A culture of creativity

Posted 8/21/12

Maybe the tide is turning. Historically, the brain drain of rural areas like ours led all the bright young people with dreams to the cities, never to return. But in places like Highland Lake and …

This item is available in full to subscribers.

Please log in to continue

Log in

A culture of creativity

Posted

Maybe the tide is turning. Historically, the brain drain of rural areas like ours led all the bright young people with dreams to the cities, never to return. But in places like Highland Lake and Narrowsburg and even Monticello, NY, some of the most creative minds I know are building their own dreams.

It’s not just that the cities are expensive (they are) or crowded (ditto) or any of the other negatives that are often lodged regarding them, but that this place and others like it are so conducive to living comfortably without so many of the stresses that burden a creative mind.

For some I know, like Susan Dalton, an actress and mother and yoga instructor, it’s a place to grow her young boys that gives them a chance to raise farm animals and go to a school that values the whole child whatever his strengths. And for her, it’s a place to grow a business and explore new directions in her life. The Chi Hive in Narrowsburg and The Lazy Fox in Callicoon are two of her ventures that are already thriving.

NACL Theatre in Highland Lake is on the brink of its 20th season producing original theatre and presenting performance artists from all over the world. In 2000, Tannis Kowalchuk and Brad Krumholz, the co-directors of the boldly-named North American Cultural Laboratory, took a chance on their dream of “promoting a culture of creativity” right here in Sullivan County. Since then, NACL has grown into a brand recognized by theatre professionals internationally. The last two home-grown shows, “The Weather Project” and “Courage” tackled themes of climate change and war and brought in community members as performers and artistic collaborators. Next summer “Courage” will be presented at Governor’s Island in New York City as part of a city arts festival.

But even before NACL, people like Tom DeGaetani and Elaine Giguere envisioned a culture of arts professionals growing in their small town of Narrowsburg. As Elaine retires this year from her stewardship of the Delaware Valley Arts Alliance, she leaves us all one of the premier arts non-profits in the state, promoting visual arts, performing arts and film.

This is the environment that led our family to invest recently in a multimedia production facility in Monticello. Yonderbarn is the realization of our son Conor Stratton’s dream of a small-scale movie studio where independent filmmakers and musicians and other performing artists can go to make professional-level productions of their work on independent-level budgets. At first he planned on renovating an old warehouse to create his vision. But while searching online for commercial properties he found the place he came to call Yonderbarn.

The serendipity of finding an already-outfitted recording studio (minus the film equipment only) in a barn only 25 minutes from our home in Narrowsburg came thanks to the efforts in the 1990s of Academy Award-winning film composer Ryuchi Sakamoto and the musician Akiko Yano, who turned a run-down barn into a first-rate studio only five minutes from the Monticello bus station. When Ms. Yano turned over the property to us, she told her realtor that she wished us great success.

Labor Day weekend will mark the opening of Yonderbarn. Although it is not envisioned as a non-profit, we hope it will be another one of the building blocks of the “culture of creativity” right here in the country.

Comments

No comments on this item Please log in to comment by clicking here