GRAFTON — A small town of four streets and 600 residents tucked away in a corner of southern Vermont is adding another good reason to make it a destination for visitors.
In an effort to create a sustainable, viable community for all its residents, and to provide yet another reason to visit Grafton, 12 local artists have joined to form the Grafton Valley Arts Guild (GVAG).
For the past year, longtime blacksmith Adam Howard has worked out of the Grafton Forge, a building owned by the Windham Foundation, which exists to “promote the vitality of Grafton and Vermont's rural communities through its philanthropic and educational programs, and its subsidiaries whose operations contribute to these endeavors.”
In fact, the Windham Foundation owns almost all of the buildings in Grafton that are directly and indirectly associated with the artists of the newly formed GVAG, including the forge.
Building on a dream
What began as a dream for Adam Howard has, in little over a year, come to fruition.
In 2009, after his job as resident blacksmith for the Red Mill Museum in Clinton, N.J. came to a close, Howard was casting about for another place to live and work.
Howard's background working in historic settings, with the National Park Service and the Smithsonian, spans some 30 years, during which time he has incorporated his personal knowledge of alternative learning skills into educational programs for adults as well as kids.
“I can translate something foreign into a language” that people can understand and learn from, he said.
Howard first saw the forge in Grafton in a 2008 YouTube video about the blacksmith of Grafton.
“I did some further research and found out that it was open only seven months of the year, and I saw the immediate possibilities,” he said.
Howard said it took him a while to find out that the Windham Foundation owned the building.
“I didn't know who to talk to. I'd never been there,” he said. But when he finally got in touch with the Windham Foundation, its staffers were open to conversations about what he had in mind.
“Once I visited and saw its proximity to the Grafton Elementary school, saw its location in town, saw the layout of the streets, I immediately knew that this was the perfect fit for what I do,” he said.
And what Howard does is use blacksmithing to educate people about the craft - or art, as some people view it - and provide a non-traditional setting for students to learn a skill.
Howard embarked on months of negotiations and talks with the Windham Foundation to hammer out how his idea fit in with the foundation's mission, how to make it viable, and how it would add to the Grafton community.
“We were both talking about the same idea,” Howard said. “We just had to agree on how to implement it.”
Howard's idea of a working forge where a walk-in public is welcome, and where he can teach classes to schoolkids as well as adults, came to fruition last year, and the “rest is history.”
But his vision did not end there.
He again approached the foundation with an expanded idea about making Grafton an even more viable community for arts and crafts people to live and work in.
“It [was] one more reason to make Grafton a destination,” Howard said. “More is more.”
Making it happen
The foundation's mainstay is the award-winning and world-renowned Grafton Village Cheese Co. The organization is involved in several other projects, such as the Old Tavern in the center of Grafton, where art and music events draw people from all over during the warmer months.
“Our visitors are international,” said Guild member Bryce LeVan Cushing, a world-renowned sculptor who exhibits internationally. “We have a large repeat visitor base in Grafton, people who keep coming back and even book the same room for years.”
Expanding the arts spectrum beyond the three existing galleries - the Jud Hartmann and Hunter Galleries and the Gallery North Star - seemed to make sense to both Howard and the Windham Foundation.
Peter Jeziorski, owner of Hunter Gallery, agreed and told Howard, “Sure. This is great. It'll fit right in.”
And LeVan Cushing said this is just one example of how receptive and supportive the village has been to the idea of establishing the artists' guild.
“There are always the naysayers,” he said. “But most people like the idea and can see how it will help the village.”
LeVan Cushing's promotional and marketing background has been key in getting the GVAG off the ground. His job at the Grafton Village Cheese Company is to be a liaison between the public and the foundation. That relationship helped to get a grant to get the guild started, he said.
A former Bellows Falls resident, Jason Ballard, another founding member of the guild, has opened his woodworking business, My Minds Design, in the old fire station - another building owned by the foundation.
“[The Windham Foundation] made it possible by working with me on what was a viable and realistic plan to open and operate my business here,” he explained.
Textile artist Frances Holliday Alford's Embellishments Studio is itself in a Windham Foundation-owned building, where visitors can visit an artist's studio, see the artist at work, and even participate in classes.
Arts, information, and small-town friendliness
The Cricketers building at 45 Townshend Rd., across from the Old Tavern, is owned by the Windham Foundation, as is the house where LeVan Cushing has his studio a few doors away.
So when LeVan Cushing and Howard approached the foundation about supporting an artists' guild made up of Grafton and local artists, the Cricketers building was offered and accepted as a location for the gallery, with a twist.
“We're also going to function as the village information center,” LeVan Cushing said. “There's no place for people to find out about the Nature Museum, and Grafton Ponds, the Grafton Nursery, and the museum. There's so much to do here, and no central place for people to find out about it all.”
“People always come in asking questions anyway,” LeVan Cushing added. “It was a natural. We live here. We know the history of the village and where to go to find things to do. There's something for the whole family, whether together or separately, in Grafton.”
In addition to having monthly shows of two guild artists at a time throughout the year, visitors can see “art in action” and sign up to participate in classes at the Forge with Howard, or with Alford at Embellishments Studio.
Ballard's workshop is a good place to see one-of-a-kind creations come into being.
Self taught, Ballard said, “I depend on walk-in business,” and noted that he does only commissions now. “I'm booked three months out,” he said. “I work an eight-hour day and then go home. It's great. I love what I do, and I don't want to burn out on it.”
Ballard's work includes bedsteads he was commissioned to design and build for the Old Tavern.
But he also does purely sculptural pieces like “the flower,” a huge unfinished burl that he has been working on for a while. “I do some, then walk away and leave it for a while,” he said of his creative work. “I've been doing this for a while, so when it comes to getting commissions finished, I'm pretty good at working it all the way through.”
Ballard said that the Windham Foundation's support made his “dream come true.” Visitors to the My Minds Design wood shop will be greeted in a friendly manner, and questions are welcomed and answered.
Howard stresses that this is what makes Grafton Village unique. “People can smell a phony a mile away. People here are authentic and genuinely friendly. We take the time to talk with visitors.”
He said one story exemplifies this unique quality of life and experience.
“There was a family, a mom and dad and two sons, from ...Nantucket or someplace ...,” he said. “They walked into the Forge, and one of the boys asked me if I had a fire poker they could buy. I was working on something else, but I set it aside and said, 'No I don't. But we can make one.'
“And we proceeded to forge the fire poker together. The boys helped me through the whole process and helped put the twist in it.
“That experience of coming to Grafton, coming to the forge and making the fire poker – they're going to remember that for the rest of their lives. Fifty years from now, those boys are going to be fighting over who will get that poker,” Howard said with a laugh.
Melissa Gullotti, the Windham Foundation's director of communications, said that Howard “really took the Forge up a notch when he took over.”
And, she added, “The Arts Guild is providing an expansion of focus in what has been a longstanding tradition of inviting arts into the community.”
“It's been part of our mission to support the arts and education. Both the Forge and the guild do that,” she said. “We're bringing the Vermont Symphony Orchestra [to Grafton] for our 21st year. Music has always been a part of what Grafton offers.”
Gullotti emphasized that “anything that brings people to come stay at the Inn” is welcome. “We offer programmatic packages where people can come participate in an event, take classes at the Forge or come for a music series, and stay at the Old Tavern.”
Howard noted that his 2011 summer workshops already “are booked solid.”
“As long as we are successful, we'll have a lease [in the ] Cricketers Building,” said LeVan Cushing. “We'll be a gallery and the official visitors' center. We can send people out to all the wonderful things happening. We're not competing [with the Foundation].“
“The more we can offer, the more people will come here,” he said.