During her sophomore year, Sarah Yates ’01 had already begun developing ideas for her senior thesis: transforming violins into a visual art form. She spent three summers collecting broken violins, learning how to repair them, and finally painting the instruments. Yates culminated her thesis with a concert featuring students and faculty of The Claremont Colleges. Yates recalls, “My goal was to create a series of 25 violins that could serve as both functional instruments in a concert setting and as visual works in a gallery space.”
Over the years, her passion for the violin has taken this art project to a new level. After Yates joined the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra development office, she organized the organization’s Artful Violins fundraiser. Based on her senior thesis, Yates began restoring old violins donated by local music stores and invited six Los Angeles-based artists to transform the violins into works of art. Roy Dowell, Michael C. McMillen, Linda Nishio, Frank Romero, Erika Rothenberg, Betye Saar, and Yates donated their time and artistic talent to the project. Once finished, the painted violins were re-strung and sold at a silent auction to raise funds for the orchestra’s community outreach and youth education program.
Recent issues of Strings and Symphony magazines featured articles about Yates and “how [her] simple volunteer idea has exploded into the hottest orchestra fundraiser around.” Aside from being a creative fundraising idea, Yates found a way to unite art and music communities across the country. “I wanted to continue working with violins after graduation,” says Yates. “The arts have an extraordinary power to enrich each other, and I felt that the visual appeal of painted violins could be used to spark people’s enthusiasm for classical music.”