How Serenbe Inspired Artist Tom Swanston

Tom Swanston is regarded as Serenbe's first artist-in-residence, though he was a Serenbe resident before there was an official program. In fact, Tom was an integral figure in creating AIR Serenbe, which is the artist residency division of the Serenbe Institute.

In this episode, Tom regales us with stories about finding his own farm south of Atlanta, what it was like to find his calling in the arts, and how Serenbe has inspired him to be the artist he is today.

Art On The Farm
Gail Foster and Marie Nygren were in a women's group together, which ultimately led to Steve visiting Tom and Gail's art gallery on their south Fulton County farm. The land had originally used by the Fisher Phillips Law as a country escape from their Buckhead practice. Tom and Gail were moving down from New England, and Ike Fisher was Tom's father's lawyer, so he suggested they look at the farm when Gail and Tom hadn't found an area of Atlanta they wanted to settle in.

This area is rural now, and even more so in the 80s and 90s. Tom tells the story of how Gail was itching to get back to creating, so when a neighbor was building a chicken coop she had him come down and help her build a work studio. Eventually one of Gail's patrons contributed to having a state-of-the-art studio built for her, and Tom took over working in the "chicken coop" as they called it. They lived on that property for 25 years.

Steve asks Tom what's on the land now. A developer bought it, flattened everything, and now it's filled with cookie cutter housing. They talk about what it was like to see it change to suburbia when it had been so beautiful and rural. It's why Steve knew he needed to put a stake in the ground, because he didn't want tract housing to come into Chattahoochee Hills. Looking at maps now, you can see it how quickly development happened in the 1990s.

11:35 - Serenbe Visual Arts Committee
Tom and Gail realized in the early 2000s they would have to make a choice on where to go next. They were living in New Mexico when they received a letter from Steve telling them about what he was doing in Chattahoochee Hills and inviting them to come see. They loved being out west, but their family is in Atlanta and they'd built a family of friends, so Steve's letter drew them back to the Southeast.

Tom and Gail had one of the first live work units in the Selborne neighborhood of Serenbe. They didn't know at first that they'd have a gallery, but they knew they'd have a home and a place to work. Once it was built, they sat down with Steve and asked what they could do to make a gallery possible. They worked out financing, and plans for a gallery were in place. Their workspace and gallery are why Steve refers to Tom and Gail as Serenbe's first artists-in-residence. Also, because Tom was on the board of the Serenbe Institute and was integral in starting the official residency program, now AIR Serenbe.

AIR had grown out of the "Serenbe Visual Arts Committee," which Tom says was mostly just an umbrella for anything remotely related to art at first. Some of it was Camp Serenbe, which Kara Nygren Adler (Steve's middle daughter), took over after college. They had movies and movie nights, which someone else took over. This allowed Tom to specialize what the residency program looked like.

16:14 - Becoming An Artist
Tom knew early on that he wanted to be an artist, but his parents weren't necessarily interested in patronizing the arts. When it came time for him to go to school, he wanted Philadelphia College of Art, which they declined and suggested instead a liberal arts school that offered other programs as well. He says he never made the "decision" to become a visual artist, but rather various people in his life helped guide him in smaller decisions that led to that outcome. One in particular was his teacher in school Alvin Cher, who encouraged Tom to go to graduate school at Parsons.

18:49 - Victory Formation
Tom's cranes have defined his work as an artist, and Steve asks how that began. Tom goes all the way back to that farm in Fulton County, where cranes flew over the house regularly. He'd been pursuing a more abstract form of art, but their rhythm and the way they flew affected him. He describes their movements and migratory patterns, then moves forward in time to when he was moving back to Serenbe in the mid 2000s. He knew he was ready for something different, both in where they were living and in his work.

That was when he decided to embrace new materials and a new subject matter, and the cranes were a part of it. He brought gilding into his work and incorporated it with what he liked about the natural world and its patterns. He had no idea how his vision would catch on, but people were drawn to his work. Steve and Marie even put a piece in the lobby of the development office (in addition to having many in their own home and gifting to their daughters). He realized that that archetypal form resonates with people all over the world. Tom's work is found in Hong Kong, Istanbul, and more, and there's even a gilded room at the Dewberry Hotel with 27 panels of Tom's work, showing an entire migration. The renovation was done by the same people that did the AIR Serenbe artist cottages.

23:20 - Creative Pair
Tom met his wife, Gail, also an accomplished artist, when he was at Parsons. She'd come up through the Maryland Institute College of Art and was also there for her MFA. When they'd decided to move together from New England to Atlanta, it was because Tom was doing some art consulting and Atlanta was a better city for expanding that. Their first move was to start a company in downtown Atlanta, and if you go to the epicenter of Centennial Olympic Park now, that's where their gallery would have been.

27:22 - Supporting Arts at Serenbe
AIR Serenbe's first artist were people that they knew or friends of friends. It was all organic and more about what they wanted to see in the community. There was a point where it was formalized, which coincided with a time when Tom was on a board for a national residency program, so he had a vision of what it would look like. They created an advisory committee that's built the organization into a notable program.

When artists started coming to work at Serenbe, they stayed in carriage houses and guest rooms. Tom kept pushing for land and space for those artists to live and work, and that time came in 2015. He pursued Auburn University's Rural Studio program, which was looking for a way to test out commercial viability of their 20K houses. They worked together to create two cottages that are on the Art Farm grounds.

Funding for the Art Farm Cottages project came from other arts initiatives. Insurgent, the 2nd film in the Divergent series, filmed on Serenbe's grounds and paid a location fee. The first two Atlanta Homes & Lifestyles Serenbe Designer Showhouses also helped. The Serenbe Institute also put money into it as a way to support their division.