by a gift of an undisclosed amount by California-based visual artist, poet, and author Carolyn Kleefeld. A cornerstone will be its integration of Kleefeld’ s art and poetry, offering ongoing opportunities for students to curate and engage with her work as a model for exploring the creative process. This engagement will extend to other artists, with students actively participating in selecting, situating, and appreciating works in the gallery. Kleefeld says she hopes it will be“ a creative, explorative interaction, inspiring expansive expression in myriad mediums, conversations, living life.”
Born in Catford, England, and raised in Southern California, Kleefeld has written 25 books, published many tri-lingual and bi-lingual translations, and created an extensive and diverse body of drawings and paintings, ranging in style from romantic figurative to abstract. Her art is featured internationally in galleries, museums, private collections, and multimedia presentations. When she looks back on her career, Kleefeld says she doesn’ t think about it in terms of accomplishments; rather, she sees it as“ an endless process,” she says. Birge says the center will bring more innovation to the college in that it will feature lab and gallery spaces whose benefits will extend beyond fine arts and into other academic areas.“ All disciplines on campus will benefit from having classes, speakers, and events in the space,” he says.“ The heart of liberal arts is broad-based, cross-disciplinary education, and this center will serve as a hub that brings together students and faculty from across the college.”
While the Feigenbaum Center for Science and Innovation, completed in 2013, provides a state-of-the-art space for science and technology, there’ s currently no comparable facility for the arts. When Kleefeld expressed interest in supporting the college through the creation of this new arts facility, the idea of creating a cutting-edge center dedicated to creativity became possible. The conversation between MCLA and Kleefeld started through former Gallery 51 Director Erica Wall, who knew Kleefeld’ s art advisor, Georgia Freedman-Harvey. Freedman-Harvey followed the exhibits that Wall was presenting at Gallery 51’ s artist-in-residence program.“ Over time, she saw in MCLA a philosophy that she thought was a match for what I wanted to do in contributing to an academic institution,” Kleefeld says. Freedman-Harvey and Wall raised the possibility of MCLA having a permanent gallery and art center. As it turns out, Kleefeld already was interested in establishing a presence on the East Coast.“ Erica was enthused with the idea, and Georgia and Patricia Holt, my long-time friend and colleague with my art and writing, worked with Erica starting in 2021 to advance this
possibility,” Kleefeld adds. Even when Wall left MCLA for a job at Colby College in Maine, Kleefeld kept the conversation going and began working with Bob Ziomek, vice president for institutional advancement at MCLA, and Richard Glezjer, vice president of academic affairs, to advance the project, Kleefeld explains. Kleefeld says she’ s excited about the college’ s expanding arts curriculum and the development of a multi-disciplinary approach to learning about the arts. Her own career has spanned multiple art forms, created from an“ inner wildness” that can reflect“ our primal nature and oneness with all things,” according to her artist statement. She lets her intuition choose the color and form, opting for work that’ s symbolic and experimental in nature, she says, ranging from abstract, figurative and expressionist. Kleefeld, who studied art and psychology at UCLA, has relationships with other colleges, too. She’ s a benefactor to the University Art Museum and College of the Arts at Cal State Long Beach, where she gifted 120 of her works, according to a 2019 press release from the college. In addition to her art, Kleefeld donated $ 10 million to the museum, which was subsequently renamed the Carolyn Campagna Kleefeld Contemporary Art Museum.
Kleefeld’ s award-winning art is in the permanent collections of, among others, The Downey Museum of Art in California, Pepperdine University’ s Frederick R. Weisman Art Museum, The Henry Miller Memorial Library in Big Sur, and The Dylan Thomas Theatre in Swansea, Wales.
“ The groundbreaking represents the beginning of what I envision as a collaborative effort with MCLA to bring originality, freedom of expression, creative inspiration to the students and staff at MCLA and adding more enrichment to the vibrant art community of North Adams and the surrounding areas,” Kleefeld says.“ Art is an interactive mirror of our innermost process, inspiring individuals toward their most expressive, creative potential. So, I see the center as a means of individuation for students and others in the surrounding community.” As the new primary gallery and arts programming space on campus( rather than the Gallery 51 space on Main Street), The Campagna Kleefeld Center for Creativity in the Arts will support MCLA programs by providing opportunities for students to engage with artists, their work, and the community through classes, curation and exhibitions. It will also support MCLA’ s Benedetti Teaching Artists-in-Residence and student artists-in-residence, according to a statement from the college. Kleefeld says the opportunity to help MCLA in this way is“ thrilling.” She says her philanthropic actions come from“ an internal well of being, not from concepts or outer expectations.”
“ I feel enriched by spiritual and other expanded dimensions, with experience and the external expressed through my unique instrument of being,” she says.“ I feel we are all instruments in a cosmic symphony. So, it is this internal existence that inspires me to be philanthropic, including providing the center for MCLA, as an affirmation of the importance of a place dedicated to inspiring independent thinking, creativity, and potentially inspiring others to learn from this experiment, this experience, and enrich their own lives.”
The college is planning a formal groundbreaking ceremony for the building this fall, to be announced at a later date. n
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