About Us

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While Villa Anita DV offers one-of-a-kind rooms to spend the night in one of the most beautiful places on earth, it is also a registered 501(c)(3) non-profit art museum that focuses on the alternative reuse of materials. 

Founded by artists, Carlo Roncancio and David Aaron Smith in 2012, Villa Anita DV started with a barren piece of property and a log cabin style house built with railroad ties. It was like a blank canvas for the artists. Now, it is a sprawling 5 acres filled with sculptures, cabanas and renovated caravans, shaded walkways, diverse vegetable and fruit gardens, and piles of materials waiting to be used! Now two artists live here, Carlo and his partner Jack Holloman. Living here, they have done what they had to, to create a comfortable dwelling in an oppressive climate, and it is a continuous process. They have discovered alternative ways to use everyday objects that are forgotten about or thrown away. For example, a broken refrigerator sitting on it's back becomes a raised bed for veggies. An old  deformed piece of furniture becomes part of an outdoor wall, casting shade. 

There are countless ways to reuse the everyday objects of our lives, and part of our mission for here has become to salvage these materials before they make it to a landfill. This act of salvaging has further manifested itself in our lives by teaching us to reclaim the parts of us that we have forgotten about, or that are buried too deeply within us. This is an extremely healing process, and the reason we live, work, and create here year-round. We realized that even back in the beginning, when Villa Anita DV was a barren piece of property, the land itself and the historic cabin had to be reclaimed and salvaged from desertification. Since then, and through the act of reclaiming, Villa Anita DV has become an oasis, a powerful ship, a site of recovery, and now a place for the gathering of people.