What would Windham County be without its arts community?
It is impossible to imagine the culture of the county without seeing the central role art plays in it. Even amidst a global pandemic that threatens both lives and livelihoods, the arts are surviving in Windham County and show no sign of going away.
They are surviving, yes - but that doesn't mean that it is easy or without some severe stress and challenges.
While Vermont has relaxed its rules enough to allow performance venues and galleries to reopen in limited ways, it will be a long time before the arts in Windham County return to health, as is true of every sector of the state economy.
Those who depend on selling their visual art face severe restrictions on their clientele at least until July 15, and possibly for long after that.
Although the state has so far defied the odds in keeping the virus at bay, the national statistics are grim, and movement between states in the summer tourist season may challenge the state in the extent to which it can relax restrictions.
Artists who depend on performing for audiences have been hit especially hard. Without spectators in the same space, performers lack an essential dimension of live performance.
But performances can still be broadcast online by a growing number of video platforms and arguably made accessible to a broader clientele, including those with disabilities who can't physically be part of those usual audiences.
And while sharing in the crisis and pain, artists and arts organizations hold another, special role. Artists document and reflect our times in their work, and they provide helpful ways of thinking about and perceiving difficult times - or provide escape, solace, and relief from them.
“Art is the thing that gives hope and the thing that builds community,” said Shoshana Bass, the co-artistic director of Sandglass Theater. “It's the thing that heals. It is the thing that speaks out for justice. It is the thing that teaches us how to imagine things being different, and to turn that into action and transformation.”
The arts and economic well-being
Tourism is central to Vermont's economy, and in Windham County the arts are central to tourism. The area's tourist marketing focuses partly on the arts, along with outdoor recreation.
As with every economic sector in Vermont, COVID-19 has damaged and disrupted the arts scene. The pandemic has hit the arts community as hard as it has every other dimension of the county's economy.
According to the Vermont Arts Council, which has been administering grants for artists and artistic venues, the losses in this sector total more than $35 million, with about $15 million in direct losses for more than 200 arts and humanities organizations.
An estimated 37,000 individuals worked directly in the creative sector in Vermont in the pre-Coronavirus era. That statistic does not account for the indirect influence of the arts on the economy, like food service and lodging.
These sectors have also been severely hit by the economic shutdown, significant economic hardship that has enabled Vermont to emerge cautiously as one of the safest states in the nation when it comes to the virus.
“Everyone knows that art is still thought of as a side thing, the icing on the cake,” said Robert McBride, the founding director of the Rockingham Arts and Museum Project and the zone agent for the Southern Vermont Zone of the Vermont Arts Council's Vermont Creative Network.
“And it's like no, whoa: 9 percent of the workforce is attributed to creatives - whether that's a janitor working at the Latchis Theatre, the graphic designer, the filmmaker - because their job is generated through a cultural organization.”
In addition to the economic dimension of the arts and the role that they play in tourism, the arts are a wellspring of well-being for people who live here and for those who visit. A lot of people who live in Brattleboro and Windham County or spend summer months here count on being able to see performances, visit galleries, purchase art, and so on.
That is different this summer, as Vermont cautiously reopens. The Marlboro Music Festival and the Yellow Barn concert series won't have public performances, and the New England Youth Theatre will be closed to audiences, though each of these venues still plans to offer opportunities for artists to work together and to make content available online.
In Putney, NextStage is planning programming that is primarily online but may have some audience opportunities as well, later in the summer. The Putney Craft Tour in the fall plans to have a virtual dimension, although some artists plan to offer open studio time.
The Latchis Theatre reopened, showing The Wizard of Oz to an audience of 12 on a recent Friday evening. According to Jon Potter, the executive director of LatchisArts, the theater plans to continue to show films in coming weeks using social distancing and a lobby space that is deep-cleaned and engineered to be safe.
Psychologically, it was an important milestone.
“I can't tell you what effect just the smell of the popcorn in the air had on all of us,” Potter said. “[The people] that came were really, really grateful that we were open, that we got a chance to pop open the theater.”
“I think we all acknowledge that it's going to take a while for people's comfort levels to return, even in the vast space of our main theater with lots of distancing,” said Potter. “It's a big ask of people to relearn the habits of coming out again, and we understand that and respect people's decisions on the basis of safety.”
Creative resilience
A round of interviews with artists, venues, and cultural organizations around the state made clear that no one plans on giving up art or music or drama, and that in this period new ways of presenting art can inspire new ideas.
The Harmony Collective, a cooperative gallery on Elliot Street in Brattleboro, had been open for just six months before the virus hit in March, forcing it to close.
Only one of its 31 artists has left the group.
“The idea that 30 artists would stick with something that was iffy in the first place - I would never have bet that people would have stuck with us, and they did,” said Kay Curtis, the gallery's coordinator. “This is nothing short of a miracle, and if we could survive that, it seems to me like we could survive anything.”
Bass said that the internationally recognized 60-seat puppet theater in Putney is too small to reopen safely for public performances in the present circumstance.
But it never really closed.
The puppet theater instead shifted to providing online content, including weekly workshops to teach crafts like puppet building to children stuck at home and streaming videos of decades of performances from Sandglass's repertoire that are not being performed anymore.
“As artists, we're experts in reimagining, experts in thinking of other solutions and new creative models and new systems,” said Bass, as she also acknowledged the pressure of the time and how difficult it is to find time and focus “when a lot of us are just kind of scrambling to survive in some capacity right now.”
Shifting audiences and change
The loss of personal interaction with audiences, patrons, and customers has caused Bass and many other artists to reconsider what presenting their art means when it is no longer possible to visit a live performance or a gallery and have the connection of physicality.
This demographic shift - a breaking of barriers of distance, cost, time, access, and space - is being seen by some artists and arts organizations as an opportunity to change long-held patterns or to shift the way that they deliver arts.
“More now than ever, as artists, we have to work harder to get our work to the people, to the audience,” said Zak Grace, a glassmaker in Brattleboro. “As an artist, I relied before on making a personal connection with my audience, and I continue to try to do that.”
How do artists build this connection, though, if not in person?
“Just like not being able to hug your people and see their smiling faces, there's a barrier in the experience [of online presentation,]” said Petria “Petey” Mitchell, co-owner of Mitchell Giddings Fine Arts. “Experiencing the artwork virtually as opposed to energetically in front of you is very, very different.”
There is an undeniable sense of loss, of missing out, when experiencing art on a laptop or phone screen, and many artists are trying to find deep, meaningful ways to present their art to audiences online, without the use of physical spaces. Some have found that it is has changed the types of people who are able to engage in their art.
“[Online workshops] really give people the flexibility to participate on their own time,” said Bass. “There's the challenge of not being able to be in the same space, but there's also opportunities that we're finding in terms of access.”
“We are excited about viewing rooms and virtual galleries,” said Petey Mitchell. “It's exciting to be sharing a similar playing field with some of the really large galleries around the world.”
“We were kind of blown away with how many people were into [online dance classes],” said Cyndal Ellis of SoBo Studio in Brattleboro. “There are lots of [pre-recorded] online classes out there, but I think having the personal experience of the live class is what people wanted.”
“Of course, the online platform is so different. It's such a different feeling, and it is hard as an instructor to give people feedback and teach the way I really want to teach,” Ellis continued.
Using the videoconferencing software Zoom, people have been participating in dance classes “from literally all over the world, from as far as Iran, Israel, [from] all over this country,” she said.
Art adapts to a new reality
As the COVID-19 restrictions tightened and loosened over the past few months, audience interaction was not the only change. Not surprisingly, another change is the nature of the art itself and the work that emerges from that major shift.
At the New England Youth Theatre in Brattleboro, “we tried to come up with these smaller experiences that still give them a taste of being connected to one another, making something really cool together,” said Executive Director Hallie Flower. “That's really why the kids come: They want to be together, and they want to make something really cool.”
“Our response to COVID-19 is in the creative act,” said Jim Giddings. “Other people are able to do other things, but the arts remain important in our lives.”
Artists document and reflect our times in their work, and they provide helpful ways of thinking about and perceiving difficult times - or provide escape, solace, and relief from them.
“We are essential to the quality of people's lives,” said Mitchell. “Art is healing, whether you do it, whether you choose to live with it or rent it or purchase it; it's healing to have creativity.”
“Clearly, this pandemic has put us in a position where everybody is asking themselves what matters in life,” said Alan Steinberg of Brattleboro Clay Works. “Art is a means of helping us process what we think is important.”
“Art is the thing that gives hope and the thing that builds community,” Bass said. “It's the thing that heals. It is the thing that speaks out for justice. It is the thing that teaches us how to imagine things being different, and to turn that into action and transformation.”