New Visual Arts Center Opens; Building Donor also Gifts Hayes Sculpture

Colorado Academy’s new studio arts building is officially open, and it is named for the lead donor on the project, Craig Ponzio. In addition to generously supporting this project, Ponzio gifted to CA the sculpture that welcomes visitors to the building, a work by sculptor David Hayes named “Young Elephant.”
 
The building was officially opened for classes on January 4, and included a ribbon cutting and student and parent tours. Ponzio’s name also graces numerous spaces and art programs throughout the Denver area — from the Clyfford Still Museum, to an innovative art therapy program at Children’s Hospital. He currently serves on the board of the Denver Art Museum.
 
The new Ponzio Arts Center is located on the northeast corner of Stamper Commons on CA’s campus. The building has been under construction since last summer. It features a refurbished wing of the existing building and a new wing that includes gallery space and studios that are designed to inspire CA’s student artists.
 
The outdoor sculpture by Hayes is among the more than 100 institutional collections of his works around the world, including those of the Museum of Modern Art and the Guggenheim Museum in New York.
 
David Hayes was born in Hartford, Connecticut and received an A.B. degree from the University of Notre Dame in 1953 and an M.F.A. degree from Indiana University in 1955 where he studied with David Smith. He worked in Coventry, Connecticut and Paris, France over a period of six decades.
 
The piece is visible from across Stamper Commons and marks the south entrance to the new visual arts center. The structure was originally a boys’ dormitory in CA’s military and boarding school days. The new center is designed to house CA’s marquee programs in visual arts, including painting and drawing, sculpture, digital content production, and much more.
 
Head of School Dr. Mike Davis says the center is an “inspiring space for students of the studio arts at Colorado Academy …The genesis of this project came with a vision — to make mission-driven, structural, and programmatic changes designed to ignite intellectual curiosity, artistic endeavor, and learning at CA… I extend my personal gratitude to Craig Ponzio who made a generous, lead gift that helped to make this building happen.”
 
New construction features three state-of-the-art studios filled with controlled,  natural light, a dedicated space for printmaking, ceramics, 3-D printing, film studies, flexible gallery space designed to display student and visiting artists’ work, a connection to functional outdoor work areas, and more.
 
Architect and CA parent Andy Rockmore of SAR Architects said, “Art studios should be expansive spaces, places to dream, and to think big, and to think creatively, not linearly.”
 
Rockmore says he and his colleagues decided to create the new spaces, “and then use the existing building to be the artist’s art box. Keep all your tools, all your materials, all the offices, and all of the things that it takes to support those new studios in the old building, and then they can work together. And it’s really worked out very well.
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