April 2007

Calling All Art Lovers: Come Celebrate with MacDowell

As part of its yearlong 2007 Centennial Celebration, The MacDowell Colony has commissioned a large-scale public art project that will be unveiled at a special birthday presentation at the Colony on Saturday, August 11th — the eve of its annual Medal Day ceremony and open house. The brainchild of MacDowell Fellow and recent MacArthur Fellowship recipient Anna Schuleit, “Landlines” will involve the active participation of community volunteers of all ages. Consisting of a stage production and a site-specific installation stretching across the Colony’s 450 acres, the project aims to pay tribute to the Colony’s long legacy of supporting artists and the community where so much of their inspiration has begun.

The stage production of “Landlines” will be the opening event of Medal Day weekend this year. Incorporating the only forbidden object in MacDowell’s studios and the signature device of communication for the 20th century, the telephone will be used to symbolically bridge the past and the present on MacDowell’s Centennial occasion. Ten children from the local community will be paired with MacDowell artists of different disciplines to create a new artistic work, each one representing a decade from MacDowell’s 100-year history. Following the performance of these pieces, members of the audience will disperse throughout Colony grounds, where they will be connected with others from around the world through telephones attached to trees and illuminated in the dark by colored cones of light. In the spirit of public art and with the use of the telephones as a tool for exchange and dialogue, the public will be invited to interact with the life of the Colony, its network of artists, its wealth of past creations, and each other.

“I’m always trying to create new memories by involving as many people as I can in my projects,” says Schuleit, whose recent public art projects have included “Bloom” (2003), a site-specific installation that featured 28,000 potted blooming flowers at the Massachusetts Mental Health Center in Boston; and “When At Last” (2001), an installation in the former waiting room of the old train station in Brattleboro, Vermont.

For those interested in learning more about this exciting, unprecedented Medal Day endeavor, Schuleit will give a public presentation about  “Landlines” at the next MacDowell Downtown on April 6th. Schuleit hopes to engage local residents in this ambitious work in a fun and cooperative way. “This project is being planned for August but I will need the participation of as many people as possible starting in May,” she relates. Of particular note are the children’s auditions for the stage production, which will take place on May 5th. Schuleit is careful to emphasize, however, that volunteer work is flexible and will span all summer. When talking about the varied and integral roles volunteers will play in the planning and execution of “Landlines,” Schuleit continues: “I want people to feel ownership. That’s important to me.”

Part play, part public performance, part installation — and part mystery (What might a Centennial birthday cake look like?) — “Landlines” will enable links between audience and artist, time and space, history and the future. By ‘violating’ MacDowell’s trademark privacy in a loving way, it will lift boundaries between those within the walls of the Colony and those beyond them.  “It is only then,” says Schuleit, “that we can really understand the spirit and significance of MacDowell over the past century — and the century to come.”