In addition to dance and classical music festivals at the Gerald R. Ford Amphitheater, patrons of the arts will have another reason to visit the Town of Vail’s signature greenspace in early August when the Vail Art Studio, the town’s first dedicated home for the visual arts, opens on Ford Park’s lower bench.

“Ford Park is Vail’s cultural nucleus,” says Molly Eppard, coordinator for the town’s Art in Public Places (AIPP) program, which stewards a collection of more than 70 sculptures, murals, installations, and other works of public art scattered throughout Vail Village, Lionshead, and West Vail. “Although we’ve had a presence in the park for years with different works of art, the studio will allow us to have a real hub for the arts.”

Nestled on the banks of Gore Creek near the pedestrian bridge to Manor Vail just below Betty Ford Alpine Gardens, the intimate 800-square-foot studio, designed by Basalt-based architect Harry Teague, features vaulted ceilings and 12-foot-high walls to provide ample space for exhibitions and copious banks of windows with sightlines to the babbling creek inviting passersby in the busy park to stop in and observe artists at work.

“The studio might be off the beaten path, but it is also on a pedestrian trail,” notes Eppard. “We wanted to take advantage of that interplay.… We look forward to introducing artists to the community and the community to artists.”

The Town of Vail and the AIPP searched for a suitable home for a visual arts studio for more than 20 years. In 2021, consideration was given to the Art Shack, an underused outbuilding on Gore Creek that ultimately was deemed prohibitively expensive to rehabilitate. Instead, Harry Teague Architects was tasked with conceiving a new structure on the footprint of the old building. Why Teague? The firm’s résumé includes the Anderson Ranch Arts Center in Snowmass, the Bucksbaum campus for the Aspen Music Festival and School, a performance hall at Breckenridge Riverwalk Center, and the Jackson Center for the Arts in Wyoming.

With a budget of $1.2 million, construction began in November, and by press time, the bones of the building were in place: a pure rectangular form with a cutout carved from one corner at the entrance, capped by a classic gabled standing seam metal roof tying it all together and adding a sense of strength. “It has an almost Scandinavian aspect to it,” says Teague. “The geometry of the structure is very important and adds to the gravitas.”

Inside, work was progressing on the ADA-compliant structure’s innovative HVAC system—the first in Vail to use geothermal energy generated from groundwater for heating and cooling—and public spaces that include a small foyer, bathroom, and the building’s nexus: a 475-square-foot multipurpose room that will serve as an exhibition hall, gathering place, and studio—functional yet inspirational for the artists who will work there.

“You want to provide surprises, like the way a shaft of sunlight may enter and leave a room, but you also want to leave space for an artist’s creativity,” says Teague. “We’ve learned that you want spaces that allow artists to ‘make a mess.’”

Once the ribbon is cut and the studio opens for business, visiting and local artists will encourage the masses to join in the creative mess-making. “There are so many creators in the Vail Valley and the surrounding region, and they have never had a space to showcase their works,” says Eppard. “Now they will.”