Liminal
Time + Space
for Artists
About the Residency
The Artist Residency at Sacred Basecamp supports under recognized, under-supported artists with dedicated time and space for creative work, along with opportunities for local and regional place-based research. During the program, resident artists engage in creative cultural exchange with Utah artists, curators, writers, art collectors, and program donors to build support for the arts, increase awareness of the artist’s professional practice, and strengthen cultural partnerships between Northern Utah and other locations around the world.
Through a lens of neuroaesthetics, and with strong focus on intentional design, Sacred Basecamp was renovated as a space for creative placemaking and cultural capital building in Northern Utah. The re-design of the property included common areas for collaboration, creative research, gatherings for donor events and artist receptions. With private bedrooms and dedicated bathrooms on the lower level of the property, Sacred Basecamp is an ideal location for an artist residency cohort of 2-3 individual artists or 1-2 small families at a time.
Through generous funding from private donors, fiscal sponsorship assistance, and gifts from local foundations and businesses, Sacred Basecamp’s Artist Residency Program will collaboratively worth with the Pathfinder Arts Residency for Mother-Artists to re-define and expand contemporary support for artists who continuously face barriers to professional advancement and increased visibility among curators, collectors, critics, gallerists, writers, designers, art advisors and consultants, and other relevant programmers and arts professionals in both public and private sectors.
Selection for the annual Sacred Basecamp Artist Residency program is invitation, direct application, or nomination by an advisory board member. A residency advisory board reviews applications annually. Artists residing in Utah, and Baltimore, and who consider themselves under-represented, under-supported, or who face other access barriers are encouraged to apply. Each artist cohort is carefully curated to maximize professional development support, artistic development, community contribution, increased artist visibility, and professional network expansion potential for the artists based on their individual career goals and advancement desire.
Inaugural Artist-in-Residence, Schaun Champion
Schaun Champion
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ContactStudio@schaunchampion.com
"No one really tells you that Motherhood doesn't just change your schedule, it changes the conditions under which creativity can exits. The long stretches disappear. The uninterrupted focus goes quiet. And if you don't know what you're looking at, it can feel like failure instead of adaptation. But the truth is that making art inside care requires a different strength. One that can hold interruption without collapsing, one that can begin again without resentment. That kind of creativity isn't flashy. It's loyal. And it's often invisible. But it's so real and it's doing more work than anyone ever taught us to name." - Grace Gulley
Meet the
Co-Founders
Lydia Gravis is a visual artist, curator, arts administrator, and consultant based in northern Utah. She holds dual Bachelor of Arts degrees in Visual Arts and Human Studies from Warren Wilson College in Asheville, North Carolina, and a Master of Fine Arts degree in Contemporary Visual Art from the Art Institute of Boston at Lesley University. From 2014 to 2024, she served as a university gallery director, overseeing large-scale indoor and outdoor exhibitions featuring nationally and internationally renowned contemporary artists, including Guggenheim, Joan Mitchell Foundation, and MacArthur Foundation fellows. During that tenure she also directed robust public programming encompassing visiting artist lectures, film series, community outreach, and professional development opportunities for emerging artists.
At Sacred Basecamp, Lydia serves as the creative and programmatic vision behind the residency — bringing her full range of expertise in curatorial direction, artist relations, program development, community engagement, neuro-aesthetic design, and arts administration to every dimension of the work.
PJ Gravis
Contactinfo@sacredbasecamp.com
Peter Gravis, known as “PJ”, holds dual Bachelor of Arts degrees in Business Administration and Outdoor Leadership, a Bachelor of Science in Nursing, and a Master of Science in Executive Nursing Leadership with a specialized emphasis in burnout prevention, mitigation, and recovery among the workforce — a combination of credentials that positions him uniquely at the intersection of operational leadership, human wellbeing, and connection to the natural world.
PJ’s contribution to Sacred Basecamp is not only administrative — it is written into the walls of the building itself. As a skilled woodworker and creative collaborator, he personally restored the original 1929 woodwork throughout the historic meetinghouse, returning it to its former integrity and ensuring that the soul of the building was preserved through the renovation process. In doing so, he did for the building what Sacred Basecamp intends to do for every artist — took something of inherent and irreplaceable value, and gave it the care and attention necessary to let it shine again.
As an emerging biophilic designer PJ brings a firsthand understanding of what it means to increase visibility and professional capacity for one’s creative practice — and the deep need for time, space, and resources that the Sacred Basecamp residency will provide for creative individuals. His background in Outdoor Leadership further informs Sacred Basecamp’s relationship to its natural setting — the mountains, the valley, the open land — as an extension of the restorative environment the program is designed to offer. His clinical expertise in burnout, recovery, and human wellbeing ensures that every dimension of the Sacred Basecamp experience is grounded in a genuine and evidence-based understanding of what creative people need to do their best work.
Program Advisors & Selection Committee
PJ Gravis
Contactinfo@sacredbasecamp.com