MacDowell, winter 2014

Vol. 43, No. 2, Winter 2014

IN THIS ISSUE

Journalists Take the Long View at MacDowell Colony Schwab Bequest Enriches Savidge Library Betye Saar Delights Medal Day Crowd Fellowships for LGBT-Themed Work Established

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ARCHITECTS | COMPOSERS | FILMMAKERS | INTERDISCIPLINARY ARTISTS | THEATRE | VISUAL ARTISTS | WRITERS

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LETTER FROM THE DIRECTOR

Avoiding a Content-Free Society

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It’s gratifying to hear from artists how valuable they consider a MacDowell Colony Fellowship to be, but when you announce a new program and people applaud the move well before it’s officially in place, then you figure you’ve hit on something important.

That’s how it’s been ever since we started mentioning our Art of Journalism Initiative. Everyone is excited, not just the writers.

Although we live in what many consider the great age of nonfiction, journalists are struggling. We all see that news outlets and publishers are rapidly transitioning to new platforms in the digital age, and while readership is expanding globally, journalists are finding it difficult to earn a living in a paperless and “free-content” society. Our aim in supporting creative nonfiction and long-form journalism is to avoid becoming a “content-free” society by ensuring that writers have time to do in-depth reporting and analysis, and find the best ways to present their stories. In this and future issues we will be providing updates on our plan to double the number of fellowships for non-fiction. This is an important goal, especially when so much of our modern culture seems predicated on getting everything fast, without emphasis on quality.

We owe it to our children and their children to make sure the important stories of our time are written with the care they deserve, to increase their impact and reflect the nuances of our collective history.

Finally, I’d like to introduce you to two new MacDowell board members who are already making a difference. Barbara Case Senchak has curated art collections for individuals and corporations, and is a former syndicated radio interview host and producer with a focus on women in developing countries.

Barbara has graciously agreed to be chairman of the Friends of MacDowell program. Also new to the board is Mollie Miller, a screenwriter who worked at various studios before moving into directing.

Most of her projects have been television movies for Disney, which aired on NBC and ABC. M ​ ollie is co-chair of the New Hampshire Benefit and is also a member of the board Communications Committee. Welcome Barbara and Mollie!

FELLOWS WORKS IN THREE BROADWAY THEATERS The works of three MacDowell Fellows, Ayad Akhtar, Donald Margulies, and Terrence McNally, were all on Broadway at the same time this fall, and Lisa Kron’s Fun Home as well as Lisa D’Amour’s Airline Highway are scheduled to make their Broadway debuts this spring.

Not a bad testament to the continued creativity of MacDowell playwrights.

Akhtar’s Disgraced, which won the 2013 Pulitzer Prize for Drama, is currently playing at the Lyceum Theatre and will be there through January 18 after sold-out engagements in Chicago, London, and New York at Lincoln Center in 2012. The one-act play was first produced in Chicago, where it won the 2012 Jeff Award for Best New Play.

Disgraced is about a successful Pakistani-American corporate lawyer who feels distanced from his cultural roots. When he and his white wife host a dinner party, chitchat about art eventually turns into a debate about religion, racial profiling, and 9/11, and the main character sees his carefully created life begin to fall apart. The play currently stars Hari Dhillon and Gretchen Moll.

Donald Margulies

Margulies, also a Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright, is back on Broadway with The Country House, which features Blythe Danner as the matriarch of a group of brooding artists. They gather at the family’s summer home in western Massachusetts during the Williamstown Theatre Festival, and when the weekend’s events don’t go as planned, secrets are unveiled and passions boil over.

The Country House is scheduled to run through December 9 at the Samuel J. Friedman Theatre.

McNally’s It’s Only a Play, last produced in 1985 at Manhattan Theatre Club, is at Gerald Schoenfeld Theatre through January 4. The TONY Award winner’s play about a neophyte playwright anxiously awaiting reviews of his Broadway debut stars Matthew Broderick, Nathan Lane, F. Murray Abraham, and Harry Potter alum Rupert Grint.

SECOND ANNUAL MACDOWELL CHAIRMAN’S EVENING FEATURES MICHAEL CHABON, IRA GLASS, AND ZADIE SMITH As this edition of the newsletter was going to press, Chairman Michael Chabon was about to sit down for a conversation with radio host Ira Glass and novelist Zadie Smith (December 8) at the second annual MacDowell Chairman’s Evening. About 100 Friends of MacDowell and their guests are expected to listen in to the discussion that will take place on stage at New York’s New Museum of Contemporary Art. Chabon has called his guests “two of our keenest, most restless, most open-hearted, and most inventive investigators into the possibilities of narrative.”

Smith’s first novel, White Teeth, was sold to a publisher before it was completed. She finished the book while in her final year as an English literature student at Cambridge. Glass is the host, creator, and executive producer of This American Life, the National Public Radio program he initiated in 1995. The program has won several Peabody and DuPont-Columbia awards.

Mollie Miller, Filmmaker

Barbara Case Senchak, Curator

❱❱ NEW FACES

Marissa Cinquanti, Events Assistant

Ellen Gordon, Housekeeping

A new wave of journalists is turning to artist residencies, and MacDowell in particular, to find the time, space, and inspiration for groundbreaking, long-form work.

In October, Amos Kamil came to MacDowell to work on a book based on his acclaimed story about the sex abuse scandal at Horace Mann School. In 2012 when the article, “Prep-School Predators,” ran as the cover story in The New York Times Magazine, the author knew of three Horace Mann School employees who had abused students at the famed preparatory school. The story earned Kamil a Pulitzer nomination, but more importantly it prompted abused alumni to come forward, and it inspired yet others to offer support and counsel to their affected classmates.

Amos Kamil

Kamil, also a Horace Mann alum, says that eventually, 22 people were identified as predators in incidents from the late-1960s to the mid-1990s.

“As the numbers kept expanding and as the school doubled down that it was all in the past,” says Kamil, “I knew there was a bigger story there.” As a result, Kamil launched the investigation that would become his book, Great is the Truth—not coincidentally, the school’s motto.

Ultimately, Great is the Truth is about how institutions should treat survivors of such scandal. One of the bright spots in the tale is that in the wake of Kamil’s original magazine story, some 2,500 school alumni have formed the Horace Mann Action Coalition made up of nonabused alumni rallying around their abused classmates.

Cheryl A. Young, Executive Director

❱❱ NEW BOARD MEMBERS

Journalists Take the Long View at MacDowell Colony

Ann Putnam, Admissions Assistant

MacDowell is making a place for powerful non-fiction like Kamil’s to take shape. Starting in 2015, a new Art of Journalism Initiative will eventually double MacDowell’s support of journalists to 20 annually. In addition to expanding outreach, the initiative is designed to help sustain in-depth reporting and literary journalism at a time when news organizations are investing less in longer work. Small project grants will be available, based on financial need, to help cover the extra costs journalists often pay out of pocket.

Another story that fits the category is being written by Zahir Janmohamed. During his first residency at MacDowell in October and November, the freelancer worked on the difficult narrative of his and others’ experiences in India during the Gujarat riots of 2002.

Janmohamed, the son of Muslim Indians from Tanzania, grew up in California. At the age of 25, disillusioned by the racism he saw in the U.S. in the aftermath of 9/11, he decided to explore his Indian heritage and had the bad luck of being in the Indian state of Gujarat when three days of violence resulted in the deaths of more than 1,200 people, most of them Muslims.

By taking the long view of the story, Janmohamed hopes to paint a bigger picture than one focused on three days of grisly religious extremism. He’s Zahir Janomohamed working on a story about identity, trauma, and memory. And being in James Baldwin’s studio has been helpful. “When someone like James Baldwin puts into words these complex painful experiences,” he explains, it can be inspiring for readers and writers alike.

Having the time at MacDowell has been a key part of the process, giving him the space to step back from the events, transcribe his interviews, and dig into the reasons for his original trip to India. And having the perspectives of fiction writers and other artists has also been helpful in seeing the long view.

Arnold T. Schwab Bequest Enriches Savidge Library and Creates Poetry Fellowship

NEW AND NOTABLE PROJECTS: Charlotte Meehan was in residence in 2008 when she wrote 27 Tips for Banishing the Blues. Her darkly comic look at how one woman attempts to cure her own depression had its world premiere in Boston in 2014 at the Boston Playwrights’ Theatre. The Boston Globe called it, “a thoughtful look at our struggle to balance despair with hope.”

Artists were already aware of the difference that Dr. Arnold T. Schwab made in their MacDowell experience even before his death earlier this year. They could sit in the new reading room of Savidge Memorial Library and see his name freshly engraved in the wall, honoring his support of the library expansion that he designated in his will. The space, well-lit with a panoramic view of the surrounding forest, provides a peaceful place for them to explore and share new ideas outside of their studio walls.

Soon, Schwab’s legacy will grow even more. A three-time MacDowell Fellow, Schwab set aside a remainder of his estate to endow a fellowship for poets.

The fellowship will memorialize Schwab’s love and practice of poetry. Schwab wrote many poems, lectures, and scholarly articles in his days as a professor of English at California State University and in his retirement. Many of those papers chronicled the lives of Marian and Edward MacDowell.

Schwab’s commitment to the Colony started with his interest in Edward and Marian MacDowell, sparked by a biography he was writing on the critic James G. Huneker, a great admirer of Edward’s music. Schwab spent years collecting letters, reminiscences, and other papers related to the MacDowell’s and the Colony, and in the 1970s he went straight to the source, spending three residencies working on a MacDowell biography, which was never finished. In 2000, Schwab’s collection was donated to the Library of Congress.

Schwab’s generosity to MacDowell as a scholar and more recently a donor will continue to benefit future generations of Colony Fellows.

For more information on making a planned gift to MacDowell and joining the Marian MacDowell Society, contact Director of Development John Martin at jmartin@macdowellcolony.org.

Chabon Delivers 2014 Keynote for NH Humanities Council

MacDowell Fellows David Lang and Alvin Singleton Selected to American Academy of Arts and Letters The American Academy of Arts and Letters named MacDowell Fellows David Lang and Alvin Singleton to its membership for 2014. The two composers, who were inducted during a ceremony in mid-May, join seven other new members in the 250-person organization.

Beth Galston, visual artist, three sculptures in “Branching Out” at the Peabody Essex Museum in Salem, MA through Sept 20, 2015.

Tangle, red oak acorn caps and string, 300 feet, 2014

OTHER NOTABLE PROJECTS:

Alvin Singleton

Singleton, a member of MacDowell’s Board of Directors, said being nominated is special because in the course of composing he would often “wonder what my peers are going to think about my work.

Then you realize that someone’s been listening all these years.... It’s wonderfully gratifying.”

Fellow composer and nominee Lang echoed Singleton’s thoughts. “I’m incredibly happy about it,” said Lang, explaining that he considers the nomination a motivator to push his curiosity about music even further than it’s been in the past. “Now maybe it’s my obligation to ask harder questions.”

National Benefit Monday, May 18, 2015 For tickets, call 212-535-9690.

Joan Linder, visual artist, solo exhibition at the Charles Benenson Gallery at OMI International Art Center in Ghent, NY called “Drawn Home.” It runs through Jan 12, 2015.

BETH GALSTON

Chairman Michael Chabon talked about mystical experiences, the wonder of libraries, the importance of arts education, and most importantly, the inevitable connections between human beings during a lyrical address to 800 people at the New Hampshire Humanities Council Annual Dinner in Manchester, NH, September 30.

Chabon’s inspiring address—titled “Interlibrary Loons: Meaning, Purpose, Connectedness and Other Useful Delusions”—began with a story about discovering Mike Mulligan and His Steam Shovel as a child being raised in Flushing, NY, and ended with a nod to the magic that takes place at The MacDowell Colony.

His aim, he said, was to point out the most important attribute, or “most central importance,” of a library. The following are two excerpts from his address.

On the child’s mind and heart: “It’s a commonplace to say that children arrive in the world preinstalled with faithful, credulous and believing hearts ... but I think you could just as easily argue that the opposite is true. Children come into life and spend their first few years seeing everything for exactly what it is ... and then undergo years of often painful and confusing indoctrination, obfuscation and mythification at the hands of adults.”

On the importance of arts education: “In a time when primary- and secondary-school arts and music education programs are routinely sacrificed and abandoned, ... when a populace ... now lines up, logs on or kicks back on the couch to receive its daily dose of corporate sponsored art-like product, it’s important to remember that [of] all the ways we’ve devised for increasing our sense of connectedness to other human beings ... the most reliable is the experience of creating and partaking in works of art. Art, for artist and art-lover alike, is still very much of some use.”

SAVE THE DATES

New Hampshire Benefit Coming soon... Check our Facebook page and macdowellcolony.org for the announcement.

Michael Ashkin, visual artist, Long Branch published Margaret Brouwer, composer, Featured Contemporary Composer on WFIU, Indiana’s Classical NPR station, month of September 2014.

Christian Bruno, filmmaker, debuted short work Ed & Pauline, at the Telluride Film Festival over Labor day Weekend.

Leah Carroll, writer, Down City published.

Matt King, visual artist, solo show “Stowaway” at Reynolds Gallery in Richmond, Va. Manfred Kirchheimer, filmmaker, saw his 1981 film, Stations of the Elevated— worked on in residence—restored and remastered for its U.S. theatrical premiere in October courtesy of BAMcinématek.

Judith McBrien, writer, third edition of Pocket Guide to Chicago Architecture released.

Alice Miceli, visual artist, presented new photographs at Museum of Modern Art, Rio de Janeiro.

Rosalind Solomon, visual artist, released her latest book, THEM.

portablemacdowell.org

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Joelle Khoury, composer, worked on the music for her multi-media opera Palais De Femmes while in residence. The “feminine saga” had its world premiere in Paris in October and was inspired by the lives and works of women such as Marguerite Duras, Virginia Woolf, Sylvia Plath, Oum Koulthoum, Nina Simone, Camille Claudel, Billie Holiday, Edith Piaf, and many others. Khoury describes the performance as a polyphony between words, notes, sounds, images, and dance with text in five languages.

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2014

MEDAL DAY

Assemblage and Installation Artist Honored with 55th Edward MacDowell Medal Nearly 1,400 visitors watched assemblage and installation artist Betye Saar accept the 55th Edward MacDowell Medal from Chairman and novelist Michael Chabon at a public ceremony August 10. In kicking off the festivities, Chabon described the three stages of the making of a work of art: The Hunt, the Transformation, and the Release. The following is the transcript of his opening remarks:

BROCK STONEHAM

Good afternoon!

Forgive me if I seem to have a bit more swagger in my walk than usual, if I seem a bit more, shall we say, swingin’. But I’ve been working on a project related to Frank Sinatra for the past month, immersing myself in the man and his music--and, well, you know, they also call me “The Chairman of the Board.”

And what’s more, I actually am a Chairman of a Board.

This is my fourth Medal Day as Chairman: Edward Albee, Nan Goldin, Stephen Sondheim, and now Betye Saar. I’m not sure it would be possible to condense a greater sense of the range, intelligence, cunning, and fierceness of American art into a smaller span than that. Or maybe it is: Within the confines of these 450 acres, as you will see today when you tour the studios, 30-odd geniuses (and when I say 30-odd, believe me, I know what I’m talking about.) from all over the country and all around the world have been busy striking just as deep, just as far, just as fiercely, and just as hard at the boundaries and foundations of art, as those four great pioneers.

I’m proud to have been a part of that incredible intensity, that smoldering focus, as a Fellow and as Chairman, for the past 18 year now.

I’m also proud to be the guy who in a few moments from now gets to hand one of those medals to Betye Saar. The word “pioneer” does not seem quite strong enough to describe the startling courage she has shown, from the beginning, in making her presence known to the world, and it’s neither a knock on the way in which medals get awarded nor, God forbid, a comment on Ms. Saar’s age--it’s simply the truth--to say this one is probably overdue.

While I was preparing for today’s ceremony I came across an interview with Ms. Saar in which she told the interviewer that, in her view, there are three stages to the making of a work of art: the Hunt, the Transformation, and the Release.

I thought this was a fascinating model not just of her process, or of the process of artists generally who work in assemblage and collage, but of my own and perhaps that of most artists, in any discipline. I hope that Ms. Saar will forgive me if I take hold of her framework and run with it a little ways, the way my dog Mabel does when she gets hold of somebody’s swim goggles.

Let us consider the three stages in reverse order.

The final stage, “The Release,” is the briefest, and the weirdest, part of the whole business. It comes when the work--assemblage, poem, canvas, short story--is surrendered to the tender mercies of the world: put up for sale, given away, submitted for publication, abandoned in a drawer. Consigned, at times after years of labor, doubt and confusion, to its fate. This is the weird part because, first of all, it often involves money or questions of compensation, and money makes everything weird. It’s weird because having your work exposed, at last, is kind of like what I imagine it would feel like to be trepanned, that moment when the tap of a very sharp chisel lets the light and air of the outside world flood in, revealing what had until now lain pulsing secretly in the dark. That has to feel pretty weird, right? “The

BROCK STONEHAM

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Betye Saar: Mo

(Clockwise from top left) Medalist Betye Saar and Chairman Michael Chabon present the 55th Edward MacDowell Medal; Brenda Garand, Daniel Kojo Schrade, and MacDowell Fellow Betsey Garand after the ceremony; Lila, Caroline, and Laura Trowbridge head off to lunch before touring Medal Day open studios; Michael Chabon addresses the gathered crowd.

“

I have been a believer that one can best bring about change in the world by cultivating one’s own garden and trusting that others will do the same. Betye Saar, by cultivating her own garden through the art that she has created has played an important role in showing the world the beauty of African American culture. What a gift to the American cultural experience!”

—PRESIDENT SUSAN DAVENPORT AUSTIN

Release” is also weird because it brings about situations like that of a painter friend of mine, a former MacDowell Fellow himself, who misses his paintings, once they’re sold and gone from his studio, who kind of pines for them, and has even contrived, on rare occasions when it gets really bad, to track them down and go and visit them for as long as decency or their current owners will permit. I guess he hasn’t quite yet grasped the whole “release” concept.

The middle stage of the process, the Transformation, is probably what most people think of when they think of an artist making art: the part where the artist turns tubes of pigment into haystacks at sunset, the remembered details of a tour of duty in Vietnam into a magic-realist epic, the notes of the diatonic scale into a sonata that leaves hard men in tears, or--in the case of Betye Saar--an antique washboard, an image clipped from an old magazine ad, a doll and a pair of vintage ladies gloves into an assemblage that is both a stinging indictment of, and a witty riposte to, a century and a half of pernicious pop-cultural racism.

The first stage of the artistic process that Ms. Saar talked about in that interview, the Hunt, is the most important, I think, and the one that tends to be misunderstood or completely neglected by non-artists and even by artists themselves. It’s the part that people at bookstore readings are unwittingly referring to when they raise their hands during Q&A and ask an author--often an author who has not slept particularly

More Than a Pioneer

“

In all the various disciplines, artists tell us stories. Some of those stories are difficult and some of them are beautiful. But all artists have a genius for combining rational and emotional intelligence into something that makes the hair on my arms stand on end. That kind of response means Art is working its way into us, helping us to understand our deepest selves. For young and old, being opened up to ideas through art, to think and form an opinion about what we believe, is the best exercise we can get and we are better for it.”

—EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR CHERYL YOUNG

Of the 1,931 applications in 2014, more than 75 percent were from those who’ve not yet come to MacDowell. Applications came from 48 states and 62 countries. From that, 288 residencies were awarded.

(Standing, from left) Resident Director David Macy, Executive Director Cheryl Young, Chairman of the Board Michael Chabon.

(Seated, from left) President Susan Davenport Austin, Medalist Betye Saar, and Presentation Speaker Lowery Stokes Sims.

Museum of Arts and Design Curator Lowery Stokes Sims introduces 55th Medalist Betye Saar Joining Sims on the selection committee were visual artists Nene Humphrey and Richard Haas, Leslie King-Hammond, art historian and founder of the Center for Race and Culture at the Maryland Institute College of Art, and the late Susan Sollins-Brown, executive producer and curator of PBS’s Art in the Twenty-First Century.

I’m entitling this A Praise Song for Betye Saar.

One of the things that Betye Saar and I have done together in the past, and have not done enough of in the present, is to shop. I recalled that fact a few years ago when at the behest of the Michael Rosenfeld and Halley Harrisburg I wrote a brief personal reminiscence about Betye. I rely on that reminiscence here with some recent embellishments.

I suppose I was shopping with Betye Saar even before I met her.

When I first encountered her work in the late 1970s—in the notorious exhibition of black American artists organized by Robert Doty at the Whitney Museum of American Art in 1971, and later in the basement gallery in SoHo of Monique Knowlton—I had just embarked on what turned out to be an occasional hobby of collecting black memorabilia. I sought out dolls, figurines, photographs, salt shakers, twine holders, fly swatters and whisk brooms in expected and unexpected places. I would later realize that I was shopping along with Betye in spirit.

Betye’s engagement of and challenge to commercial black imagery, which had been an irksome presence since the Reconstruction era, was a never-ending source of fascination for me. As a young black person I had grown up with the expected unease with and disgust for black stereotypes such as Stepin Fetchit, Uncle Tom, Sapphire, Amos and Andy, Aunt Jemima, Uncle Mose, and Uncle Ben, and a whole other panoply of characters. These were certainly not the types of images in which one expected to find a new and positive black assertiveness. What Betye’s art work did was to let me and others in on another reading, another consideration of those images, their historical reality, and their social impact, and to begin to recognize that they could be mechanisms for survival, and a means to coopt the distortions of racist ignorance.

Because of the fact of her work, therefore, my avocational passion—which some of my family and friends viewed as a transgressive pleasure—was given context and meaning, and the objects in my collection shed their controversial pasts as symbols of shame and ridicule. They were resurrected as instruments of liberation for me as I strove to define myself in the world.

At times I also realized that the dialogue I could have with Betye’s work could take on the character of an inside joke, or a nod and a wink of those in the know. This was the case when I engineered the acquisition of one of Betye’s boxes, Whitey’s Way (1970-1996) for the Metropolitan Museum of Art when I was on their staff. This piece shows a series of identical white figurines of alligators aligned on a mirrored surface. I realized that my colleagues at the Metropolitan initially saw this as an expression of ethnic serial imagery. At the time it was brought into the Museum, a postcard that Betye had put into the lid of the box had gotten loose and it was only when it was recovered that the true meaning of the work was evident. The post card showed a popular image of a young black boy half in the mouth of an alligator referring to the actual, though thankfully not widespread, use of black babies as alligator bait.

So in light of my affinity for mementoes from the past, and Betye’s need to replenish her stock of images to make her art when we got together we would shop whether in a flea market or swap meet or places like

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well for several nights in a row--that dreaded question “Where do you get your ideas?” The fact that writers dread and despise this question so thoroughly may be proof that the Hunt is the least understood, and most important stage in an artist’s process. And one of the many, many wondrous things about Betye Saar’s work is that it exposes the importance of the Hunt to making art in a way that is readily grasped.

At its simplest, the Hunt might be defined as the period during which the artist assembles, accumulates, organizes, and prepares the raw materials that will, during the next phase, be transformed. For Betye Saar the Hunt is often, in part, quite literal: she haunts garage sales, secondhand stores, junk yards. I can actually report that she sent out some emissaries this morning to a local swap meet. She trains her gaze on curbsides and trash bins, rescuing what has been discarded or neglected to obtain material for her pieces.

But I would argue, and I hope Ms. Saar would agree, that the Hunt, properly understood, begins long before the first trip to the Salvation Army or the hardware store, before the first research is undertaken or the first interview conducted, before the canvas is bought and stretched and the paints mixed--long before the commission is ever received. The Hunt for the raw materials out of which art can be made begins before we even know we might want to spend our lives making it. The Hunt begins before we are born, with the experiences and memories, the skills and the scars accumulated by our parents, grandparents and great-grandparents, and it carries on, in earnest, from the day we are born, through all the years of our education (both in school and out), through the streets and houses of our hometown, through the pages of the books we read and the flicker of the movies we see and the endless hours of music we listen to. All of that provides us with raw material for the Transformation; they are all the spoils, and the quarry, of the Hunt.

When the time comes for the Transformation, if you’re, say, Betye Saar, you are holding not just bits of glass and pottery, old furniture to reconfigure and old books and magazines to repurpose, but particular memories: of seeing Simon Rodia’s magical towers rise from the alleyways of Watts, of your relatives’ conversations and tribulations. You hold the expertise you gained by making enamel jewelry to sell at fairs when you were young, and that you gained by raising three bi-racial daughters in a racially fraught city. You hold your history of pain and love and sorrow, of slavery and emancipation, hope and disappointment, exclusion and marginalization, your history as a woman, your history as a reader of magazines and fairytales. All of that, taken together, is where you get your ideas. And now the Hunt is over, and it’s time to get to work--no time to consider the mysterious possibility that all along it was not you who was doing the hunting, that in fact you are just the container, the basket in which some unknown hand has gathered all that raw material, that it is not the bits of flotsam or cans of paint or skeins of words but yourself that must now be transformed. And as for the Release...? Let’s burn that bridge when we come to it. Thank you.

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the Terminal Market in Philadelphia, a trendy boutique on the upper west side of Manhattan, or in a new mall she insisted that I see in Los Angeles. We hunted for presents for ourselves and friends, ate in the hottest restaurants and where possible took in the drop-dead gorgeous views.

I hope that I’ve indicated how Betye Saar and I have long had a multi-layered relationship: artist/curator, teacher/ student, black women across generations.

As a curator I’ve had to privilege of writing about her work, and being able to do so from a highly personal point of view. I have observed how she creates a visual dialogue between real and manufactured images, particularly of black women. How she exploits the racially charged metaphorical meanings of colors such as white and black.

How she affirms our spiritual essence as African peoples as well as our empirical challenges in the world. After all she emerged as an artist in the 1960s and 70s as black Americans were involved in a movement to assert their right to economic, social, and political equality in this country. One of the crucial strategies in this effort was the recasting of the self-image of the black American.

In this context, as Susan Scott indicated yesterday, Betye’s legendary work The Liberation of Aunt Jemima of 1972 burst onto the landscape of American art like a molotov cocktail. This boxed assemblage of modest proportions gathered “found” objects into a “mojo” (i.e. an amulet or charm that works with the strength and conviction of the user) that transmuted the mythical stereotype of Aunt Jemima from some fantasy of the good-natured black servant to a dedicated terrorist outfitted with a grenade and rifle, ready to reclaim her power and her dignity.

As a student I learn from her every time she exhibits her work. I see how artifacts from vernacular life and personal histories can be brought together and result in works of great visual acuity and political acumen. At times the effects are breathtaking even in their simplicity. I think specifically of a small sculpture of a kneeling African woman set in a gilded cage that was part of her exhibition Cage at the Rosenfeld Gallery a few years ago. It was a heart-stopper, metaphorically capturing the experience of women caught in a cage—albeit gilded—but caught in a cage nonetheless.

As a student I also learn how she brings to her work certain qualities that are key elements of her vision: improvisation, emotional engagement, nature, and her own personal presence and energy.

A primary encounter with Betye’s work is on an intimate scale where one can meditate quietly and privately on her transformative gestures. But even as the assemblages and collages gave way to larger altar-type works and eventually installations, the context for the object in Saar’s work grew richer and more profound in nuance.

While this enlargement of scale and space would seem to deprive the viewer of the experience of the quintessential intimacy and concentrated energy of the early works, Saar has never lost her primary connection to the innate and accumulated aura of the individual object.

Through the artful evocation of nostalgia, shamanism, autobiography, and reconstruction in these works Betye has been able to consistently and directly engage her audience.

Her installation work, which has been a part of her oeuvre since the 1970s, has given her a vehicle by which she could “travel” her art and engage a larger number of people—particularly art students.

She revels in the improvisational mode in which she has had to create these works in the past. Often it was not feasible to transport a cache of objects from her studio, so she would find herself creating the work on site in conjunction with others. On occasion even visitors to the exhibition might be invited to leave their own contribution on a work, accumulatively altering the form and substance of the work during the exhibition. In this way Betye brings her work squarely into the realm of communal expression that characterizes the work of the tribe—i.e. the familial group—and the magical and occult aspects of the objects are refocused again.

But the roots of that expression are multi-variant. Betye thinks of herself not only as a woman artist, but as a California artist. As she has noted the first consideration has given her access to an intuitive gift that was nurtured and sustained through the multi-ethnic gene pool into which she was born. The second consideration has led her to feel a particular cultural affinity to Asia and to appreciate the West Coast environment where light and water are omni-present, reinforcing her particular connection with nature.

As women bridging generations, Betye and I have shared perspectives on our experiences as black women, meditating on the conditions of exploitation and servitude that for many of us are but one or two generations behind us. As our late great mutual friend Arlene Raven, the noted feminist critic and writer, observed about Betye’s work dealing with

(Top) Baxter and Bonnie Harris enjoy a picnic lunch with their daughter Molly Herron. (Lower left) Visual artist Emily Noelle Lambert demonstrates print making for a young visitor in Graphics-Putnam Studio after lunch.

“

Sometimes from the outside MacDowell can be mistaken for an isolation chamber for creative work, a place where artists are trained on deadlines with bleary eyes, endlessly grinding out work in the studios. But the reality is that MacDowell is an incredibly social place, a rich community filled with opportunities to trade ideas and make fast friends. Its open admissions process brings together a cast of characters that could never be assembled here or anywhere else without the striving of all those who are seeking the time to make their work…and to discover what it’s like to make it on an organic time schedule.”

—RESIDENT DIRECTOR DAVID MACY

2015 The MacDowell Medal is rotated among the artistic disciplines practiced at the artist colony established in Peterborough in 1907. Next year’s medal will be awarded to an individual who has made an outstanding contribution to the realm of music composition.

black female labor: She is able to “[intensify] the irony inherent in her materials, exaggerating beyond satire to black humor,” while demonstrating “the involuted and unfinished nature of American apartheid.”

I cannot conclude my remarks without acknowledging the influence that Saar has had in the art world on generations of younger artists. Her gift as a manipulator of texture, color, image, shape and contour informs the work of a host of artists for whom she paved the way for their positive reception in the art world. A few who readily come to mind: Joyce Scott, master beader and glass artist, who is a comparable creator of commentary within the context of a highly aestheticized sensibility and technical virtuosity.

Kara Walker, with whom Betye has disagreed, but who would never have been able to pursue her artistic ambition without Betye Saar.

Performance and installation artists from Kaylynn Two Trees, to Sengue Nengudi and Maren Hassinger and Simone Leigh would never have been able to see how their own existences could be potent and viable subjects for art without Betye Saar.

And I can’t fail to mention the wonderful work created by her daughters Alison and Lezley who have found their own voices within the language she has created. And Tracye, whose engagement with language complements those of her siblings and of her mother.

Betye Saar is an artist for all ages. At a time in human history where individual responsibility on all planes, especially the spiritual, is increasingly abrogated, she reaffirms the validity and power of the individual and shows us the way to tap the best qualities in ourselves and reach our highest good. She is a guru, a griot and a masterful materialist. She is also feisty, feminist, mystical, and race affirming.

Therefore this year’s MacDowell medal committee, which also included Richard Haas, Leslie King Hammond, Nene Humphrey and Susan Sollins (under the stewardship of Cheryl Young and Michael Chabon), is honored to present the 2014 MacDowell Medal to Betye Saar for her outstanding achievement and continuing effervescence in the arts of the United States and the world.

Betye Saar Delights Crowd as She Accepts Edward MacDowell Medal Thank you.

Eighty-eight revolutions around the sun. Eighty-eight revolutions around the sun, and what do I have to show for it?

All the hours, days, weeks, months, years, decades. All of those behind me and yet here I am hunting and gathering, collecting, finding objects, images, materials, imprints, impressions, ideas, memories to recycle. To recycle, to reinterpret, to mix, to match. To recycle all the trash and treasure that I have with the obligation to reinterpret, to connect, to transform by cutting, tearing, nailing, painting, gluing, with fabric, paper, and paint.

My creative process, which is my art: collages, assemblages, installations. I guess that’s what I’m leaving behind. But anyway, I feel that I’m creating herstory, my story.

The MacDowell Colony encourages and supports creativity, just as all of us right here in this space are doing our part to encourage and support creativity.

And here I am a few weeks into my Eighty-ninth revolution around the sun. Here I am receiving this medal as my reward, and I feel that this medal says for me, ‘You go, girl!’ (applause and laughter) And my reply is, ‘Thank You.’ (applause)

New Fellowships for Artists Working on LGBT-Themes

Bill Knott_ Poet Bill Knott, a prolific writer, died on

Artist Awards, Grants and Fellowships

Playwright Robert Schenkkan’s All the Way won a Drama Desk Award for outstanding play, while Louise Erdrich and Donald Margulies won PEN awards.

Other awards and their recipients include: Alpert Award in Film and Video to Deborah Stratman; Radcliffe Institute Fellowship in Literature to V.V. Ganeshananthan, Radcliffe Institute Fellowship in Literature to ZZ Packer, PEW Fellowship in the Arts in Literature to poet Laynie Browne, PEW Fellowship in the Arts in Literature to poet Thomas Devaney.

National Endowment for the Arts Grants in creative writing went to Amy Quan Barry, Catherine Chung, V.V. Ganeshananthan, Michelle Hoover, Alexandria Marzano-Lesnevich, Daniel Mason, and Raj Parameswaran.

Pollock-Krasner Foundation grants were awarded to 12 MacDowell Fellows: Mixed-media artist Golnar Adili, Installation artist Shimon Attie, Interdisciplinary artist Helene Aylon, Sculptor Zigi Ben-Haim, Writer Judith Braun, Painter Ray Ciarrochi, Painter Joe Fyfe, Painter Jim Gaylord, Painter Tom Judd, Visual artist Lindsey Landfried, Painter Tabitha Vevers, and Sculptor Tamara Zahaykevich.

Westminster, CA at the age of 92. Schwab, who was in residence three times, last in 1978, wrote several books including the recently published One Night Stand and Other Poems. Schwab earned his undergraduate degree from UCLA in 1943. After serving three years in the U.S. Navy he received his master’s degree and then his Ph.D. from Harvard University in 1951. He taught at California State University Long Beach until he retired in 1980.

Pati Hill_ Author and visual artist Pati Hill, who was acclaimed for her work in fiction in the 1950s and 1960s and then turned to making visual art with a photocopier, died in her home in Sens, France on September 19, 2014. She was 93. Hill, who was in residence six times, the last in 1977, published her first book, The Pit and The Century Plant, in 1955. It told stories about her life in the French countryside and was followed quickly by a novel, The Nine-Mile Circle.

Susan Sollins-Brown_ Susan Sollins-Brown, MacDowell Colony Board

Two MacDowell Fellows, fiction writers Olivia Clare and T. L. Khleif, have received 2014 Rona Jaffe Foundation Writers’ Awards. Two Lucille Lortel Awards went to playwright and actress Lisa Kron. She won outstanding musical for Fun Home, and outstanding featured actress in a musical for her part in Good Person of Szechwan.

Interdisciplinary artist Mimi Lien won outstanding scenic design for Natasha, Pierre and the Great Comet of 1812.

The National Book Award in Young People’s Literature was awarded to fiction writer Jacqueline Woodson for Brown Girl Dreaming.

Arnold T. Schwab_ Poet Arnold Schwab, died on July 1, 2014 at his home in

member for 13 years and executive director of ART21, Inc., died suddenly on October 13, 2014 at home in Rye, NY. She was 75. Sollins-Brown was the producer, director, and curator of the groundbreaking Peabody Award-winning documentary television series, Art in the Twenty-First Century, broadcast nationwide on PBS and now in its seventh season. Her feature-length film, William Kentridge: Anything is Possible, also received a Peabody Award. Sollins-Brown was the co-founder, with the late Nina Sundell, of Independent Curators Incorporated (ICI), now Independent Curators International, and was president of the Earle Brown Music Foundation named for her husband, composer Earle Brown, who died in 2002.

Kit Carson_L.M. Kit Carson, a filmmaker dedicated to independent film and

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perhaps best known for co-writing the screenplay for Paris, Texas and the 1983 remake of Breathless, died on October 20, 2014 in Dallas. He was 73. Carson, who also worked as an actor, producer, and director, was in residence three times, most recently in 2008. Before launching into filmmaking, Carson wrote about his discipline for Esquire and Rolling Stone, among other journals. He co-wrote and played the title character in David Holzman’s Diary in 1968, a film credited as being one of the first mockumentaries. Described as a Texas film legend, he later became a mentor to Wes Anderson as well as Owen, Luke, and Andrew Wilson.

Galway Kinnell_Galway Kinnell, a poet noted for his

plain-spoken verse, willingness to teach, and his political activism, died October 28, 2014 at his home in Sheffield, VT. He was 87. Kinnell, who was in residence seven times between 1959 and 1992, was a great presence among the artists in residence at MacDowell. He was named the Vermont State Poet in 1989, wrote more than a dozen books of poetry, won the Pulitzer Prize and a National Book Award, and wrote simply, eschewing the modernist poetry of the masters publishing as he came of age. Kinnell wrote about street life in New York, love, and death in a lyrical style that has ensured that all his poetry published since 1960 has remained in print. In 1983, his Selected Poems won the Pulitzer as well as the National Book Award. He was married to Board Member Barbara K. Bristol.

Community Engagement: MACDOWELL IN THE SCHOOLS Non-fiction writer Leah Carroll met with 20 advanced writing students at ConVal Regional High School in May. Later that month, composer Orlando Garcia discussed composition at ConVal. In June, poet James Arthur led students in writing exercises, and fiction writer Devika Rege conducted a series of workshops in crime writing. In July, interdisciplinary artist Gregory Sale joined Devika to talk to the class about his work with men and women incarcerated in U.S. prisons. He also visited the Concord Corrections Center for a workshop on communicating through art. Filmmaker Mike Estabrook visited ConVal art classes twice to talk about and demonstrate his techniques. Composers Andrew

Norman and Yotam Haber met with 45 Walden School students in Savidge Library in July.

Writer Sarah Deming taught boxing to a dozen ninth grade students at High Mowing School in September. She then joined playwright Boo Killebrew to talk about writing with 25 seventh grade students from World Academy in Nashua.

MACDOWELL DOWNTOWN In May, Heather Robb told stories and sang songs from her current project, a contemporary musical called The Gig. In June, Tamar Ettun introduced her sculpture and installations using parachutes as inflatable performance spaces before taking everyone out into the Monadnock Center’s courtyard to inflate a demonstration

piece. Later that month Andrea Clearfield talked about her new opera, shared recordings, and showed images of two treks to record songs of a rich but endangered Himalayan culture.

Visual artist Deborah Aschheim presented drawings and sculpture that explored shared cultural memory, and in September filmmaker Yemane Demissie showed clips and talked about his new documentary series examining the social history of his native Ethiopia during the reign of Emperor Haile Selassie. In October playwright Boo Killebrew read from her recent work and showed clips of her work The Play About My Dad, and in November composer Guy Klucevsek introduced the accordion as a versatile concert instrument.

WINTER 2014 • THE MACDOWELL COLONY

Over the next four years, the Arch and Bruce Brown Fellowships will be awarded to artists inspired by history and working on LGBT-themed theatre, music, choreography, or interdisciplinary genres intended for stage settings. While MacDowell residencies have supported many works on these subjects, from the essays of James Baldwin to the prize-winning theatre work of Doug Wright, and Lisa Kron, this grant reflects the Colony’s mission of fostering freedom of expression and a diverse artist community. Candidates for the Fellowships will be selected annually from artists who have successfully completed the standard MacDowell application process.

Remembering

New Fellowships from the Arch and Bruce Brown Foundation will support MacDowell residencies for artists working on lesbian/gay/bisexual/transgender themes in performance-based work. The $20,000 grant, which is also the largest award the foundation has ever given, is the first at MacDowell designated specifically for LGBT-themes.

March 12, 2014 in Bay City, Michigan, at the age of 74. Knott, who was in residence seven times, most recently in 1979, published many works of poetry and loved to use social media to connect his work to a wider audience. According to The Boston Globe, Knott was a relentless reviser. He would revisit his works, pulling them off the shelves in libraries or stores, making notes on the pages, then leaving the revised books for readers to find. His two epitaphs “Death” and “Goodbye” are considered some of his best work and were published in his first book, The Naomi Poems, in 1968. Knott taught at Emerson College and inspired students for more than 25 years.

❱❱ FELLOWSHIPS

From May 2014 through October 2014, The MacDowell Colony welcomed a total of 155 artists from 24 states and six countries. This group includes 67 writers, 29 visual artists, 11 film/video artists, 10 interdisciplinary artists, 14 theater artists, 14 composers and 10 architects.

WINTER 2014 • THE MACDOWELL COLONY

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EMILY ABRUZZO, Architect Brooklyn, NY

ANNE FADIMAN, Writer Whately, MA

JOSEPH KECKLER, Interdisciplinary Artist; Brooklyn, NY

IEDE RECKMAN, Visual Artist Leiden, The Netherlands

JOAN ACOCELLA, Writer New York, NY

MELISSA FEBOS, Writer Brooklyn, NY

BOO KILLEBREW, Theatre Artist Brooklyn, NY

DEVIKA REGE, Writer Pune, India

BASMA ALSHARIF, Film/Video Artist Chicago, IL

ROSEMARIE FIORE, Visual Artist Bronx, NY

ALICE KIM, Writer San Francisco, CA

MAURICIO ARANGO, Film/Video Artist; Brooklyn, NY

DAN FISHBACK, Theatre Artist Brooklyn, NY

MELISSA KIRSCH, Writer Brooklyn, NY

JESSICA SARAH RINLAND, Film/Video Artist Surrey, United Kingdom

PENNY ARCADE, Theatre Artist New York, NY

EDWARD FORD, Architect Charlottesville, VA

NATE KLUG, Writer Des Moines, IA

SOLEDAD ARIAS, Visual Artist New York, NY

REBECCA FOUST, Writer Ross, CA

KARLA KNIGHT, Visual Artist Redding, CT

JAMES ARTHUR, Writer Baltimore, MD

LISA FRANK, Visual Artist Madison, WI

LISA KO, Writer Brooklyn, NY

DEBORAH ASCHHEIM, Visual Artist Pasadena, CA

RUTH FRANKLIN, Writer Brooklyn, NY

EUN KOH, Writer Mercer Island, WA

MICHAEL ASHKIN, Visual Artist Ithaca, NY

DARCY FREY, Writer Cambridge, MA

NICOLE KOLTICK, Architect Andalusia, PA

JOSHUA ASTER, Visual Artist Inglewood, CA

AMITY GAIGE, Writer West Hartford, CT

NICHOLAS KOVATCH, Visual Artist Minneapolis, MN

TEMME BARKIN-LEEDS, Visual Artist Atlanta, GA

ORLANDO GARCIA, Composer Miami Beach, FL

ANTONIA KUO, Visual Artist Brooklyn, NY

ANN BAULEKE, Writer Minneapolis, MN

ELIZABETH GREENWOOD, Writer Brooklyn, NY

EMILY LAMBERT, Visual Artist Sunnyside, NY

JAMIE BAUM, Composer New York, NY

YOTAM HABER, Composer New Orleans, LA

FÁBIO LEAO, Visual Artist São Paulo, Brazil

JO ANN BEARD, Writer Rhinebeck, NY

ALEX HALBERSTADT, Writer Brooklyn, NY

DAVID LEVINE, Interdisciplinary Artist; Brooklyn, NY

SILVIA BENEDITO, Architect Cambridge, MA

SARAH HALPERN, Film/Video Artist Brooklyn, NY

MARK LEVINE, Writer Iowa City, IA

REBECCA BENGAL, Writer Brooklyn, NY

ZACHARY HARRIS, Writer Pittsburgh, PA

CYNTHIA LIN, Visual Artist New York, NY

MARIE-HELENE BERTINO, Writer Brooklyn, NY

WILL HERMES, Writer New Paltz, NY

LEE MAIDA, Visual Artist Brooklyn, NY

MIRIAM BLOOM, Visual Artist New York, NY

ELLA HICKSON, Theatre Artist London, United Kingdom

MIWA MATREYEK, Interdisciplinary Artist; Los Angeles, CA

MICHAEL BROEK, Writer Little Silver, NJ

MARIETTA HOFERER, Visual Artist New York, NY

MICHAEL JONES MCKEAN, Visual Artist; Richmond, VA

NICHOLAS BROOKE, Composer Bennington, VT

RICHARD HOLETON, Writer Montara, CA

PAULA MCLAIN, Writer Cleveland Heights, OH

KRISTIN CALABRESE, Visual Artist Inglewood, CA

JOHN HOLLENBECK, Composer Binghamton, NY

MAUREEN MCLANE, Writer New York, NY

JIBZ CAMERON, Theatre Artist Brooklyn, NY

CATHY PARK HONG, Writer Brooklyn, NY

ROSE MCLARNEY, Writer Tulsa, OK

LEAH CARROLL, Writer Brooklyn, NY

GARRETT HONGO, Writer Eugene, OR

KIEL MOE, Architect Cambridge, MA

CHRISTOPHER CASTELLANI, Writer Boston, MA

LYNNE HORIUCHI, Architect Oakland, CA

EILEEN MYLES, Writer New York, NY

MICHAEL CHABON, Writer Berkeley, CA

CAITLIN HORROCKS, Writer Grand Rapids, MI

JEAN NATHAN, Writer New York, NY

HARRIET CLARK, Writer San Francisco, CA

RICHARD HOUSE, Writer Nottingham, United Kingdom

DAVID NEUMANN, Interdisciplinary Artist; Thornwood, NY

ANDREA CLEARFIELD, Composer Philadelphia, PA

MAJA HRGOVIC, Writer Zagreb, Croatia

ABIGAIL, NEWBOLD, Visual Artist Somerville, MA

JENNIFER PAIGE COHEN, Visual Artist Brooklyn, NY

CHING-CHU HU, Composer Newark, OH

TSZ YAN NG, Architect Ann Arbor, MI

MATTHEW CONNORS, Visual Artist New York, NY

JEREMIAH HULSEBOS-SPOFFORD, Visual Artist; Chicago, IL

ANDREW NORMAN, Composer Los Angeles, CA

JACK DAVIS, Writer Gainesville, FL

LARYSSA HUSIAK, Interdisciplinary Artist; Jersey City, NJ

BENJAMIN NUGENT, Writer Brooklyn, NY

SARAH DEMING, Writer Brooklyn, NY

CATHERINE INGRAHAM, Architect Brooklyn, NY

JANICE OKOH, Theatre Artist London, United Kingdom

YEMANE DEMISSIE, Film/Video Artist New York, NY

AARON JAFFERIS, Theatre Artist New Haven, CT

SCOTT PENNEY, Writer Bradford, VT

RACHEL DEWOSKIN, Writer Chicago, IL

MAYA JANSON, Writer Florence, MA

DAVID PETERSEN, Film/Video Artist Brooklyn, NY

MARIE YOHO DORSEY, Visual Artist Tierra Verde, FL

JOHN JESURUN, Theatre Artist New York, NY

HEATHER PETERSON, Architect Venice, CA

ELLEN DRISCOLL, Visual Artist Brooklyn, NY

JILAINE JONES, Visual Artist New Haven, CT

PAMELA PETRO, Writer Northampton, MA

STEPHEN DUNN, Writer Frostburg, MD

KEVIN JONES, Writer Portland, OR

EVAN PLACEY, Theatre Artist London, United Kingdom

MIKE ESTABROOK, Interdisciplinary Artist; Brooklyn, NY

KIMA JONES, Writer Los Angeles, CA

JOANNE POTTLITZER, Theatre Artist New York, NY

TAMAR ETTUN, Visual Artist Brooklyn, NY

AMOS KAMIL, Writer Montclair, NJ

LAWRENCE RAAB, Writer Williamstown, MA

AMELIA EVANS, Film/Video Artist Wellington, New Zealand

KASUMI, Film/Video Artist Cleveland, OH

MICHELLE RADTKE, Writer Brooklyn, NY

The MacDowell Colony is located at 100 High Street Peterborough, NH 03458 Telephone: 603-924-3886 Fax: 603-924-9142 Administrative office: 163 East 81st Street New York, NY 10028

Telephone: 212-535-9690 Fax: 212-737-3803 Web site: www.macdowellcolony.org E-mail: newsletter@macdowellcolony.org

The MacDowell Colony awards Fellowships to artists of exceptional talent, providing time, space, and an inspiring environment in which to do creative work. The Colony was founded in 1907 by composer Edward MacDowell and pianist Marian Nevins MacDowell, his wife. Fellows receive room, board, and exclusive use of a studio. The sole criterion for acceptance is talent, as determined by a panel representing the discipline of the applicant. The MacDowell Colony was awarded the National Medal of Arts in 1997 for “nurturing and inspiring many of this century’s finest artists.”

Applications are available on our Web site at www.macdowellcolony.org.

Chairman: Michael Chabon President: Susan Davenport Austin Executive Director: Cheryl A. Young Resident Director: David Macy

HEATHER ROBB, Composer Brooklyn, NY STEVIE RONNIE, Interdisciplinary Artist; Hexham, United Kingdom BEN RUSSELL, Film/Video Artist Chapel Hill, NC GREGORY SALE, Interdisciplinary Artist; Phoenix, AZ

On the cover…

SARAH SANDER, Theatre Artist Brooklyn, NY LUC SANTE, Writer Kingston, NY SARAH SCHULMAN, Theatre Artist New York, NY ADAM SCHWARTZ, Writer Newton, MA RAVI SHANKAR, Writer Chester, CT HELEN SHAW, Writer Brooklyn, NY

MacDowell Colony photographer Joanna Eldredge Morrissey captured this image of Edward MacDowell’s log cabin after a new snowfall. Built in 1898, the log cabin highlights the tranquility and natural environment offered to artists to produce their finest work.

ADAM SHECTER, Film/Video Artist Long Island City, NY JOAN SILBER, Writer New York, NY TAIJE SILVERMAN, Writer Philadelphia, PA BENNETT SIMS, Writer Iowa City, IA ERIN SROKA, Writer Durham, NC MELISSA STEIN, Writer San Francisco, CA KOTOKA SUZUKI, Composer Chicago, IL ALICIA SVIGALS, Composer New York, NY

MacDowell is published twice a year, in summer and winter. Past Fellows may send newsworthy activities to the editor in Peterborough. Deadlines for inclusion are April 1st and October 1st.

CLARK THENHAUS, Architect Ann Arbor, MI TED THOMPSON, Writer Brooklyn, NY SARAH TORTORA, Visual Artist Guilford, CT JOVANNA TOSELLO, Film/Video Artist; La Canada, CA

Editor: Jonathan Gourlay

ALEXANDER TURNER, Writer London, United Kingdom

Design and Production: Melanie deForest Design, LLC

PETER VAN ZANDT LANE, Composer Gainesville, FL

All photographs not otherwise credited: Joanna Eldredge Morrissey

AYNSLEY VANDENBROUCKE, Interdisciplinary Artist; New York, NY

Printer: Print Resource, Westborough, MA

AMANDA VILLALOBOS, Theatre Artist Brooklyn, NY

Mailing House: Sterling Business Print & Mail, Peterborough, NH

PATRICIA VOLK, Writer New York, NY

No part of MacDowell may be reused in any way without written permission.

LOU ANN WALKER, Writer Sag Harbor, NY STEWART WALLACE, Composer Brooklyn, NY

© 2014, The MacDowell Colony

JING WANG, Composer Dartmouth, MA

The names of MacDowell Fellows are noted in bold throughout this

CARRIE MAE WEEMS, Visual Artist Syracuse, NY

newsletter.

JOE WINTER, Interdisciplinary Artist Long Island City, NY MELORA WOLFF, Writer Rock City Falls, NY MARIO ALBERTO ZAMBRANO, Writer Spring, TX

facebook.com/MacDowellColony

STEVE ZEHENTNER, Theatre Artist New York, NY

The Colony is grateful for the generous support of the following organizations:

TK