Summer residencies underway

Text by Ruth Melville
Photo by Andra Moss

The Yale Summer School of Art may have been canceled for this summer, but a new artists residency program promises to keep Norfolk’s small but enthusiastic art scene active.

Molly Zuckerman-Hartung and Fox Hysen moved to town about four years ago. Artists and teachers, they met at Yale’s School of Art—Zuckerman-Hartung is a senior critic in the Department of Painting and Printmaking, and Hysen received her MFA there—so they were well aware of the long history of art in Norfolk.

The two share a strong interest in how art can connect us with a place, how it can enable us to see our environment—the “greenwoods” of Northwest Connecticut—in new and unexpected ways; and how making and talking about art in a small rural town can allow for deeper connections between art, the ecosystem and the way we live. As they learned more about their new home, they were impressed by the number of artists, writers and craftspeople they were meeting, so they decided to try to put their interests into practice in their new home.

Their first idea was to open an art gallery, but that approach didn’t offer the kind of active engagement with town and place they were looking for. As their thinking evolved—and after they bought a second property in town during the pandemic—they decided to start a combined artists collective and residency, which they named Greenwoods, 2058, after the address of the new house, 58 Greenwoods, and a future date, to quietly suggest climate change’s threat to the future of our planet.

The collective part of the Greenwoods, 2058 project is a group of artists who live and work in the area. To help support the residency program, each member of the collective also produces “multiples,” a series of objects, mostly prints and drawings, to be sold in the shop located in the Greenwoods house. Half of the sales proceeds go toward supporting the residency program, and the other half goes to the artist whose work is sold. It is the members of the collective who invite the visiting artists; there is no application process.

Resident artists receive free lodging and a studio to work in and can stay from one to six weeks. Since the goal of their stay is not just to produce new work but to participate in a meaningful dialogue between the visitors and local residents, there will be an ongoing series of talks and workshops with the visiting artists.

This spring, Dani Leventhal ReStack, a filmmaker who teaches at The Ohio State University, was 2058’s first artist-in-residence. ReStack finished up her residency with a public reception at the Greenwoods, 2058 house, a public screening of her work at Tom Burr and Billy Dobbins’s barn and a lively discussion with the 15 or so people in the audience. Zuckerman-Hartung and Hysen say the event was a “huge success” and are looking forward to further talks and discussions during the summer.

Zuckerman-Hartung and Hysen already have five more artists lined up for this summer, with more expected in the fall. The painter Nolan Hendrickson recently arrived and will be in-residence in June.

An online shop and additional information schedule on upcoming artists talks and workshops will soon be available on the website.