Founder’s Focus

Dear VSC Friends,

It’s surprising how fast the 25th of the month comes around, in this our 25th year at VSC, and it’s time to post another edition of this blog. Like many things here at the Studio Center, the blog is now becoming one more “regular” activity, and it’s that rhythm of “Regular Activities” at VSC, and the sense of ordered monastic calm, that allows each resident’s creativity, whether calm, chaotic or both, to expand. Three “regular” meals  (what does 3 square meals mean anyway? why square?) leads to a regular pattern of get up, eat, go to the studio for 4 hours, eat, go to the studio for 4 hours, eat, go to the studio for 4 hours, or a lecture or reading, go to bed, get up and do it again for a week, two weeks, three weeks, four weeks and on…with occasional or regular activities such as walking, hiking, yoga, meditation, relaxing, dancing, etc. added to the daily schedule.

It is a monastery-like routine, and as those of you aware of the 40 year involvement Louise and I have with meditation know, this is no accident, but rather one of the founding principles of our adventure in creative world community here in Johnson.

Carlos de Villasante, a December resident, sent me the excellent quote below on the relationship between the artist’s and the meditator’s practice, which succinctly articulates a relationship we have been endeavoring to incorporate in the “regular” daily life at VSC for the past 25 years.

Best Regards,

Jon

P.S.  Visit the Vermont Studio Center on Facebook and spread the word to other alumni.

The artist’s dilemma and the meditator’s are, in a deep sense, equivalent. Both are repeatedly willing to confront an unknown and to risk a response that they cannot predict or control. Both are disciplined in skills that allow them to remain focused on their task and to express their response in a way that will illuminate the dilemma they share with others.

And both are liable to similar outcomes. The artist’s work is prone to be derivative, a variation on the style of a great master or established school. The meditator’s response might tend to be dogmatic, a variation on the words of a hallowed tradition or revered teacher.

There is nothing wrong with such responses. But we recognize their secondary nature, their failure to reach the peaks of primary imaginative creation. Great Art and Great Dharma both give rise to something that has never quite been imagined before. Artist and meditator alike ultimately aspire to an original act.

–Stephen Batchelor, Tricycle: The Buddhist Review, Vol. IV, #2

Over the past 25 years the founding vision of VSC has evolved into what is now the largest International Artists and Writers Residency in the U.S. hosting talented individuals from across the country and from 96 nations around the world. In honor of our 25th anniversary year I thought I would share with you just a few photos from the early days at VSC.

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