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Only at Interlochen: Graduating Visual Arts senior creates an immersive hotel room commemorating fellow students

The second of Interlochen’s Stone Hotel art rooms, featuring silhouettes of students practicing their art forms, was finished in late May by Holland Haeck.

A group of people look at a light gray wall that has been decorated with the silhouettes of artists dancing and playing music.

Walk into Stone Hotel’s Room 221, and you’ll realize right away that this isn’t an ordinary hotel room. The room’s curving gray walls feature life-size silhouettes of individuals practicing the arts: performing on a double bass or a trumpet, delivering monologues, filming movies, and posing on pointe. But these aren’t just artistic depictions. Every single one represents a real Interlochen Arts Academy student, drawn from life by graduating senior Holly Haeck.

Haeck says she was inspired by a moment from graduation last year when she and her friends took a photo of their shadows on the pavement. She was struck by the symbolic potential of the image.

“I became captivated with the way that shadows seem to transcend time with their anonymity, yet still contain the unique identity of the owner. To me, shadows represent the past, present, and future selves of the people they represent, while freezing them in a single moment of time,” says Haeck in her artist’s statement. 

The image shows a white bed illuminated by a hanging lantern-style light fixture. The walls are decorated with the silhouettes of artists.
The image shows a bed with a curved desk and matching chairs made out of light-colored wood at the foot.
Portrait image of a young woman with short blonde hair and bangs, wearing a white blouse, long gold earrings, and several necklaces.

Holly Haeck designed the art installation in Room 221.

After shining a light on her student models and tracing their outlines, Haeck filled in each shape with graphite pencil. The painstaking process took about 1.5-2 hours for each figure, an experience Haeck calls “meditative.” The hotel room also features lantern-style light fixtures and warm wood accents, including a bedframe and U-shaped seats. 

Room 221 is the second installation in Interlochen’s art hotel rooms project, which began in 2022 as a collaboration between Stone Hotel, Interlochen’s Maintenance department, and Visual Arts at Interlochen Arts Academy. The project was developed with an eye to the global phenomenon of art hotels, which feature creative installations in each room. The goal is to create multiple art hotel rooms over the next few years, each one designed by a different Arts Academy student.

Camille Colatosti, Provost at Interlochen Center for the Arts, expressed her enthusiasm for the project. “Each art hotel room provides our students with an opportunity to practice being citizen artists. They are creating something both beautiful and functional that will impact the experience of Interlochen guests for years to come.” 

Learn more about Visual Arts at Interlochen Arts Academy.