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As UGA's Cortona program enters its fourth decade, a new generation of art students attempts to capture the essence of the town on the hill. This year marks the first time they will do it in the University's own building.

ortona is governed by cycles. In the early winter months, olives are picked by the basketload and taken to local mills to be pressed. When the sunflowers—which wave in golden sheets across checkerboard valley farms during the summer—turn brown, it's time to chop wood for the cooler months ahead. Local vineyards siphon wine into household casks for daily sustenance and siestas. And for the past 31 years, Cortonese gather in the town square to greet busloads of art students, members of UGA's Cortona study abroad program, as they enter the hillside city through an Etruscan stone wall, surrounding a site chosen for its ascension to the gods.

Curious faces and welcoming "buon giornos" escort the UGA students into the 2,700-year-old community. A young Italian man smiles at a female student and offers to help her with her bags. "Mi chiamo Antonio," he says. "Come sta? Capisce?" And the cycle begins anew.

Renna Tuten, a junior art history major from Guyton, Ga., is one of 44 fall students who have come to Cortona to embellish their definitions of art. She became interested in art in high school, and a semester abroad in Cortona, she believes, will shift her interests from the theoretical to the tangible and make fine art a realistic career and not just the foundation for a more practical job.

"My interest in art started when I saw a program on PBS," says Tuten. "The way the host spoke was as if she knew Titian and Warhol personally. She tapped into the exclusivity of art that many people are turned off by. Now that I am here in Italy—seeing things that I have studied first hand—scholarship and teaching, rather than architectural history and historic preservation, appears to be quite feasible and not just a precursor to the career I expected to have."

Tuten and the rest of the fall 2000 students left the bus that first day and walked from the main town square through the Piazza della Republica, just as the first group of UGA students did back in 1970. Standing on the medieval bricks, they marveled at 13th-century buildings, which rise straight up before them. Over and over, the same exclamations are heard: "Wow, this is too cool!" and "I am so glad I am finally here!" and "This is so much better than I thought it would be!"

Cortona still has a market every Saturday morning with vegetables, fruits, fowl, and rabbits to choose from. Men gather in the streets after midday siesta and communicate with their hands in an ecstatic way that is so typically Italian. And the community still celebrates special happenings in gala fashion, like when the UGA students arrive. The welcoming party includes the famous flag-throwers from Arezzo, who wear dazzling costumes and twirl colorful flags high into the air. And the town brass band still limps through their rendition of the "Star-Spangled Banner" in honor of the Americans.

"This is what I wanted Italy to be," Allison Fry, a senior art history student from Atlanta is overheard saying while lugging a backpack through the Piazza. "You just know you are in the middle of something of real emotion. And emotion is all that matters."

"It is unlike anything you expect but it is everything you hope for," says Kim Anderson, a junior studio art major from Savannah. "The people go out of their way to include you when you are here. Just now, I could tell that a shop owner had been having a rough day. When I walked over to buy something, he looked at me like, 'Oh, another tourist,' but then he realized I was with UGA and said, 'Estudia?' When I said yes, he just lit up and smiled real wide. It was like I was one of them."

From his office in the clock tower overlooking the cobblestone square, which UGA students see when they first come into town, Mayor Emanuele Rachini ponders the cyclical relationship between Georgia and Cortona, which renews itself every semester:

"To Cortona, UGA is as the seasons. Everyone in town knows when the students are to arrive—it's even announced on the radio. Each new group marks the beginning of a new season."

The three-decade-old program has transcended the relationship of school to host city. With the recent signing of a 12-year lease on the Villa Severini, the program has changed from ongoing to permanent. The former schoolhouse (named for futurist painter and Cortona native, Gino Severini) is adjacent to space UGA already uses for sculpture, ceramics, and metal work. The fall 2000 students are the first to use the fully renovated facility.

Before the acquisition, UGA moved into any vacant space the town could provide. Instruction has taken place in billiard halls, a gymnasium, a palace—even the local police station. And although the studio and classroom space was always free-of-charge, it meant that the beginning of each term was like a M*A*S*H* unit's move. The new facility allows for unfettered focus.

For young artists, that focus is the reason they have come to this Tuscan village built on a rock face. They come to work in the sky blues and earthy tones that this thin mountain air and famous regional light accentuate. They come to walk in the footsteps of da Vinci, Carvaggio, and Michelangelo—whose works changed the aesthetic world and must be seen in person and not over the Internet. But they come, whether they know it at the time of arrival or not, to become more human by participating in a foreign culture. In return, Cortona receives a jolt of Americana.

"At first, when the students started to come here, it was really different for citizens," says Roberto Manfreda, who was a teenager when the Cortona program began. He helped the founding director, Jack Kehoe, secure adoptive homes for the first summer's participants. "The older people were skeptical about blue jeans and bare feet. Of course, all my friends couldn't wait to hang out with the Americans and meet the girls."

The program's popularity stems from the fact that students attend not just from UGA but from colleges and universities all over the U.S. In the past three decades, roughly 4,000 students from 400 institutions have become temporary Georgia students in order to participate in the Cortona program. They represent schools such as Carleton, Pratt Institute, University of Hartford, and Harvard. Some schools have specific affiliations with UGA, such as Furman and Corcoran—the art school of the National Gallery of Art in Washington D.C.—so credit transfers are one to one and the institutions can advertise the Cortona program in their curriculum materials.

"To Cortona, UGA is as the seasons. Everyone in town knows when the students arrive—it's even announced on the radio. Each new group marks the beginning of a new season."—Cortona mayor Emanuele Rachini

Art students come to study under a UGA umbrella the same way schools like UGA go to Oxford: to take advantage of established facilities and renowned artists in a setting complementary to the practitioner-driven curriculum. Budding talents come here to do things not possible in the States—like working with the same Carrara marble Michelangelo used, or to take advantage of the special partnership with the Santa Reparata printmaking workshop.

After the students leave the Piazza on their inaugural tour of town, they go up. With only one flat street in town, the young painters, sculptors, photographers, and art historians quickly learn to walk like the Cortonese: slow and steady.

A 15-minute walk from the middle of town brings the Americans to their home for the next three months—the building on Via San Antonio named for their college home—Albergo Athens. The converted monastery houses 60 people and comes equipped with banquet room and chapel, plus maids and a porter who minds the door late into the evening. The students lean against the wall and catch their breath before locating their rooms. Then, in unison, the bragging begins:

"Did you see the view from my room? What's yours like? It can't be nearly as good as . . . oh, it is as good as mine . . . maybe better!"

The students run from room to room like the cast of an MTV forced-living program, but this show, the Cortona version, has a purpose. Soon, they realize that every room has a panorama bella over terra cotta roofs with Lake Trasimeno in the distance, tucked into a patchwork, postcard valley.

Another 10-minute walk from the Albergo Athens, at a 35-degree grade, brings the students to the terraced courtyard of the Severini building—where they are able to run their hands over the stone countertops and inspect the new ceramic kilns, photo darkroom, and printing plates.

"It's nice working in our building with windows open," says senior studio art major Kathryn Leonard from Alpharetta. "There are miles of countryside, a lake, and the huge mountains in the distance. It keeps things fresh."

he genesis of the Cortona study abroad program came in 1969. Lamar Dodd—who served as the director (and arguably, the founder) of the UGA School of Art from 1938 to 1973—gave Jack Kehoe one instruction: find the right place to start an art program in Italy. So Kehoe wedged himself into a Fiat 500 and drove down back roads for three months. He visited 34 cities before he found the sleepy town built on a spur of the Mont Santí Egidio.

"Lamar sent me away to Italy with no parameters," Kehoe recalls. "He trusted me enough to leave it open-ended."

Working as a sculptor in Rome in 1966, Kehoe observed big-city, study abroad programs and noticed that American college students were getting lost in the shuffle of tourists. This in mind, Kehoe set his own parameters for the UGA program. It needed to be in a small city where students would be forced to learn the language. There had to be plenty of studio space, not just classrooms. Housing was obviously critical. And, finally, the town had to be interested in a relationship with UGA.

"A lot of Europeans were wary of hippie Americans at that time. But Cortona welcomed us with open arms," says Kehoe. "They provided classroom and studio space for no charge and for years the town actually provided more scholarship dollars than UGA did. We, in turn, provided the Cortonese with an outlet to the world and economic possibilities—and they were quite proud that we chose them. It is a bragging point for them to other Italian cities that they have the Americans."

Ironically, Kehoe's inspired choice received a flaccid reception back in Athens. None of the 37 art faculty members was willing to volunteer time for the first Cortona session in summer 1970. Many of the professors believed the program belonged in a large city like Florence. Some didn't believe in it at all.

"The whole concept of study abroad programs was different back then," says Kehoe. "Georgia was a very conservative place—very Anglo-Saxon with very little exposure to ethnic backgrounds. I think the faculty was being careful. No one wanted their name associated with the thing if it flopped. And some didn't like the fact that it was going to be in a small town—but I think that has made all the difference."

"Everything is better in Italy. Everything—from the ravishing light against the stone, to the people and their clothes, to the way the vegetables are arranged at the market—makes the teaching much easier. Students are excited about attacking the landscape."—UGA art professor Jim Herbert

Cortona has since become internationally famous—in large part due to Frances Mayes' best-selling book, Under the Tuscan Sun—but UGA's provided the initial impetus. This village of 3,000 has become synonymous with UGA's art department, which ranks in the top ten nationally in both number of majors and quality of its graduate program. The department excels in stone carving, as well as drawing and painting, and book arts programs. The faculty has evolved to the point where it is nationally respected—and many of those professors started or cemented their careers with a tour of duty in Cortona.

"We are well-known for our comprehensive breadth of studio offerings," says Carmon Colangelo, director of UGA's Lamar Dodd School of Art. "And art history is easily the strongest it's ever been, very highly regarded and poised to become one of the top ten programs in the U.S., if it is not already."

Cortona is the first American study abroad program in Italy located in a small town, and it is arguably the standard by which other art study abroad programs are judged, serving more than 200 students per year with sessions in summer, fall, and spring.

"When I attend conferences, people are anxious to talk about the program," says R.G. Brown III (MFA '76), the current director who came to UGA in 1975 for the chance to study in Cortona. "But you really see the respect when people talk glowingly about the program being 'the big leagues' and they don't even know you're affiliated with it."

"Jack Kehoe had a great vision," agrees Colangelo. "But you also have to give credit to the different Cortona mayors. Their vision fosters our main goal: a real, serious, study abroad experience with rigorous studio-art studies."

n the space of a 200-yard stroll along Via Nazionale, handshakes, chance meetings, and an occasional café stop enable Brown to take care of business with 10 people. A visit with one local businessman secures a space in town for the first annual Cortona International Symposium, which this year will focus on print-making. These symposiums will spotlight UGA's Cortona facilities and further internationalize the art department by luring big names in each artistic discipline.

Between his hotel and a restaurant for lunch, Brown has talked to a Who's Who of Cortona: the former mayor and current Tuscan senator, the current mayor, and a Marchese of genuine royal blood.

"The whole Cortona experience is a natural," says Brown, who became a faculty member and program director two years ago. He went to Cortona for the first time in 1975 and went back five times more as an instructor, visiting artist, and assistant to Kehoe. "But it has taken 30 years to really make it so," he continues. "In the first years, it was a natural because of the people and the backdrop. But now, there is not another program in Italy that has the equipment and is as established as we are."

In order to qualify for Cortona, art students must have the grades to get into UGA, a 3.0 in their major, the pre-requisites to take the classes in which they show interest, and—if they are studio artists—a portfolio of their work.

The basic cost for those accepted for fall and spring terms is $8,400. Summer term costs $6,500 (for every semester, out-of state students pay an additional $125). This covers airfare, weekday breakfasts and dinners, rooms in the Albergo Athens, the courses themselves, and a plethora of field trips to every city of artistic merit within reach of Cortona. Day-long excursions include Perugia, Assisi, Siena, and Florence. These field trips are often used to drive home points about specific techniques.

"Each trip provides students with a chance to see some of the finest artists in their fields in action," says Brown. "It's also a chance to see works they have only read about right in front of them. It makes it all real."

Veterans of the program term their Cortona experiences life-altering. Athens artist Alan Campbell said, "I suddenly felt like I was part of a noble profession. Cortona helped develop my strength and conviction to do this as a career."

Becoming a Cortona faculty member is even more competitive. Along with an MFA, instructors must have a prize-winning résumé, national recognition, and teaching accreditation.

"Everything is better in Italy," says UGA art professor Jim Herbert, a two-time Guggenheim grant recipient and a veteran Cortona instructor, who will teach the first film-making class in Cortona this spring. "Everything—from the ravishing light against the stone, to the people and their clothes, to the way the vegetables are arranged at the market—makes the teaching much easier. Students are excited about attacking the landscape."

University of Hartford painting instructor Fred Wessel, a first-time Cortona faculty member, taught an egg tempera class this fall. This style of painting, in which yolk is used as the paint's base to create a delicate feel, is a medium few art programs can teach.

"This atmosphere is perfect for creation, and these facilities are beyond my wildest dreams," Wessel told his students. "I want you to soak up Italy—but you have to control your own course and give 100 percent. Here, with the proper inspiration, even your mindless doodling can become great work."

he late fashion designer Emilio Pucci (M '36) was so enamored with both Cortona and his time at UGA that he agreed to narrate a documentary about the UGA-at-Cortona experience. Pucci believed Cortona to be unlike any other place—even, any other place in Italy. Said Pucci, "Each day will bring a new intensity, an excitement, a feeling that there is something [the students] must not let pass lightly."

And after just a short time in Cortona, the fall 2000 group can sense that intensity, that excitement. "Here, people just know how to live," says Tuten. "It's in the details. Americans are ruled by their jobs and their weekends; Italians are about every day."

Veterans of the program relate their Cortona experience in terms of life-altering. "I had an epiphany in Cortona," says Athens artist Alan Campbell (BFA '73, MFA '76). "I saw things with clarity. I remember watching the trains in the valley at night. They were like strings of pearls. And with the stars above, it was hard to know where one began and the other ended—just a thin line with stars above and below. I suddenly felt like I was part of a noble profession. Cortona helped develop my strength and conviction to do this for a career."

The city on the hill in the heart of the Renaissance remains much as it did when the region thrived in the 1300s and 1400s. And as UGA's Cortona program enters its second generation, this bucolic setting still provides the perfect backdrop for art historians, illustrators, painters, sculptors, photographers, and landscape architects. Printmakers and metalworkers still learn tried-and-true techniques, which are reinforced by the power of the villa's ancient layers.

"It helps every part of me just to realize how important it is to enjoy a meal or view art work with deeper understanding," says Kathryn Leonard. "And we have all come together through these details, like we are old friends. It's like 'The Real World—Cortona.'"

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