, hard to argue that a knowledge of these things could not help you somewhere down the line. And Art History was indeed "History", a good traditional theory of knowledge, testable with multiple choice quizzes, and capable of a measurably defensible grading system, understandable by the local banker or academic accountant. And it is very hard to argue that some of these paintings or statues were not worth a lot of money or generated money for someone somehow connected thereto. And though Andy Warhol might be detested for his lack of perceived craft, one could not argue that he made money. So, though a little awkward and unsettled, art history became a part of "the Orme experience".

And do, after years of teaching biology, physics, baseball, history, roping, English, the football huddle, mathematics, the Judeo-Christian heritage around campfires, horsemanship, chemistry, the Orme School offered Art History. This became an "academic requirement" and graduates of Orme suddenly became capable of recognizing a painting such as Guernica or an artist such as Vermeer or Jackson Pollock. Art had made its beachhead on the dry dusty (but irrigated) soil of the Orme Ranch.

Allies and Co-Conspirators

And there were other co-conspirators, such persons as Henry Brooks, the Latin teacher, and thereafter, choirmaster and music teacher, whose efforts to develop the choir could scarcely be criticized by an institution whose most prominent architectural feature was the Mort Vrang Orme Chapel, and instruction on the Judeo-Christian heritage a fundamental part of the school philosophy.

The Orme Judeo-Christian Heritage

The history of Religion has always been entwined with the history of Art, religious leaders have almost universally recognized the value of art --- the ability of Art to assist mere mortals to understand or at least accept concepts of transcendence. Music has always been a fundamental part of Religion, of keeping people from sleeping in church, raising their communal consciousness, providing the exhilaration of sound coupled with physical effort, perhaps hard to really understand, but undeniably effective in its results.

While the leader of the Orme School, Charlie Orme (headmaster from 1945 to 1987) could never be equated with Pope Pius in terms of his patronage of the arts, but his broad education and travel profoundly appreciated the forces that led the great religions of the world to devote so much of their resources to the creation of buildings and sculptures and paintings, as well as the source of so much music and tradition. If possible, Charlie would allow the development of art into the curriculum. Opposition was not based on disdain for the value of art or music, but a lack of confidence that "academic standards" would permit funds to be so obligated. Of course, he did view art education and indeed the Fine Arts Festival as a "frill" that was not a reason parents would send their children to the Orme School, and in his book about the building of the school, written when he was in the last years of his life, he attributed a drop in the enrollment to the lack of value of the Festival. Yet even before the Fine Arts Festival, outstanding artists were brought to the school for special programs. The great singer Beverly Sills gave a mini-concert for freshly scrubbed young cowboys and cowgirls who fidgeted somewhat uncomfortably in the Horsecollar Theater.

The Importance of Parents

And every summer, since the year after Dot Lewis had arrived at the Orme School, she packed up her son and car, and headed for California to explore life beyond the Orme fences and cattle guards, seeking further instruction in the areas that she loved, up in the mountains of Idyllwild and at Scripps College in Claremont, where she obtained her Masters in Art during a two-year absence from Orme in 1955 and 56. When she returned to the Orme School, Dot was loaded with the latest information from art educators and wrote articles for publications* reporting the linkages that were beginning to be re-recognized, between music, art, creativity, and academic excellence. * ("The Vital Years" - article written in early 60s)

Actual Art Instruction

Dot also continued her own art as she performed her teacher duties, painting the Riderless Horse after the assassination of John F. Kennedy, and continuing her exploration of small sculpture and rock drawings, developing friends in the art community, as she led students on special trips to art museums. These programs did NOT require extra academic funding but fit in with the expansive view of education that Orme, as through its caravans and other expeditionary efforts, found compatible with formal class-work. Dot exhibited from time to time with some of her fellow artists, and continued to lobby the Orme administration for greater and greater access to the arts. With such other teachers as William "Buck" Hart, whose personal dramatic tendencies could not possibly stop at the classroom door, Orme began to develop its artistic side step by step. When a local gallery owner sent invitations to all the high schools in Northern Arizona to participate in a special show for high school art students, Orme was one of the few who responded. What was to be a show of Arizona high school students became largely a show of Orme students.

ISOMATA

In the evening programs, members of the ISOMATA community would view presentations of art or music from any of the diverse classes, a puppet show by one of the foremost puppeteers of Los Angeles, a dancer from Africa, or a full symphony featuring a guest artist who had recently performed at the Hollywood Bowl or back east. The atmosphere of ISOMATA in the 60s affected all who were fortunate to be there, the teachers, the students, the counselors, the children, all of whom left imbued with a sense that art and music were universal elements that enabled people to grow in all ways.

For many years, from the 50's to the 70's, Dot participated each summer in the ISOMATA community, taking a sculpture class from Lora Steere, then teaching various classes in the graphic arts, including print-making, enamelling, and watching her 7 year old son grow up enjoying the benefits of summer program, with music, dance and art, and learning theatre in the junior high program. ISOMATA continues in modified form today, and has expanded to be a year-round arts academy (www.idyllwildarts.org), one of three in the country to combine full art instruction into a sustainable secondary school program, producing graduates who find success in all the arts.

The DEAD of WINTER . . . oh Why! Why? Why!

Instantly, the normalcy of a 200+ community, all working together, serving all aspects of communal living and educating in the Arizona desert, transformed itself back to a time when only a few small families of Indians or settlers gazed on the beauties of Big and Little Mesa . . . . , or listened to the coyotes yell at the moon. This was true of the Thanksgiving short break, Christmas, Spring vacation, and the big one: Summer. And the return was equally transforming, from the quiet to the re-populated bustle of the community in a few short hours as all returned.

But one break always ended with a almost automatic sense of gloom --- the cold, the dreary dark days, the seeming lack of any prospect of happier days --- the Christmas or winter break at Orme was different.

Upon returning, the students and staff felt the elation of the holiday spirit crushed by the somberness of mid-winter and the quietness deeper and more inescapable. It was a troubling time for school administrators and teachers --- many commented on the difficulty of getting back to the business of high school after the relative freedom and joy of vacation, when students returned to the isolation of life on a cattle ranch, away from old friends, urban stores, city-life, and family.

From time to time, Dot visited the nearby Verde Valley School, another private college preparatory high school, located in the beautiful Arizona countryside about an hour and a bit north of Ranch, on the edge of Sedona, and with whom Orme students had a friendly rivalry. She discussed with Colonel Fisher their programs, much more oriented to the Arts --- she encountered a student who was working on an independent study project, for a whole week, working on her own in practically any area, music, art, a project self-directed and encouraging the broader goals of education: finding something in life you are interested in. This was a method the school used to develop the personal interest its students in their own schooling. Regular instruction was suspended, but personal instruction blossomed.

At Orme, the third week after Christmas was the real downer. Something needed to be done --- all the teachers, trying to regain the focus of the students on the class plan, all the administrators juggling the small problems that would emerge at that time of year, felt the need for something bring back a sense of hope or attention or any enthusiasm. Dot sensed an opportunity to make a piece of Art --- to take a discarded piece of junk, and transform it into a statement of real beauty, personal expression and exploration. The piece of Art was to remind everyone of the real Basics of Academia: Music, Dance and Art --- the source of all other academia, what let Man transform himself from a hairless ape into a creature that could communicate with others of its sort, to transform itself with thought, various forms of expression and communication.

This fundamental belief seemed to coincide with the need to restart the school process --- students and teachers needed to remember why they were embarked on the academic enterprise in the first place. Learning and teaching is fundamentally communication between two or more individuals --- communication is necessarily expression on the part of one, and observation on the part of the other. IF Art is, at its most basic form, self-expression, then what the art teacher does is show one how to see what is expressed.

And so, by remembering that Music taught us how to count, that Dance taught us how to catch the eye of and impress each other, and that the graphic arts taught us how to preserve our desire to communicate, teachers and students would remember why proper English, mathematical symbols, the stories told in History, and the technical skills of chemistry came into being --- the product of our need to communicate, to create, to remember, to improve our lives through our individual endeavors.

Art would merge with the Academic Plan --- the Orme School would restart itself with a reminder of the original source of all schooling. The basic artistic impulse of Man would be tapped to get students and teachers to once again communicate with each other. To express themselves and to observe. This is the basic artistic impulse --- to make a pleasing noise, to costume oneself, to create an object or design that conveyed something to someone else, to discern the beauty in ourselves and in each other. To celebrate our mutual interest.

The Start

And it was critical to find the right artists --- enthusiasm for their skill and desire to share was critical. Compensation could not be the motive --- the school would only offer an "honorarium" to perhaps offset a bit of the lost time that the artist would be sacrificing for the cause. Because this was to be a regeneration for the Artists as well --- a reminder of what sparked their careers, why Art was meaningful. As Dot knew from her experiences at the New York Art Students League and at ISOMATA, artists enjoy the company of other artists, and in trying to reach young people, felt renewed in their own source of inspiration. She depended on her close friends and mentors such as Harry Sternberg who immediately saw the goal and beauty of the idea and enthusiastically supported her efforts. She spent a lot of time on the phone, and identifying those local artists that others knew, that had an inclination to participate. The selection of each artist could lead to another --- many would come because of the other people invited.

The other faculty members needed to be invested in the project, and each would be assigned to one of the workshops to share the experience, and reestablish the sense of common purpose that teacher and student must ideally share. And the week would be capped with an Exhibit that would show the ultimate possibilities of Art --- professional and of the highest quality. Here Dot drew upon her many artist friends, driving many hours to personally arrange the safe transportation and generous loan of the best art available, to be displayed properly and professionally at the Orme School so that the students, the teachers and visitors would know without a doubt the power, the importance, and the look of professional Art.

The initial budget, twisted out of the clutching fingers of the business office, was $1,100 to cover all the expenses that the endeavor would entail. The honorariums were either nothing or very little, much of the supplies were scavenged or purchased very carefully. To date, many of the artists who come to the festival, like art teachers everywhere, bring supplies carefully obtained at less than normal cost, the reality of professional artists who have to measure dollars carefully in the creation of art. This frugality seems the secondary lesson of the artistic impulse, the ability to take what is available, and transform it beyond its initial form. Art is the expression of the Possible, surprising, transcendental, an endeavor that does share with Politics acknowledgment of its limits, but then inflates all accomplishment with a sense of universal meaning, and the fullest achievement of human endeavor. While the budget today is much bigger, the same financial creativity renders the week an exercise in economy, invention, audacity over quantity and traditional power. Such is the lesson of Art.

The artists who come are mostly driven by a special feeling that the Festival is an opportunity as much as an honor . . . to be asked to participate in a unique event that can return to the artist as much as the artist gives to the students. Something about remembering the origins of one's initial creative impulses provides a renewal of one's creative energies. This was the happy coincidence that merged the needs of winter-bound students and artists into a mutually beneficial collaboration, refreshing both at a time of the year when depression holds easy sway.

And so it began.

Four: The Festival would be ended with a demonstration of the results of the week's work, a fully professional Exhibit which would demonstrate the reality of success in the Arts, and programs or exhibits that would show the whole community what each workshop had worked on. (Over time, the Festival Art Gallery Exhibit also included the Orme Fine Arts Collection which contained works purchased by money raised during the Festival for this purpose. This consisted of bead sales -- the beads specially made by Orme students in preparation for the Festival, and by the Art Sale of various donated works from the workshop leaders, such as Phil Atwood and Ramsom Lomatewama's glass works, specially created for sale. The Collection has been an important legacy of the five decades of the Festival, and is in need of proper attention and respect at this time.)

Five: The number of workshops needed to be carefully set, to show the breadth of the artistic experience, allowing each student personal experience with the professional, and not too many to overwhelm the ability of each student to relate to the other workshops.

From the 1995 Festival Brochure concerning the Festival Gallery Exhibit

During the Festival Week, the Phillips Library is transformed into the Art Gallery. Through the kindness and cooperation of many outstanding artists, along with our own workshop leaders, we are able to exhibit a variety of trends in contemporary art. In addition, The Orme School is proud to present Raising Cane, an exciting show of a successful blending of form and function by artist designer, craftsperson, and professor, Esther Ratner. The collection of canes provides an alternative to the canes currently available to the elderly and others who require their use. The canes are visually diverse, crafted from a variety of materials such as wood, machined aluminum, leather, rubber, and plastic. The forms are sometimes whimsical metaphors, explorations of geometry, or organic abstractions. The diversity of the work is a direct result of different users' requirements and personal tastes. There is a strong concern to provide an object that reflects and satisfies the needs of the individual. By elevating the cane from a negative stereotype to a position of prized possession, it can provide both physical and psychological support. These canes improve motion arid emotion. The canes in this exhibit transcends the boundaries between art, craft and design. They work as sculptural forms, but never forget that they must serve as the link between the person and the environment.

Buck Hart - Long-time Orme School teacher, and biggest ham of the Orme theater scene, helped coordinate the Fine Arts Festival while Dot was there, and encouraged music and theater throughout his tenure.

Perhaps the pervasive symbol of the Orme Fine Arts Festival is the "Devil's Claw." This seed pod found on the upper Arizonan landscape was a favorite still life for Dot to draw, and took on meaning as a symbol of the purposes of the Festival. As she explained and published in the 1991 Festival program:

WHY THE DEVILS CLAW LOGO?

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Riding across this range in the late spring you may come across yellow-green flowers blooming on a low lying vine from which seed pods will grow. Later as these tough pods dry out, they curl and split open. The pointed ends form sharp claws that hook on to the animals that move through the range, and the mature seeds are thus shaken out and scattered abroad. A fascinating form of seed dispersal. Often several Devil's Claws are found clinging together and, to me, this spiraling cluster not only makes a beautiful design, but suggests the generating force of the Fine Arts Festival. The seeds within representing the knowledge and inspiration being dispersed by the guest artists and germinating in the minds and spirits of those attending the workshops. That this unique plant is indigenous to this area is yet another reason that this drawing of these Devil's Claws seems an appropriate symbol of The Orme School Fine Arts Festival.
Dot Lewis

ARTISTS OF THE ORME FINE ARTS FESTIVAL

The alumni artists of the Orme Arts Festival are many . . . the tradition honors those who return. The list is long and gets longer every year. Some are students who return. The lives of these Artists are the school lesson that was taught and continues to teach.