Cultivating Warwick Arts Culture: How Does It Happen?
Melissa Shaw-Smith received the Orange County Arts Council Art Award for 2022 for expanding arts culture in Warwick. She explained her role.
Melissa Shaw-Smith, who recently received the Orange County Arts Council Art Award for 2022, became absorbed in community arts early and elsewhere. Having been steeped in arts culture in Ireland and Manhattan, she sought ways to sow it in Warwick. She grew up not far from Nobel-winning writer Samuel Beckett’s origins in Ireland, near Dublin. She and her siblings followed their parents around as they made television documentaries about craftspeople doing traditional work that was disappearing— weavers, thatched roof makers, saddlemakers, silversmiths, coopers and candlemakers, among others.
“My parents realized that the spinning wheel and butter churn they saw in use in parts of Ireland were fading out, ” said Shaw-Smith.
Her family, which also included her two sisters and brother, often camped near the filming locations. She recalled camping alongside sheep-shearing and sweater-making and collecting lichens growing on rocks to be used for dye.
“It was an introduction to creative life and craftsmanship,” said Shaw-Smith.
Growing up amid that activity, what was Shaw-Smith’s plan for herself?
“No plan,” she said. “I was accepted to Trinity College, and I wasn’t sure I’d go.”
She was accustomed to doing what her parents did—following their curiosity and interests and developing their skills accordingly rather than pursuing middle class career aspirations, she said.
Her first year at Trinity College Dublin she studied English and the history of art and architecture, though she was most interested in acting in and then directing plays, including Beckett’s.
“We did lunch time shorts and full length evening plays. The public ate sandwiches and soup that students prepared, and we were taken seriously enough to be reviewed by press,” said Shaw-Smith. “I found my niche while studying there.”
Beckett too had attended Trinity Collge.
“But he left Ireland to live in France. He couldn’t stomach the narrow-minded Irish society. I found that too,” said Shaw-Smith. After graduating from Trinity, she went to the U.S. to tour on the East Coast for three months with the theater company she co-founded. Returning to Dublin, she found the theater world to be small and male-dominated at the time. She returned to the U.S. in 1989.
“New York is a big city. I went with nothing and spent two days on a friend’s floor.”
Then, in the back of the Village Voice, she saw an ad. John Reilly, founder of Global Village Video in Soho, was looking for a producer for a documentary on Samuel Beckett.
Shaw-Smith devoted five years to the project, aided by Barney Rosset, the rebel Grove Press publisher who had met Beckett decades earlier in Paris and introduced Beckett’s work to Americans. Rosset, whom Shaw-Smith described as “shy but a great story-teller” with a colorful history, also championed other authors in court who were initially considered “obscene.” He successfully defended the work of Allen Ginsburg, Henry Miller and D.H. Lawrence. But Beckett was unwilling to be interviewed for the documentary, as he refused to be interviewed about his work throughout his life.
“He said his autobiography was in his work,” said Shaw-Smith. “But he was an avid letter-writer. We had access to much of his correspondence with Rosset and other literary figures.”
She lived in the East Village amid writers and artists, and with some she produced films, festivals, magazines and parades.
She and Reilly finished the Beckett documentary in 1995. Meanwhile she met and married Jacob Gendelman, a screenwriter and set builder. By 1997 Shaw-Smith was riding the subway to work at Global Village Video with one baby on her back and one on her front. She was ready to return to rural life to raise her son and daughter.
“We wanted our kids to have farms, rolling hills and mountains,” said Shaw-Smith.
This vision led the family to Warwick, mentioned by a friend. There she worked freelance, writing fiction and nonfiction for children’s magazines and a bi-monthly column about artists and crafts, and she assisted artists with grant proposals.
Then in 2016, Shaw-Smith’s neighbors Gary Genetti and Janet Howard-Fatta, artists, approached her about the need for a community arts center and a possible place for it—a barn at the former Orange County Correctional facility that the Town of Warwick had bought from the state. Shaw-Smith saw the same need.
“I worked with kids on short story and art projects as part of the Warwick schools Parents in Education (PIE) program, but there was no art scene and center,” she said. “We looked into acquiring the barn. The town wanted ideas and suggested leasing the barn, but a certification of occupancy would require hundreds of thousands for work on the building.”
So they set up a nonprofit, Wickham Works.
“Our board talked about who was in the community and what they wanted,” said Shaw-Smith.
She had lengthy discussions with Elizabeth Knight about raising local interest in sustainability, and since Wickham Works had little money then, she said, “We collected used and donated art supplies and found lots of exciting trash to upcycle for art workshops. We decided the material reuse would be a guiding principle, showing people that art supplies could be free and right in their trash can.”
The 2016 Treecycle event at Wickham Woodlands resulted, where the public was invited to work with local artists making trees from found objects, an art-making method that had been used in the PIE elementary school program and would continue in the Changemaker middle school program to which PIE children progressed. In 2017, Knight spearheaded Too Good to Toss at Stanley Deming Park, where people gave away functional but no longer needed items. Earth Fest, in 2018 and 2019 was a combination of those events.
Then Karen Thomas, director of Warwick Valley Community Center, offered Wickham Works a “reuse maker space” room at the center where the group hosted free drop-in “making sessions.” The group paid for the space both with rent and by providing arts programs there, Shaw-Smith said.
Meanwhile, she said, “Twenty-somethings wanted to reboot the music scene at Warwick Community Center, where they saw their first bands.”
They worked with Thomas to organize the Doc Fry Music Sessions, monthly band nights at the community center, named after a local potter and arts organizer. Art was added to the music.
“Jaime Munkatchy, a New York City teacher and print-maker on the Wickham Works board wanted youth to have a place to socialize and make art. That was my vision too,” said Shaw-Smith. “Our sons had been together since kindergarten. She brought the art of screen printing to make posters, and that became part of the Doc Fry music scene, to design and hand print posters.
The Love Local Makers Market became a fundraiser.
“We charged modest fees to vendors and made sure they were high quality,” said Shaw-Smith. “We wanted to support local artists and have a revenue stream for Wickham Works, which was volunteer based for the first five years. Then we commissioned artists for public art events. The only way to sustain art programs was to pay artists a living wage, whether for Earth Fest sculptures or after school programs. You can ask artists to do something once, but not every year, not for the Warwick summer arts festival. It’s not fair.”
She advocates for an “art economy,” as with the Makers Market.
“When someone asks me to connect them with artists, I say they must pay them. They’re not volunteers,” said Shaw-Smith. “There’s much potential if we persevere. Money will come.”
She explained that Wickham Works provides some arts programs for Warwick Valley Community Center as partial payment for the space the group uses there, in addition to paying rent to the center. For other programs that require substantial amounts of time she is paid as an independent contractor. She was paid to produce the LGBTQ Pride event, infusing art using floats, window decor and body art. When she organizes arts events and raises funds for them, she is paid with money remaining after the artists are paid, she said.
“It’s grass roots community arts organizing,” she said. “With Kathy Brieger, we work with Warwick Farmworkers Organization children, using art supplies left over at the end of the year. I had teaching artists for a summer program and got a grant.”
In 2020 and 2021, with six teaching artists, during four weeks in the summer, Wickham Works held four workshops on portraiture, contour drawing, water colors, collage, poetry and movement for underprivileged children, paying artists a “living wage.” This year they added an arts program for seniors at Liberty Green low income housing. Weekly, a conductor and choreographer led music and movement for an hour and a half in the community room.
David Dworkin, who was 89, was animated, jumping up and down as he conducted, said Shaw-Smith. “He talked about classical music. He was engaged, stimulating and funny. We also offered weaving and watercolors. We were told they lacked things to do. People said they were interested in arts and crafts.”
But attendance was not what was expected, six to eight people each visit, despite the potential audience in three buildings with 80 apartments each. So the Wickham Works group will try a future program for seniors in the Village of Florida and Warwick libraries, which already have senior audiences.
“We’ll reach those who want to be reached,” said Shaw-Smith.
They also offered arts programs to home schooled students, responding to what they said they wanted, but that was also challenging.
“Their schedules changed often, and grants were elusive, so we do ask for pay,” she said. “To take part in the haunted house program, it’s drop in and pay as you go for home schoolers.”
Local Administrators and the Arts
Shaw-Smith says that Village of Warwick administrators have supported arts events in various ways, while the Town of Warwick has been less forthcoming. However, they have some limitations in common.
“We don’t generally fund nonprofits,” said Warwick Town Supervisor Michael Sweeton. “Where would that stop? Then what about Warwick Historical Society?”
As for the tourist and residential appeal of arts programs, he pointed out the attraction of farmers markets and the chamber of commerce.
However, the town did provide Wickham Works with $1000 for each of the last two years for the Fuller Moon Arts Festival in 2022 and August for the Arts in 2023. Shaw-Smith noted that Wickham Works then had to pay $1000 for Stanley Deming Park use, but Sweeton pointed out that visitors paid for tickets to attend. Both the Town and Village passed on $4999 from Orange County arts grants to Wickham Works and the Hudson Valley Jazz Festival.
Village of Warwick Mayor Michael Newhard acknowledged similar limitations regarding nonprofit contributions, although, he said, “There is a difference. We’re a centralized place where activities happen historically—parades and festivals. We’ve always been supportive of the arts, at least in sweat equity, for instance having a stage ready. If there’s an activity to enliven and showcase the arts, we’re in, mostly with sweat equity."
He noted the increase in artists in the Village since the Covid pandemic, a presence conducive to more arts activities.
“But, like Mike Sweeton, we’re selective,” Newhard said.
However, the Village does provide a stipend for a Warwick Historical Society lecture series and will launch poet laureate and artist in residence programs, guided by Wickham Works, in the spring of 2024, he said.
Delegating, Locating and Expanding
Shaw-Smith has also partnered with Hannelore Chambers, who organized creation of the Playground Dreams inclusive playground, on organizing the makers market. Chambers will now oversee the makers market, where money is going to artists, said Shaw-Smith, who receives money from the grant funding she gets for arts program, after the artists are paid.
“Last year, artists were paid $30,000, and this year they were paid more with grants and admission fees,” she said. “I’d like to make myself obsolete. Rather than having one person, bring artists to manage the elements, creating an art scene with opportunities for connection among artists used to looking at things creatively and making something out of nothing.”
The Halloween haunted house at Warwick Community Center is an example.
“All along I had a vision. I knew it could be done, but at what cost?” she recalled thinking when she planned the variety of haunted experiences, such as the “no scare walk through” and the family tour. “At times I thought I must be mad, but inside I knew I was getting traction. I’d say I’d continue until the end of the year, but then I couldn’t walk away.”
She noticed the way engagement with the arts program served many people in different ways.
“A kid with ADD who needs to run around the building, when given tasks, becomes a leader of peers and self-possessed,” she said. “Maybe we had a hand in that.”
Now she contemplates whether getting funding to build an art center would attract the kind of community investment that grass roots efforts to “use what’s here” would summon.
Meanwhile Shaw-Smith’s arts circle enlarges. Fuller Moon Arts Festival in 2022, offering productions by Warwick Center for the Performing Arts and Warwick Dance Collective, along with assorted visual art displays, became part of August for the Arts in 2023, which included film, jazz and short plays festivals. Next year, she said, an event will spotlight climate change challenges and what people can do to address them.
“We look for people who extend the mission of the arts,” said Todd Hulet, executive director of Orange County Arts Council, explaining why Shaw-Smith received an award this year, along with three artists from other parts of Orange County. With the arts, “they add to quality of life, jobs, the economy and tourism,” he said.
Nominations are open to the public. Then the OCAC board of directors selects awardees. Hulet noted how Shaw-Smith’s efforts supported a variety of arts and arts groups.
“She brought them in, so her efforts will sustain their work,” said Hulet.
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