Artists Survive and Thrive
Artists Survive and Thrive After Irene
by Dan DeWalt
Last summer, many of us who live along the Rock River in southern Vermont thought that we knew the river and our neighboring communities. Tales of the floods of ‘27 and ‘38 were pieces of our history, if not so relevant to our daily lives. But on August 28, under the relentless deluge of tropical storm Irene, the roots of that knowledge cascaded into a rubble of scree. We found ourselves separated from our landscape and awash in uncertainty.
For the twenty or so independent artisans who comprise the Rock River Artists, our namesake changed from an idyll into a symbol of destruction.
When the skies cleared, the entire community worked to recover what was salvageable, clear away what wasn’t, and provide solace and assistance to those who had experienced loss. What we discovered was how little we really knew about each other.
David Moore is a native Vermonter who moved his family in with his mother in South Newfane after his father had passed away. He knew that there was a group called Rock River Artists, painters, potters, woodworkers and others who plied their trades in his neighborhood. He was aware of their show in the old South Newfane schoolhouse every July, but he had never availed himself of the show or the artists’ open invitation to visit their studios during that same weekend. He reckons that some of his reluctance may have arisen from the stereotypical distrust country natives often have of newcomers, especially those affiliated with the arts or coming from urban areas. But this separation from these neighbors didn’t sit well, so in July of 2011, he and his wife Kathleen went to visit three nearby studios during the open house weekend. “I came away amazed” he said, “There are some people that do things that most of us can’t imagine, like Chris [Triebert’s] still life photographs taken without a camera. It was very interesting to get to know better the people we visited.”
David is also the head of emergency management for the town of Newfane and helped to evacuate the neighborhood. He knew that Triebert’s studio was located in the flood plain and was almost certainly inundated. “After the flood when we returned that first day, my thoughts went to Chris and Carol” Moore said. “I was convinced that they’d be homeless.”
Chris and her partner Carol Ross thought the same thing as they sheltered a safe uphill distance from the raging waters. “Sitting in [the neighbors’] meditation room, I realized that the Buddhist philosophy is about letting go and I remarked to Carol how fitting a parallel that was for us” Chris reflected months later. They expected to find their property denuded and their house washed down river, as were many others. Although their garage was ruined and their property and studio sustained extensive damage, a tree had stopped the guesthouse from flowing downstream and only the basement of the house had been flooded.
Shell shocked, gazing at the destruction, a thought came to Chris. “There is this quote — nature never takes more than it needs — I thought about our river. It took what it needed because it needed to move. There was no malevolence in that. Nature simply needed the room.” She said that while man-made destruction, brought on by war or greed makes you despair and ask why, the disinterested destruction of nature made it easier for her to react to it in a positive way. Nature educated and informed her about change. Chris realized that the land had been her anchor. She was more reliant on the steadfastness of the earth than she had realized and she was suddenly untethered. But the outpouring of community support gave her a new grounding based on human contact. As David Moore put it, “We were sharing a camaraderie that only comes with disaster. It seemed that all politics left this valley for a couple of weeks. Everything functioned really nicely…. There was a fellowship of community that I’d not seen before.”
On the day of the storm, upstream a mile or so from Chris and Carol’s along the Marlboro Branch brook, landscape artist Georgie saw water rising on both sides of her house and knew that she had to evacuate. “I didn’t have much time. I looked at my paintings and realized, I have to save these,” she said. But there were thirty paintings; she only had time to grab her laptop, purse and two cats. Though the house next door was washed away, her house still stands, paintings intact. Her works celebrate the rural Vermont landscape but Irene had re-charted the watercourse so dramatically as to render parts of it unrecognizable. Georgie was devastated. “Having the landscape altered was gut wrenching. When I paint, I want to be in a positive frame of mind.
I couldn’t get there and I couldn’t paint.”
Chris had a hiatus as well. “I didn’t do art work for five months or so.” she said. As her anchor changed moorings, her artistic eye also had to re-assess its new surroundings. “You have to be aware of what you’re aware of” she said. “What I’m noticing [now] is not so much the landscape, or what’s in the landscape, but the topography itself. I don’t want to photograph it, but I want to find elements in it to create sets that express the changed topography.” Along our rivers, beauty once found in the bucolic was now lying among the detritus of elemental force. As she later observed, “It’s fascinating that beyond the sadness of loss, nature has given us a new palette.”
If a new way to see helped Chris, it was sharing art that saved Georgie. “Since the flood I’ve been giving away my prints of Vermont. I had given some away at Christmas and after seeing the joy they brought, I thought why not just give some away randomly? On any given day, I just walk up and give people a print. They make people really happy…. I couldn’t think of any positive thing that I could do to make anyone or me feel better. So I did this…. Now I look forward to trying to find new beauty that has been created by the changes in the landscape.”
Georgie will continue to give away her prints, and Chris and Carol are determined to hold onto the community spirit that kept them afloat. Before the roads were repaired, everyone was walking or biking to get out to work or town. By the time we were driving again, we had a deeper understanding about the faces in the other cars we passed. We had stopped to pet their dog, or admire their baby, or worked together with them to clean out someone’s house or yard.
Chris and Carol know that it will take work to keep this hard gained sense of community from dissipating. That is why they are organizing in the village to bring back the South Newfane general store, which has been abandoned by its owner and is slowly deteriorating. As Carol puts it, “The flood brought us together. We want to keep it going.” The store idea has caught the interest of a broad group in the area. Several neighbors have been visiting other community owned stores in Vermont and plans are underway to regenerate South Newfane’s community locus of a village store.
Williamsville fabric portraitist Deidre Scherer sees the store as a natural fit for the Rock River artists. “The store will bring our art to the community on a daily basis. We have now established bonds within the community that are too valuable to lose.”
David Moore would agree. He intends to visit three more artists on this year’s tour, and he sees a vital place for art in the rekindling of a healthy community life. “The artists are one of the main facets of our community. That should be looked at as a benefit to the entire community. They are a unique addition and something that we should be proud of…. It’s not just the work. I like to know my neighbors and learn about them.”
As Sherer noted, “The River that connected us tore us apart. But in the end, the catastrophe did the opposite and connected us more closely after all.”
How the “Irene effect” will manifest itself in everyone’s artwork will be revealed in this year’s Studio Tour. One thing is certain, the Rock River Artists and their community now enjoy an interdependency that will enrich each other in ways that could have only been imagined a year ago.
