{"id":52516,"date":"2018-09-13T16:40:51","date_gmt":"2018-09-13T23:40:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/?p=52516"},"modified":"2020-06-12T08:48:51","modified_gmt":"2020-06-12T15:48:51","slug":"the-macy-legacy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/the-macy-legacy\/","title":{"rendered":"The Macy legacy: How one man’s love affair with art will benefit NAU students for years to come"},"content":{"rendered":"

Doug Macy<\/strong> was not an artist, or a Northern Arizona University alum. Yet he was passionate about two things: collecting art and NAU\u2014he had his son to thank for both.<\/p>\n

Aaron Macy<\/strong> attended NAU in the late 1990s and pursued a degree in ceramics. It was during those four undergraduate years that he fell in love with Flagstaff, creative expression and his alma mater\u2014he was especially drawn to the woodfired kilns on campus. The Macy house was filled with Aaron\u2019s creations, and consequently, Doug also acquired a strong appreciation for ceramic art.<\/p>\n

After graduation, Aaron moved to Ohio to pursue a masters of fine arts in ceramics. At the start of his second year of grad school, he became ill and ultimately lost his battle with leukemia. He died at the age of 29.<\/p>\n

Aaron\u2019s ashes were scattered around Cottonwood Canyon in Utah\u2014one of his favorite places. For many summers thereafter, Doug would make the 800-mile journey from Portland to the canyon to visit his son\u2019s resting place. After spending a couple days in Utah, he would make his way to northern Arizona to spend time at Aaron\u2019s other favorite place\u2014NAU\u2019s Ceramics Complex.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was my first summer teaching at NAU when I saw this man wandering around the wood kiln facility looking really sad,\u201d ceramics professor Jason Hess<\/strong> said. \u201cSo I went down and introduced myself and said, \u2018why don\u2019t you come on up to the shop?\u2019 And so, he did. We hung out and had tea. That\u2019s when our friendship started.\u201d<\/p>\n

Doug and Hess would grow to be great friends. They talked about art, and Doug shared stories about his son.<\/p>\n

\"Kiln\"<\/a>
One of NAU’s\u00a0woodfired kilns on the complex, that Aaron especially loved.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u201cAaron\u2019s death was devastating for him\u2014no parent should ever have to experience losing a child,\u201d Hess said. \u201cAnd I think it gave him some comfort to connect with a place that was so pivotal to Aaron, and to be involved with our program.\u201d<\/p>\n

Doug was eventually asked to chair NAU\u2019s College of Arts and Letters Advisory Council\u2014he set the agenda for the committee and played a big role in raising money for the college. Though it was the biannual council meetings that kept him coming back to campus, he stayed involved in any way he could. When he was in town, he visited with ceramic students and participated in student critiques. He also put his landscape architecture career to use.<\/p>\n

From the placement, pathway and patio of the Japanese teahouse to the construction of the ceramics clay-mixing building, Doug was instrumental in designing and implementing multiple elements on the grounds of the ceramics complex, including a memorial wall covered in woodfired ceramic tile in honor of Aaron.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe was a real advocate for ceramics, and helped in every way he could\u2014never asking for anything in return.\u201d<\/p>\n

Hess and Doug\u2019s friendship would last 18 years, until Doug died in 2017. Though he was gone, Doug made sure his son\u2019s legacy would live on.<\/p>\n

He devoted his life to collecting art. Over the course of two decades, he collected more than 200 pieces, mostly comprised of ceramics, but also paintings, drawings, prints, photographs and sculpture.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s mainly focused on artists from the Pacific Northwest,\u201d Hess said. \u201cIt\u2019s a very high-caliber collection that includes pivotal ceramic artists like Peter Voulkos, Jun Keneko, Patti Warashina and Don Reitz. He also collected a number of pieces from me and from faculty here at NAU. And whenever he came through Flagstaff, he would always buy something, or a couple things, from students.\u201d<\/p>\n

The collection is now known as the Aaron M. Macy Memorial Collection.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe didn\u2019t have an heir,\u201d Hess said. \u201cSo, he didn\u2019t know what to do with his money. He wanted to give some to NAU, but he also wanted to put it into something that would live on, and that was this collection and endowment.\u201d<\/p>\n

The collection, worth more than $650,000, was willed to NAU. In addition, Doug put more than $400,000 into the Aaron M. Macy Memorial Award fund and NAU\u2019s Tozan Kiln fund. He even provided funds to have display cases built at various locations around campus to house the collection.<\/p>\n

\"ceramics<\/a>
Jason Hess works with ceramics students<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u201cThe idea was that these display cases would be placed in highly visible areas so that students could enjoy the artwork. A portion of the collection would be on display at all times around campus, then rotated out every couple of years.\u201d<\/p>\n

Hess said that Doug made sure all of the money he donated would directly benefit students: should a student want to go to China or India to study art, they could; if someone couldn\u2019t afford art supplies or needed money to do other research, they would be funded. A portion of the money also will go to bringing visiting artists to campus each semester.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was really important to him that students have opportunities.\u201d<\/p>\n

Because of the Macys, the opportunities seem endless.<\/p>\n

\u201cDoug was so concerned about making sure Aaron\u2019s legacy would live on, that in doing so, he also created a legacy of his own.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n

\"NAU<\/a><\/p>\n

Carly Banks |\u00a0NAU Communications
\n(928) 523-5582 | carly.banks@nau.edu<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Doug Macy was not an artist, or a Northern Arizona University alum. Yet he was passionate about two things: collecting art and NAU\u2014he had his son to thank for both. Aaron Macy attended NAU in the late 1990s and pursued a degree in ceramics. It was during those four undergraduate years that he fell in…<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":51,"featured_media":52537,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,15],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-52516","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-campus-community","category-editors"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52516","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/51"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=52516"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52516\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/52537"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=52516"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=52516"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=52516"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}