About The Bellows Foundation
The Bellows Foundation is a 501(c)3 Arizona non-profit corporation, formed by Stephen Boyle and Patricia Dolan on May 17, 2004 in Patagonia, Arizona.
Steve Boyle crossed over to the field of education in 2001 to work on an Ed.D. at Columbia University’s, Teachers College. He is currently in the dissertation stage with a focus on research-driven, integrative, practicum-based learning. Since his return from Teachers College to Arizona in 2003, he has worked full-time in the creation of Bellows as an instrument of innovation in secondary and post-secondary education. Steve left a 35-year work effort in joint venture finance, including fifteen years with Wall Street firms—seven years with Donaldson, Lufkin & Jenrette and eight years in charge of EF Hutton’s National Real Estate Investment Department. He is the owner of L’Auberge Communities Inc., which he co-founded in 1983. L’Auberge has served as a general partner and fiduciary of seventeen joint venture development partnerships consisting of 7,000 limited partners.Steve holds a BA from Cornell University, an MS of Accounting from the University of Massachusetts, and an MA from Teachers College at Columbia University. He served as an officer and reconnaissance platoon leader in the United States Marine Corps from 1963 to 1966.
Pat Dolan is an artist whose encaustics art work is represented by the Victoria Boyce Galleries in Scottsdale, Arizona. Pat has shown her work extensively in a series of Art Collaborations including:
1996-2004: Sweet Chariot, co-founder, facilitating workshops using art as a medium to
heal grief and loss, and co-creator of Ravensong, a non-profit dedicated to
providing opportunities of reconnection to the earth through art and ceremony.
1991-1995: Earth Angels, co-founder, an art alliance of artists dedicated to expanding awareness to our connection to the Earth.
1980-1991: Ruby Lee, co-founded with Charles Littler, an art collaboration of site sculptures, installations, video, performance pieces and a 4-acre site sculpture walk.
Currently, Pat is teaching at The Drawing Studio in Tucson. She has taught drawing, basic design and art workshops at Pima Community College. Formerly, she was a faculty member in the Art Department of Western Illinois University and DePaul University. She has also worked as a social worker, grief counselor and most recently a behavioral health specialist for the Area Agency on Aging for Pinal County, Arizona, working with caregivers of family members with Alzheimer’s and homebound seniors. She is currently creating an artist mentor program for The Drawing Studio, non-profit organization in Tucson
Pat is a member of Rancho Linda Vista, an art community in Oracle, Arizona, where she lived for fifteen years. The Ranch was founded forty years ago to create a community to support artists and their families, living and working together and creating decisions through consensus. While living at the Ranch she was the president of the Board and also created the Visiting Artist Program that hosts artists from around the world for artist residencies.
Pat holds a BS in Art History from Trinity College, Washington DC. and an M.S. in Visual Design from Institute of Design (Bauhaus), Illinois Institute of Technology in Chicago.
Who Is Bellows?
The work of The Bellows Foundation is dedicated to the memory of Chester Henry Bellows, Steve’s grandfather. Born in New York City in 1890, his dedication to learning and mentorship profoundly affected his children, grandchildren, and many others who were inspired by his personal attention. His academic aspirations were thwarted by The Great Depression. Chet devoted much of his spare time to humanitarian and educational efforts including the Boy Scouts and the Masonic and Methodist Episcopal Church movements. Were he alive today, one would hear his mirthful chuckle to think that his influence might have an impact on secondary and post-secondary American education in the 21st century.
Location of The Bellows Foundation
Patagonia, Arizona (population 900) is 18 miles north of the U.S./Mexico border and a fifty-five minute drive south from the Tucson International Airport. The surrounding Coronado National Forest provides Patagonia with a sense of seclusion and, yet proximity to a major airport.
The setting of Patagonia is at an elevation of 4,050 feet, lies in a narrow valley between the Santa Rita Mountains, which peak at 9,453 feet and the Patagonia Mountains, which peak at 7,221 feet, at the intersection of Harshaw Creek and Sonoita Creek.
Accordingly, the riparian habitat created by the confluence of these creeks provided ideal conditions for clusters of ancient settlements with ruins and petroglyphs of the Anasazi leaving their mark. The first presence of the Spaniards occurred in 1539 and a century and a half later, the Jesuit priest Padre Eusebio Francisco Kino traveled through the region, establishing one of his visitas—–overnight houses located between the larger missions—–nearby Sonoita Creek in Patagonia. In 1853, the Gadsden Purchase made the corner of southeastern Arizona, then part of Mexico, a part of the United States, leading to the break-up of vast Spanish land grants by homesteaders, ranchers and miners.
Cattle ranching, mining and the railroads have come and gone, leaving Patagonia as a hybrid borderland culture with a population that is more than 50% Hispanic in origin, including shopkeepers, artists, craftspersons, former cowboys, vaqueros, miners, others on the local workforce and retirees.
The Nature Conservancy’s Patagonia-Sonoita Creek Preserve, is a world-famous riparian habitat and home to 300 bird species and a rare Fremont cottonwood-Goodding willow riparian forest with rare plant life. The riparian habitat continues on to Patagonia Lake. The nearby San Rafael Valley is a rolling savanna of grass, oak and mesquite that was among the places where grassland plants and animals survived during the ice ages—-an ecosystem of great diversity. The Santa Rita Mountains have the Smithsonian-sponsored Fred Lawrence Whipple Observatory at Mt. Hopkins available for astronomy practicums.
Patagonia was chosen as the location of The Bellows Foundation and the first Learning Center of The Bellows Institute because students will benefit from its rural setting; its treasured village life; its dedication to the values of the commons, rather than the corrosive values of the global market economy; and its juxtaposition with the U.S./Mexico border, which offers the students a stark learning environment about the complex realities of globalization.