Founder's Focus

It’s hard to fathom that we’ve been building the Vermont Studio Center for 25 years. Building, planning, dreaming, learning, laughing, crying, growing, trying, failing, succeeding; all of these ” – ings” happening at different points of every day for the past 9,125 days (365 x 25).

We must be having fun, (and we are) because the time has flown by. What’s particularly wonderful is that our idealism, optimism and enthusiasm are as strong now as they were in 1984. And, as we start our next 25 years, we have the added benefit of a 25 year track record of success, a strong worldwide reputation, 11,000 alumni, a 31 building campus, and a great staff and board.

Here we are now as VSC at 25, well schooled in the ways of our vocation. We are entering the next phase of the life we have been living and learning about through our education and effort from 1984 to 2009. As we travel a road of supporting and serving serious emerging and mid career artists and writers in their efforts to make work that expresses their highest humanity, this process as a whole, in turn, serves and inspires the awareness, creativity, kindness and compassion that art and writing has historically called forth.

The VSC utopian adventure continues …… Come join us!

Jon

A Selection of Recent Resident Portraits:

Photos by Howard Romero

Photo by Howard Romero

A Selection of Images from the Show:

To see more of Jessica’s work, please visit http://www.fakenature.com.

August Visiting Artists:

Barbarba Takenaga	Gillian Jagger
Irving Petlin	Allison Smith

August Visiting Writers:

Excerpt from November 22, 1963
by Adam Braver

Carolyn Hawkins’s brother, Aubrey Rike, who went by the name of Al, was sitting at Parkland Memorial Hospital when the motorcade passed through Dealey Plaza. As an ambulance driver for O’Neal Funeral Home, Al and his rider, Peanuts McGuire, had been at the parade route earlier, sent down to Houston and Elm to pick up a man who had suffered a seizure across from the School Book Depository. They’d taken him over to Parkland, per O’Neal’s contract with the city for ambulance services, and were standing around chatting when news of the shooting spread through the hospital almost as quickly as the president’s car arrived.

Within moments the ER was swarmed. The stink of rushing bodies. Al found himself jammed against a wall, shoved up beside an agitated policeman who kept looking down at his feet while telling him to stay put. He might be needed.

People ran chaotically. Newspapermen scurried for telephones. Elected officials milled. Congressmen. Senators. A general stood with a briefcase handcuffed to his wrists, as though he might blow the whole place to smithereens. Dallas PD. County PD. Secret Service. FBI. At least fifty people smashed right into the entrance, with a whole lot more spilling into the waiting-room area. Outside, hundreds of people crowded the police line. Men with submachine guns guarded the glass entry doors. More and more kept arriving. Not enough air to feed them all.

After about a half hour, Secret Service Agent Kellerman approached. His arms folded across his chest, crumpling his customary dark suit. Falsely composed. A bubble ready to burst. He said Mr. O’Neal would be bringing a casket down shortly and needs both Al and Peanuts to be ready to assist with the necessary details. Kellerman said to wait for O’Neal right outside the trauma room. Maybe Al heard wrong? Misunderstood the part about the casket.  
Click here to read more

Excerpt from Transference
by Jean McGarry

The first patient of the day was eight-year-old Isabel. Isabel brought her doll, which sat in the chair opposite his. The patient sat against the wall, and told him he could look at her if he took off his glasses or looked with one eye. The doll, made of cloth, with a head but no face, was a blabbermouth, and Isabel asked him to slap her face, and if he didn’t, she’d slap his. Why would you slap my face? he asked. Because I want to, she’d say, and with that, the ritual greeting was accomplished.

Isabel’s five-year-old sister, Evelyn, was run over by a car while the family was traveling in Italy. Isabel had tossed the doll into the road because her sister had insisted on holding its free hand, and Mother was threatening to take the doll away if Isabel continued so selfish. The marriage hadn’t survived the trauma. Father wasn’t present the day of the accident. He was conducting business from the hotel, business he’d promised to forgo for the week away, but a looming worry had become a crisis. His wife knew the matter could have waited till their return, and she was proven right, as the father had explained to Dr. Broad in an early session arranged just for him. He was the one who’d gotten the referral for Isabel… To read more, see the July 2009 issue of the Yale Review

September Visiting Artists and Writers:

Marge Piercy Brian Belott Anne Rochette Ed Smith Gregory Botts Cole Swenson

Life is not measured by the number of breaths we take, but by the moments that take our breath away.

-Maya Angelou

Kathryn Lynch, a VSC alumna and Trustee, has arranged a series of 3 independent film screenings in Manhattan this Fall, as the first of what she is planning to make an annual event as New York friendraisers for the Studio Center.  Each evening will involve about 75 – 100 guests and each film will be presented by the filmmaker(s).  For this first series, she has selected the theme of freedom.

We found these old photos of Johnson at the Johnson Historical Society.  Despite the new automobiles, new clothing styles and new construction, many of the buildings haven’t changed  significantly over the years.

We recently came across this photograph at the Johnson Historical Society showing the Pearl Street bridge back in the 1940′s.  We are nearing the end of the demolition of the current bridge and look forward to seeing if the new construction contains any of the spirit of these twin bridges.

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