Life in the Colonies {yaddo & macdowell artist colonies}

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http://www.slate.com/articles/arts/culturebox/2011/12/macdowell_and_yaddo_reflections_on_my_years_at_various_artists_colonies_.html


The mansion at Yaddo, home of Spencer Trask, Saratoga Springs, N.Y., 1900s

Back in my footloose, aka unemployed, years in the ’70s and ’80s, I spent some time kicking around the colonies. By that I mean stints at MacDowell and Yaddo, the most venerable of the American artists' colonies. In those places artists from the various disciplines are stabled and fed for fees ranging from modest to none. In my sojourns as a colonist, adding up to about a year and a half, I got more music written per diem than at any other time in my life. Meanwhile I had my share of adventures, encounters, and contretemps.

I know what you're thinking: Sex! Drugs! Egos! Art! In all those respects, yes and no. A certain number of people turn up at the colonies with an indecorous agenda, but the majority come to work, in an atmosphere of intense privacy and concentration, without spouses, kids, students, commuting, cooking, cleaning, or hustling. For most artists at a colony, this is the only place to get away from all that.

In those facts are the mission and the glory of artists' colonies. You can get more work done than anytime or anywhere else, and spend your evenings hanging out, if you wish, with some of the most creative and interesting people around. For nearly everybody, the work comes first. Dalliance, if any, is icing on the cake. But most arrivals have no such intentions and neither did I, in my one-to-two-month stays at Yaddo and MacDowell and the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts. What follows is a mélange of reportage and memoir.
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Each colony has its founding myth. It was not the then-celebrated composer Edward MacDowell who founded the eponymous place in Peterborough, N.H. He died early, but as he faded he imagined that his estate might inspire other artists as it had him. His wife Marian campaigned for years to raise money for a colony. Edward survived to see the arrival of the first MacDowell fellows. Eventually there were 32 studios scattered about the woods. Over the years they have housed Leonard Bernstein, James Baldwin, Spalding Gray, Alice Walker, and others of that stature. Colonist Thornton Wilder based Our Town on Peterborough. Marian survived until 1957, keeping the place running and enforcing her rules, particularly in regard to female fellows: No slacks, no smoking in public, no canoodling, or you hit the highway. In those days, hanky-panky was a challenge. In 2007 MacDowell celebrated its centennial.