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Moment 11 (2006), watercolor and wax medium, 8"x8", by MaJo Keleshian, who will be teaching a drawing workshop during the fifth session, July 31-August 12.

From the Director

By now you’ve probably read the 2011 Haystack catalog and imagined yourself in a studio, remembered a workshop you took, or made plans to be here this summer. I’m glad that you were able to hold it in your hands. There were a few days in January when we were worried that the catalog, filled with all those creative possibilities, might not make it into the mail. 

This problem arose because we’ve changed the way that we do our bulk mailings, and instead of sending the catalog from Maine, it’s mailed from a large postal center near where it’s printed, in Virginia. When an official there looked up the school’s name in the postal service’s national data base, we were listed as Haystack Mountain School—‘of Crafts’ hadn’t made it in. Our catalog return address had our full name, and since this didn’t match exactly with the name in the database, the by-the-book official wasn’t going to approve our mailing paperwork, and the catalogs wouldn’t be mailed. Working through our friendly local post office—where mail addressed only as ‘Haystack School Maine’ might get delivered—we were able to access the national database and straighten things out. 

While we were in the middle of this confusion (theirs, not ours) about our name, the words ‘common sense’ came to mind. What was the concern here? Were there two competing institutions in Deer Isle, Maine—one focused on rappelling down cliff faces and the other on working with our hands and materials—and this was part of an elaborate deception to attract students to another program? Our complex world needs complex safeguards, but we forget sometimes how simple things can be. In this case, I assume that many years ago, someone filling out a form by hand couldn’t fit our long name in the space.

When I confront situations like this, I sometimes tell the person on the other end of the phone a story about Neil Armstrong, the first man on the moon. When he was landing the lunar module he wisely overrode the computer, which had selected a boulder-strewn site, and landed the spacecraft on his own. It’s the human intervention that’s compelling. And what a complex moment that was. Landing where no one had gone before, and needing to make a judgment, a man used his hands to make the right choice.

We face these choices all the time. It’s not an either or situation. It’s knowing the appropriate way to respond. When we talk about the hand, much more than our remarkable sense of touch is involved. We are really talking about human intervention and imagination; grasping a situation and understanding the feel and the weight of it. It is always a balancing act, where the rules can give us the form, and our senses can give us the spirit. The wisdom is in that balance.   

Stuart Kestenbaum

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Haystack Celebrates the 50th Anniversary of its Award-Winning Campus

When Haystack was forced by highway construction to move from its original location in Montville, Maine, it found the perfect site. It also found a remarkable architect, in Edward Larrabee Barnes (1915-2004). Haystack’s campus opened in 1961, and was the perfect complement to the school’s progressive programs in craft education. It was recognized as an outstanding example of Modernist architecture by the American Institute of Architects in 1994 with the presentation of the organization's Twenty-Five Year Award. It is one of only forty-one buildings in the country to achieve this distinction. Others include Rockefeller Center, the Vietnam Memorial, the Guggenheim Museum, and the East Building of the National Gallery. In 2006 Haystack Mountain School of Crafts was added to the National Register of Historic Places as a building of national significance.

Ed Barnes circa 1980.

Ed Barnes’s work and vision have influenced generations of American architects. He was a fellow of the American Institute of Architects and was posthumously awarded the Gold Medal of the American Institute of Architects in 2007.

50th Anniversary Events

Haystack has planned a number of events this summer and fall to commemorate this important milestone. These include:

• Our 5th annual Summer Conference, Design: Shaping the World and the World Shaping Us (July 10-14), will look at architecture and design and also examine Haystack as a designed environment.

• A conference in partnership with the Maine chapter of the American Institute of Architects (September 19-20), which will look at Haystack’s architecture, its impact, and architecture in Maine and beyond.

• A season-long exhibition, Haystack Architecture: Vision and Legacy, focusing on the influence of Haystack’s architecture and Edward Larrabee Barnes on leading architects in the US. The show will feature work by ten architects and will include models of buildings and narratives. Opening July 3rd at the school’s Center for Community Programs.

• Publication of a book (with Brynmorgen Press, Brunswick, Maine) about the campus—to feature essays about Haystack’s buildings, as well as historic and contemporary photographs, and architectural images.

• Launching a campaign to raise additional funds for campus renovation projects and to initiate a study to create a ‘greener’ campus.

Campaign for Haystack: Campus 50th Anniversary

The Haystack buildings were constructed at a cost of $5 per square foot in 1960 and its location on the coast of Maine means the campus is subjected to severe winters and coastal weather, with periods of excessive damp, high winds, and corrosive salt air. Regular, maintenance, repair, and restoration are vital aspect of Haystack’s operations. In order to preserve the facility, the school has a phased plan in place for extensive renovations and replacements to key elements of the campus and invests approximately $100,000 annually in these projects.

As part of the anniversary, the school is also embarking on a fundraising campaign that will support facility projects and campus planning and ensure the long term stability of these landmark buildings. This spring Haystack is launching the Campaign for Haystack: Campus 50th Anniversary. The school’s Board of Trustees has set a $350,000 goal for this effort. While the funds raised will go towards projects that will preserve the past, Haystack is also looking to the future and will allocate campaign funds to support studies on integrating new technologies for a more sustainable campus in order to create a ‘greener’ facility. James Carpenter Design Associates will be undertaking a sustainability study to identify long-term solutions and the school will also be undertaking other green projects as well, from water conservation to more energy efficient glass furnaces.

Early Leadership Gifts

Planning for the 50th campus anniversary campaign began during the summer of 2010 after the school received a $50,000 bequest from the estate of Dr. David Becker, a former Haystack trustee and longtime student. Dick and Lois Rosenthal also gave $25,000 toward the effort, which was followed by a $50,000 challenge grant from current trustee Chuck Holland and his wife Annie Holland for Haystack trustees to match–members of the board have pledged 100% participation in this effort. Additionally, Haystack was recently awarded a $5,000 grant from the Maine-based Morton Kelly Charitable Trust to support historic preservation to the campus. We need to raise $45,000 to reach our goal. To make a gift to the Campaign for Haystack: Campus 50th Anniversary visit our secure donation page.

Save America’s Treasures

The school just received a major boost to these early efforts—with the award of a $125,000 Save America's Treasures Grant from the National Park Service the National Endowment for the Arts, National Endowment for the Humanities, Institute of Museum and Library Services, and Save America's Treasures' private partner, the National Trust for Historic Preservation.

The grant provides an opportunity for the school to address vital restoration projects that will preserve the campus’s historic status, while additional funding from the campaign will be allocated to maintenance, repair, and renewal of the physical plant, and sustainability initiatives.

The images above show early campus construction circa 1960 (right) and some of the damage (left) to be addressed with the grant from Save America's Treasures. Vital restoration projects at Haystack will be supported by this award, in addition to replacement of supporting posts and piers, projects will include the replacement of rotted carrying timbers and repairing damage to roofs and windows.

Haystack is recognized internationally for its leadership role in craft education. The campus and its design are central to the school's role to the craft community at large and to the local and architectural communities. By honoring the past and moving into future simultaneously—not sacrificing one for the other—Haystack can serve as a national model for integration of green technologies in historically important buildings, and in its potential to, in a sense, complete Edward Larrabee Barnes’s ‘low impact’ vision. His design was based in part on not disturbing the fragile moss and lichen-covered forest floor. Its sensitivity in this regard is one of its distinguishing characteristics. Haystack was a prototypical ‘green building’, built primarily of local materials and having a light impact on the landscape.

The purpose of SAVE AMERICA’S TREASURES grants is to conserve nationally significant cultural and historic sites, buildings, objects, documents, and collections. The grant program received 338 applications during the 2010 cycle—61 grants, with a total of $14.3 million, were awarded. Haystack was the only recipient in Maine in this cycle.

Allocation of funds for Campaign for Haystack: Campus 50th Anniversary

Campus: Historic Preservation and Capital Projects (over a three-year period)		$ 250,000
Sustainability/Energy Studies		$ 100,000
Goal		$ 350,000
Pledges/Contributions to date
Save America’s Treasures		$125,000
Haystack Trustees		$100,000
Leadership gifts		$  75,000
Morton Kelly Charitable Trust		$    5,000
Total		$305,000

 

To make a gift to the Campaign for Haystack: Campus 50th Anniversary visit our secure donation page.

 

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New construction at Haystack.

Studio Expansion and New Construction

Construction on the new visiting artist’s studio (the current one will be used to house the new fab lab) is nearing completion. The deck that joins the two buildings is finished and work on the structure has been ongoing since the fall. Both studios are dedicated facilities that provide indoor studio spaces, a shared walkway and large outdoor deck, and also serve as the living quarters for the visiting faculty. Expanding the visiting artist’s studio and establishing a new digital fabrication studio allows both programs to take place simultaneously, adding more flexibility to our programming.

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Haystack Publishes Twenty-Fifth Monograph

Stone Songs, or Disagreeing with Dolphy: Two Weeks in Another Town was written by Bill Harris during his 2010 residency as a visiting writer. Bill Harris is a playwright, poet, critic, and Professor of English at Wayne State University, Michigan. In February, he was named a 2011 Kresge Eminent Artist by The Kresge Foundation, recognizing Harris's significant professional contributions to the literary field as an author and playwright.

Since 1991, Haystack has published monographs written by visiting artists that document and explore the role of craft and art in contemporary life. Bill Harris' essay is the twenty-fifth publication in the series. Stone Songs,or Disagreeing with Dolphy: Two Weeks in Another Town is a reflection on Bill’s interactions in the Haystack community, particularly the contrast of his urban home of Detroit and Deer Isle’s rural environment, during last summer’s fifth session, August 1–13.

 

Excerpt from Bill Harris's Stone Songs, or Disagreeing with Dolphy: Two Weeks in Another Town:

There were more trees, scraggy, prickly-pronged, thin-branched spruce, their textured gray a complement to the designer-barn-like structures clad in age- and weather-bleached shingles. The buildings are constructed on beds of boulders. They lie in profile like a boot on its back, chisel toe pointing up.

“Upon this rock . . .”

Standing mute before one of the imposing monster stones, it took on a new reality. It was no longer just a non-transcendent hulk hunkered immovably, like their impenetrable cousinsdownloaded in the open landscape. Up close, these rock-titans, rather than inhaling all of the light and energy around them into the black hole of their enormity, turned one reverent, supplicant. It is like a cathedral to an unlettered medieval landsman. At the very least, the stone was monument to the mass of ice that deposited sand, silt, till, and its nearby mates those 25,000 years ago as it snailed its way across the thermal terrain, plowing and scraping everything before it with benign but W. T. Sherman-like singularity of intent. The stones began to be opened to me in some way I was yet to understand—as if there was some message attempting to be transmitted through a thick stone door, some sound I could not quite hear or decipher.

The monograph will be distributed to art schools and libraries throughout the US. Individual monographs and The Haystack Reader, an anthology of monographs #1-23 published by Haystack and the University of Maine Press in 2010, are available from the school’s administrative office or during the summer at the school store. Monographs are $4.00 each, including postage and handling within the United States (additional postage outside the United States) and The Haystack Reader is $24.95 each plus postage and handling. For a complete list of monographs, contact the school or visit our monograph page.

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Center for Community Programs

 

Student Mentor Programs

Mentor Christopher Joyce (left) taught a woodturning workshop in his Deer Isle studio – here he is working with Deer Isle-Stonington High School Junior Owen Simonds.

An opening reception for the annual Student Mentor Exhibition will be held on Friday, April 15, from 3:00 – 5:00 p.m. Musical guests, Route 15, the Deer Isle-Stonington High School student Jazz Combo, will play from 4:00 – 5:00 p.m. The exhibition will remain on view until April 29.

Haystack’s 2011 Student Mentor Program was supported by a SMART (Schools Make Arts Relevant Today) grant from the Maine Arts Commission, the Quimby Foundation, the Maine Community Foundation, and the Ann and Chuck Holland, Betsy Rowland, and Belvedere Funds of Haystack’s Program Endowment

 

Maine Sculptor is Haystack’s Visiting Artist for Spring Residency, Exhibition

Randy Regier in his NuPenny Store, which exists as a traveling art installation under the guise of an inaccessible toy store. Photo by Scott Peterman.

Maine sculptor Randy Regier, whose work is an exploration of how to understand and find community in his relationship to his culture and country, is the visiting artist for Haystack’s spring 2011 Community-Based Artist Residency. Additionally, work by Randy Regier will be on display at Haystack’s Center for Community Programs from May 6 – June 10. Groups of students from both the high school and elementary school, and the community, will be invited to the exhibition during the second week of the residency.

Randy Regier has worked in the auto-body industry, restored and repaired antique toys, and was a free-lance cartoonist. He received a BFA in Sculpture from Kansas State University and an MFA in Studio Arts from Maine.

College of Art, Portland. His work has been featured in exhibitions, installations, and is in private and public collections, including Belger Arts Collection, Kansas City, Missouri; and in Kansas, the Marianne Kistler Beach Museum of Art, Manhattan; The Washburn - Mulvane Art Museum, Topeka; Emprise Bank Collection, Wichita; and the Spencer Museum of Art, Lawrence. The Boston Phoenix has written of him that, “…his work is just beginning to be known, but he may be one of the best sculptors in the country.”

Randy Regier’s residency was planned as part of Haystack’s expanded community programming and because his work directly ties into Dennis Saindon’s applied engineering program at Deer Isle-Stonington High School and with the students’ interests. Randy will be in the high school for two weeks as an artist in residence working with a core group of students who will benefit from hands-on experience, learning techniques that Randy has honed, and exposure to new ways of working and thinking about materials. Students, faculty, and members of the local community will also be invited to observe Randy at work, his creative process, and will be encouraged to ask questions.

Randy Regier’s residency is supported by Island Education Foundation, a SMART (Schools Make Arts Relevant Today) grant from the Maine Arts Commission, Quimby Family Foundation, and Haystack’s Program Endowment.

 

Summer Exhibition—Haystack Architecture: Vision and Legacy

Early Haystack model, detail.

This summer Haystack will mount Haystack Architecture: Vision and Legacy, which will examine the impact of Haystack’s architecture on architects from throughout the US. The exhibition is being curated by Falmouth, Maine architect Carol Wilson, FAIA, and will include models of buildings, drawings, and photographs, as well as brief narratives by the architects describing the impact of Haystack and Edward Larrabee Barnes' work on their work. The show’s format is based on one developed by Carol for the fall 2010 storefront for architecture maine exhibition, mounted in Portland.

A model of Israel Museum in Jerusalem, designed by James Carpenter (James Carpenter Design Associates, New York) will be one of the models in the exhibition. Jamie recently reflected on his work with Ed Barnes:

I worked with Ed on several projects and one in particular is important in its use of glass and integration with Ed’s architecture. It is the Christian Theological Seminary windows done between 1983 to 1985…I first went to Haystack in 1969 with Dale Chihuly to teach in the glass program. I had started Rhode Island School of Design in the Architecture Program and then moved into Sculpture, glass in particular. I think Ed’s influence, not just through the CTS windows but through the spatial experience of Haystack had brought me back to architecture… Also, our recently completed renewal of the Israel Museum in Jerusalem–this campus, built in 1964, is not dissimilar to Haystack in that it is organized around a central pedestrian spine, ascending one of the hills surrounding Jerusalem, the Hill of Tranquility.

Haystack Architecture: Vision and Legacy will open Sunday, July 3 at Haystack’s Center for Community Programs and will remain on view through mid-October (by appointment after September 3), offering participants in the school’s fall programs—including attendees at a September conference for Maine architects, which Haystack organized in collaboration with the Maine chapter of the American Institute for Architecture—the opportunity to attend the exhibition as well. If you are unable to attend the exhibition in person, visit our exhibition page to view images and read narratives from the show (posted once the show has opened).

Recent Grant Awards Bar Harbor Bank & Trust – $1,000 to sponsor 2011 Gala Dinner & Private Auction Benwood Foundation—$5,000 to support Studio Based Learning and exhibitions at the Center for Community Programs Island Education Foundation – $1,000 to support Spring 2011 Community-Based Artist Residency Morton-Kelly Charitable Trust – $5,000 to support historic preservation Save America’s Treasures – $125,000 to support historic preservation William Penn Foundation – $10,000 to support 2011 Student Craft Institute and other teen programs

 

2011 Visiting Artists

Visiting artists augment the summer workshop sessions with informal activities and are an integral part of the Haystack experience, providing a wider context for exploring the crafts. This summer writer Bill Carpenter, visual artist Gyöngy Laky, and jazz musician Matthew Shipp will each spend a session at Haystack, working on their own projects and also engaging students and faculty.

Maine writer and poet, BILL CARPENTER, will be Haystack’s visiting writer during the second session, June 12–24. Bill grew up in Waterville, Maine. He received a BA from Dartmouth College, New Hampshire and a PhD from the University of Minnesota, and taught at the University of Chicago.

Bill Carpenter. Photo by MaJo Keleshian.

He returned to Maine in 1972 to help start the College of the Atlantic in Bar Harbor, where he continues to teach literature, creative writing, and interdisciplinary studies. Bill Carpenter received the Associated Writing Programs award in poetry for The Hours of Morning (University Press of Virginia, 1980) and the Samuel French Morse award for Rain (Northeastern University Press, 1985). His two novels are A Keeper of Sheep (Milkweed Editions, 1996) and The Wooden Nickel (Little-Brown, 2002).

During his residency, Bill Carpenter will conduct workshop sessions that will focus on writing about art in the broadest sense: poems, prose poems, reflections, or reminiscences on one’s personal experiences with the world of paintings, sculpture, movies, music, theater, craft, and dance. He will also write an essay reflecting on craft, which will be published as part of Haystack’s monograph series.

 

Gyöngy Laky. Photo by Barbara McKee.

GYÖNGY LAKY is a San Francisco sculptor, an American Craft Council Fellow, and Professor Emeritus at the University of California, Davis, where she was also Chair of Art in the mid-1990s. She received a BA and an MA from the University of California, Berkeley. Her work has been in exhibitions in the US, Europe, South America, and Asia, and temporary, site installations have exhibited in the US, Canada, England, France, Austria, and Bulgaria. Gyöngy Laky was a National Endowment for the Arts recipient. The Bancroft Library at the University of California, Berkeley, published her oral history and her papers are in the Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC. www.gyongylaky.com

Gyöngy Laky will be Haystack's visiting artist during the fourth session, July 17-29. During informal afternoon sessions, Gyöngy Laky will focus on the idea of exploring the unexpected, based on interactions with Haystack’s environment of nature and nurture, and will discuss her creative process.

Matthew Shipp. Photo by Lena Adasheva.

Jazz pianist MATTHEW SHIPP will be Haystack's visiting musician during the fifth session, July 31-August 12. Growing up in Wilmington, Delaware, he was influenced by 1950s jazz. At the age of five he learned piano and later studied classical piano and bass clarinet. Matthew Shipp studied for a year at the University of Delaware and attended the New England Conservatory of Music in Boston, Massachusetts, for two years, and in 1984 moved to New York. Matthew Shipp was a sideman in the David S. Ware Quartet and for the legendary Roscoe Mitchell’s Note Factory before deciding to concentrate on his own music. He has recorded a number of duets with leading musicians including Mitchell, William Parker, and Mat Maneri, and has recorded with a host of jazz labels—most notably a number of chamber jazz cds with Hatology in the 1990s and with Thirsty Ear, including curating and directing their Blue Series (2000–2010). Matthew Shipp’s acclaimed recordings include Equilibrium (2002), Harmony and Abyss (2004), One (2006), Piano Vortex (2007), Harmonic Disorder (2009), and 4D (2010). www.matthewshipp.com

While at Haystack, Matthew Shipp will conduct workshop sessions that will explore in lecture what it means to be an improvising artist, as well as the esthetics and psychological motivation that go into the lifestyle of a creative musician and its applicability to all the arts.                 

Support for musical performances comes from Haystack’s Hy Frumkin Fund.

Matthew Shipp’s residency at Haystack is in conjunction with the 11th Annual Deer Isle Jazz Festival at the Stonington Opera House, produced by Opera House Arts, August 5-7, 2011. www.operahousearts.org

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Haystack’s 2nd Online Auction Raises Over $6,500 for Scholarships and Community Programs

From November 29-December 5, Haystack Mountain School of Crafts held its second online auction, raising over $6,500 to benefit the school's scholarship fund—nearly 25% of our students receive full financial aid to attend workshops—and continuing improvements to our award-winning campus. Haystack partners with eBay Giving Works to bring unique online auction opportunities to support creativity through the sale of artwork made by world-renowned artists who have taught at Haystack. The 2010 online auction featured twenty-four items.

Haystack appreciates the many generous donors, staff, board members, and auction participants who contributed to the success of the online auction.

Online Auction Donors

Boris Bally	Jeanne Jaffe
Sonja Blomdahl	Stuart Kestenbaum
Emily Brown	Tracy Krumm
Carole Ann Fer and Rosalie Guy	Chris Leith
Pat Flynn from the estate of Charlie Gailis/Haystack	Xiaping Luo donated by Helen Drutt English
John Garrett	Christy Matson
Jenna Goldberg	Alleghany Meadows
Ann E. Grasso	Cynthia Schira
Pat Hickman	Bill Underhill donated by Paul Nowicki
Ayumi Horie and Sara Varon	Jason Walker
Lissa Hunter	Jack Wax
Matt Hutton

 

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Haystack People, News & Notes

 

Morgan with Chance, a frequent visitor at Haystack.

MORGAN COUSINS has been hired as Haystack’s business manager. Morgan, who lives in East Blue Hill, Maine, has a Bachelor of Arts degree in Mathematics with minor in Secondary Education from St. Joseph’s College. She has worked as a staff accountant at Blue Hill Accounting, LLC as well as provided private bookkeeping and payroll accounting services to businesses in the area.

Morgan is married to Adam Cousins, an estate caretaker and fisherman. They have two dogs, Chance and Dozer.

"Although only for a brief time, I was honored to have worked with Ingrid [Menken] and humbled by the lasting impact she has had on all associated with Haystack. It is truly rewarding to work with such a charismatic and passionate group of people in a beautiful location. Joining Haystack has been an amazing experience and I look forward to the years ahead. "

Haystack Administrative Assistant, CAROLE ANN FER, is representing the school at the 45th NCECA (National Council on Education for the Ceramic Arts) Conference in Tampa-St. Peteresburg, Florida, March 30-April 2.

Haystack Director, STUART KESTENBAUM, was elected to the American Craft Council’s board of trustees.

Haystack’s Facilities Manager, EUGENE KOCH, attended a week-long Fab Lab training session at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Center for Bits and Atoms, in January.

ELLEN WIESKE, Haystack’s Assistant Director, has work included in Maine’s 2011 Portland Museum of Art Biennial—on view April 7 through June 5.

Congratulations to BETSY WISH of Kittery, Maine who won this year's raffle to attend a 7th session workshop for free!

HOUSEKEEPING and KITCHEN WORKERS are needed for September–October 2011. Housing available on campus. Contact Haystack for job descriptions and application information.

VOLUNTEERS needed for pre-session and the Center for Community Programs. Pre-session will be held between May 15–19 and May 22–26. Please let us know if you are interested in volunteering, for a day, or for the entire week—any amount of time is helpful! We’ll provide the room and board in exchange for your help with getting the campus ready for summer. Haystack will also be seeking volunteer support at the Center for Community Programs once the summer exhibition opens.

MEMORIAL GATHERING On Saturday, June 25th, family and friends will gather at Haystack’s Gateway Auditorium in celebration of Ingrid Menken (1952-2010), who was Haystack's business manager for the last 13 years and served as the school's treasurer for 8 years prior to that. More details will be made available as the date approaches. Please contact Haystack with any questions.

 

Haystack’s 2011 annual appeal has raised $179,804 from 854 donors (107 from first time donors to the annual fund) donors as of March 7, 2011. To make a gift now please contact us at (207) 248-2306, haystack@haystack-mtn.org, or donate securely online. For a complete list of donations received since the Fall 2010 issue of Gateway, please download the Spring 2011 Gateway Newsletter. You can also view and download previous Gateway Newsletters (2004 to 2011).