RS: [0:00:48] I don’t know yet. I don’t think we can make it to the gala. But it’s always possible. If so, I’ll let you know.

GK: [0:01:00] Yeah, maybe we’ll see you. I’m in Portland most of the time. But I obviously go up and see the family a lot. So, up and back. Yeah. So let’s get started because sometimes – we’ll probably be an hour. Sometimes, it can go a little bit over. I don’t want to keep you for too long. I will mute myself just because I’m in my shared office. So when you’re speaking, it might be kind of quiet on my end just because I’m going to be –

RS: [0:01:29] Okay, that’s fine.

GK: [0:01:31]

So first, it’d be great if you could just introduce yourself and give me just a little bit of your own background outside of Haystack, who you are.

RS: [0:01:42] So, I’m Rosanne Somerson, and I am a furniture designer/maker. I’ve also had an academic career, working as a faculty member, initially part-time, running the graduate program in furniture design, which, when I started teaching there in 1985, was part of industrial design. Then, in 1995, some colleagues and I decided to make it a separate department, which we were able to do. And then I became the head of that department from 1995 until the early 2000-teens, at which time I got asked to come into the administration at RISD [Rhode Island School of Design], first as provost and then went through a search process and became president and now am president emerita. So, I’ve always maintained a studio practice as well as an academic practice. Since I retired from academia, I’ve been doing consulting, working on helping cultural organizations and others deal with strategic planning and implementation, and also some leadership, mentorship, mentoring, and development. So, that’s what I’ve been doing.

GK: [0:03:13] Do you have a memory of either hearing about Haystack or when Haystack first came into your life or even as a concept at all? Maybe not the first time you went there, but the first time you heard about it.

RS: [0:03:30] Sure. Yeah. So, I started my first connections with Haystack – well, I think, actually, that’s later that people came to RISD and talked about it. I think that was started with Stu [Stuart Kestenbaum]. My former husband, Alphonse Mattia, was a trustee. I got to know Haystack as a wife. I would go up with him frequently. He was a trustee for nine years. He might have had two stints. I can’t remember. I know after he stopped his trusteeship, I came on as a trustee, which was great. So I knew Haystack at first from the board side. The thing that was so amazing was the community of board members, who were some extraordinary people – collectors and artists and businesspeople. One can’t help but fall in love with the place. It’s very magical. There were also some amazing faculty who I met through Alphonse, through his teaching there, other faculty who were teaching, and some of them may have been on the board at different times as well, but just an incredible artist community.

GK: [0:05:03] What was Alphonse’s medium? What was he teaching? Because you said, he was on faculty.

RS: [0:05:10] He was teaching wood. He used to be very angry that there wasn’t a wood session every session. He was also involved at the time when Howard [Evans] had issues and was leaving. Well, actually, I think the issues came later, but when Howard left, and they did the search to find Stu, he was in that group. So, I knew Haystack before Stu, but got to know it really well when Stu came on – Stu and Susan and their family. I got a lot more involved as time went on, and I think Stu and I connected really well. I was there pretty much every year for decades.

GK: [0:06:03] We’ll touch more on that experience. Just sticking with those first impressions, did you first go there in this wife capacity role, you said, as the wife of a trustee?

RS: [0:06:22] Yes. Honestly, I don’t remember if it was first as a wife of a faculty member or a trustee. I don’t remember what years Alphonse taught there and what years he was on the board, but I definitely was not taking a class or teaching at that point. I really treasured the time there. There was this unbelievable, creative community, and the space and place reflected that. I don’t remember who mentioned this to me, but there’s this sense – the fact that everything’s connected by these decks and they’re hovering – that you can know when someone’s walking in another part of the campus. You may not see them, but you have this sensibility that there’s someone else there. That’s a really nice descriptor of the whole place. It’s like you feel everyone’s creativity and everyone’s experience on some very subtle level. It may not hit you in the face, but you know there are all these humming experiences going on for different people in aspects of their creative development and life and also teaching life. That’s just really never something I took for granted whenever I was at Haystack. I felt it every time I was there. There’s also this sense that it leads to this kind of echo of the greats, who have been there before, the leaders, the Jack Lenor Larsens, the Anni Albers, the people that were connected early on and their influence beyond their own media that just lived in the air there, which is such a special feeling.

GK: [0:08:29] Yeah, that’s really lovely. I love that connection. The deck connection. You’re so right. You can hear from far away that someone’s walking up the steps or the clinking of metal somewhere. What was your transition into faculty/student attending Haystack? What was your first session as a faculty member?

RS: [0:08:56] Yeah. So, it was as a faculty member. And then I think I might have been a visiting artist for another faculty member later. I taught a couple of times there. My issue was always that at the time when I started teaching there, I had a small child who I seem to remember you running around the decks with at some point. So, it became hard for me to leave for two weeks. The sessions, I think, prior to my teaching there, were generally two or weeks long. They started doing one-week sessions, and it was a lot more burden on the staff, which was an unfortunate part about it because of more takedowns and setups, etc., but it did encourage a number of artists who couldn’t afford to take off two weeks. At the time, the pay was not a lot. So, people like me, who were part-time faculty, who – I spent the summers doing commissions and getting work ready for shows. So, it was a little bit of a hardship to take more than a week away from my own work and parenting. But once they started doing one-week sessions, I was able to teach, and I taught a couple of different times. I’m still in touch with a number of the students that I had there, some of whom have gone on to start companies and do these amazing things. I really appreciated that. Then, when they first got the grant to do New Works, and former faculty were able to come back and just work in the studio, I put my name in the lottery every time because that was heavenly, just having open time to work in the studios with technicians. I think I might have taken blacksmithing. I took things that I didn’t know how to do. I just loved that because it was short, it was intense. There was no expectation of having to produce. But I always produced new work. It was a chance to know myself at Haystack from another perspective, which I really valued.

GK: [0:11:20] So, just grounding us a little in time, those first years, it looks like – so I get notes from – Haystack staff compiled some notes for me of when you were at sessions.

RS: [0:11:32] Great.

GK: [0:11:34] Sometimes, they’re not quite right because I think some – I actually think some of the – this is why we’re doing archival stuff. Some of the dates are – we don’t have all of them. So, was your first year actually on faculty in 1994? Do you know?

RS: [0:11:54] It feels like it was earlier, but I would trust Haystack’s records more than my memory.

GK: [0:12:00] Yeah, 1994 would have been – gosh, I would have been six years old. Stu would have been there for about seven years.

RS: [0:12:08] Yeah, that probably is about right.

GK: [0:12:11] Yeah. Can you talk a little bit about –? We’ll touch back on the New Works thing because that’s really – I want to tie in the effect of Haystack on your own work and your own studio practice. But first, did the school change in any way in either those first couple of years or over the course of the decades that you’ve gone, in terms of culture, accommodations, on a bigger scale, and then thinking about some of the smaller interpersonal stuff?

RS: [0:12:55] Sure. Yeah. It changed a lot. It changed a lot because the craft fields were changing. The campus didn’t change all that much. Gateway was built when I was there, so that was a big change: that front complex, the visiting artist studio, and then, eventually, the Fab Lab. So, those were all pretty major changes. The studios themselves occasionally would go through a minor renovation, but they really went through a lot of change during Covid, and I think that was a fantastic way to use Covid time to make giant studio improvements. Stu, who was the director when I was teaching there, had this philosophy about just enough and no more. So, part of the expectation of being there was to use your own resourcefulness. A lot of people were coming from a range, from garage studios to no studio, to graduate students who had access to amazing facilities to artists who were in co-ops. There were all different kinds of studio experiences. So, to be sort of humbled into this very basic studio working space that had what you needed, but not everything you needed, was a really wonderful way to get back to the roots of your creative process and not necessarily make the most advanced technical thing you could make, but make something that dug deep into your source of why you made and what you wanted to make and how you were evolving what you were making. But the craft field changed a lot. Initially, in the kind of early studio crafts movement, there was a lot about alternative lifestyle and separating from the mainstream of society. And Haystack had more of that in the early years. But I think also having Stu as a director who was a poet and not a craft maker, there was a real intellectual, thoughtful aspect to Haystack, which was different from some of the other summer craft communities. I mean, they all were amazing. It’s not to say that some craft community was not as intellectually driven as others, but I do think that Haystack had a particular bent on looking at theory and concepts as the programs evolved to really think about the impact of craft and the purpose of craft and even more broadly than craft, just making and creating in general in a way that was somewhat unique to Haystack. Part of it, I think, was the environment, which was just so extraordinary. Oh my God, there’s this amazing bird right outside my window. I just have to take a picture of this because I’ve never seen a bird like this. So, let me pause here.

GK: [0:16:25] Speaking of the environment. Yeah. [laughter]

RS: [0:16:28] It flew away. Anyway, it’s amazing. It had a chartreuse orange chest, but more orange than red and stripes on it. It looked like an oriole, but I’ve never seen one like that. Anyway, sorry. There’s something about water and something about being so removed. We used to talk about the fact that it was such a journey to get to Haystack and that every causeway that you went over, you felt like you were shedding something from your former self. By the time you got there, whether you arrived in fog or sun or whatever the weather, there was a sense of being someplace magical. The way the woods had all these miniature lichens, there was just this sense that you sort of walked into a fairyland and emerged in this place where there were these glorious studios with this very modern-at-the-time design overlooking this spectacular bay full of islands and trees that were like statues. There was nothing like it. So, I think a lot of people went there and had this very intellectual experience that really drove their making in different ways. There was a sense once the conferences started, which was, of course, much later in the process. But the partnerships with, at the time, the Cooper Hewitt and MIT [Massachusetts Institute of Technology] and others, there was a real sense of elevating the dialog, thinking about how collaboration could create new intersections that were really going to help drive fields forward. The visiting artists and writers who came were – and sometimes dancers or individuals who had a different kind of creative practice – talking about critique or movement or listening. All of these things were such expansive notions that helped everybody feel that they were growing beyond what they came with initially. Haystack was, I think, a place where that happened frequently to many people who were there in different ways. Also, the multigenerational aspect, being eighteen to ninety-something – I had ninety-year-olds in my woodshop classes – was remarkable. There was so much to learn from one another. Then, there were also some international sessions where there was this sense of what was happening in another culture or country. That was fascinating, too, to try to globalize the things that were driving people’s creative work. Or to learn from one another in ways that wouldn’t have happened through travel necessarily unless you happened to be lucky enough to just know these artists and see their studios or their work. In so many ways, it was expanding, certainly for me, my definition of myself as a maker and as a teacher and as a writer, but also, I think for people that weren’t necessarily in the academic world, the same thing in their own studio practice. I loved the fact – Lissa [Hunter], who was on the board with me for many years, was a very good spokesperson for never forgetting that a lot of people there were practicing studio artists who weren’t connected to an academic institution and that all the decisions and all the programming needed to not be exclusive to those individuals. It shouldn’t just be people coming from academia, which sometimes had a heavy presence there. There weren’t, in certain fields, a lot of artists who could support themselves solely through their studio practice. But there were some. A lot of people juggled a studio practice and some other way of earning income. Those meet-ups and the recognition of the different ways that people practice their practice was really illuminating.

GK: [0:21:28] What was Lissa’s last name?

RS: [0:21:31] Hunter.

GK: [0:21:32] Hunter. Okay. I know that name. But just to make sure we have it on there.

RS: [0:21:36] She’s been very involved as a trustee, and she has been a huge supporter of Haystack over the years.

GK: Yeah. That’s wonderful.

RS: [0:21:49] God, there’s this weird light thing that’s happening. Do you see that?

GK: [0:21:53] Yeah, I kind of love it. You’re making a halo.

RS: [0:21:57] When I said “illuminated,” it came on.

GK: [0:22:00] Yeah. I love what you said about the intellectual experience of that. It’s intellectual and embodied, it feels like. There’s two things happening where you’re in this place, and the environment is really, really important. And there’s also this piece of – and maybe you could speak a little bit about if this changed – but the evening programs and the community aspect and the communication that’s happening amongst faculty, students, staff. Can you just speak about if that shifted in the time that you were there and maybe if there are any specific moments or experiences you had that really influenced your work, either in the studio or in academia? Because I think that it could have had – well, it could have had an influence on both of those things. I’m sure it did.

RS: [0:23:14] Yeah. The school changed a lot because the times changed. Getting involved at first in the ’80s and then moving into the 2000s, the world changed so much. People used to refer to Haystack, as I’m sure you’ve heard, the nudist colony up the road. There was this sense of hippies there and people running around naked. The world changed, and I think because many more universities actually had craft programs or some aspect of craft programs, the field moved into the university and college realm. So, there was a lot of moving it out of practitioners first, the kind of studio basis of a lot of early crafts leaders who really were living a whole lifestyle. Some of them made their own homes. They had this kind of immersion in who they were as a craft artist in every aspect of their lives – the Sam Maloofs, even people who were teaching, like Wayne Higby – people that had a real sense of a totality about their being around their craft. When things moved into the university setting, some of the artists bridged that, but it changed to have much more of a connection to psychology, art history, philosophy, and other things that people were naturally studying at the same time. So, that couldn’t help but impact the way the craft field evolved. The fact that the American Craft Museum, which went through brutal changes and eventually kind of lost its initial identity, was still very strong in those early years. There were galleries everywhere showing the work, which don’t really exist anymore. One of the aspects that was really fun for me was to meet so many incredibly supportive and generous collectors, mainly through the board and the galas and the community events, and get to go into their homes and see their collections and see people living with this work who just adored it and see the influence and the joy that it brought into their lives. Because making this stuff is really hard work and a lot of the time – and it’s expensive, and you’re not making a lot of money, but you’re putting in so many hours and expensive materials. A lot of it could have felt very out of proportion to what you were having to put into it and what was coming out the other end, whether you liked the piece or someone liked the piece or not. But to see collectors living with this work with such joy and also their interest in connecting to the makers and understanding – some of the collectors that I met at Haystack would say, “I wish I could be a maker, but I can’t. So, I live through your works,” not just me, but “you” in the general sense. That was such a lovely thing. It expanded the purpose. It’s not just about selling it. It’s just about the idea [of] how these objects live in the world. So, that was another really nice aspect. I think Stu, and then I think Paul [Sacaridiz] carried this forward as well, made big efforts to really connect with the community in new ways and to bring in programs that were specifically for Deer Isle or high schools working with OUT Maine, which was a fantastic success. A lot of programs that were geared towards making Haystack a resource for the community rather than an oddity in the community was such a smart move and really changed the way that Haystack was perceived. I think now it’s perceived as a jewel and an asset rather than something weird up the hill.

GK: [0:27:48] Yeah. When you say galleries everywhere were showing the work, is that more broad across the United States? You were going to collectors’ homes all over. So this wasn’t even just Deer Isle-specific?

RS: [0:28:03] Well, it was Deer Isle in terms of Haystack, except for board meetings, which were sometimes at collectors’ homes in other parts of the world – sorry – other cities and not parts of the world, but parts of the US. But often, when we would have a board meeting in another location, we would tour collectors’ homes. Of course, anyone that we saw had a connection to Haystack because that’s how we got access to their homes. So, I was able to see a lot of personal collections that really came through the Haystack connection.

GK: [0:28:44]Yeah, that’s wonderful.

RS: [0:28:44] There was a big overlap with Haystack and the [James] Renwick Alliance [for Craft] – a lot of the same people. So, some of those things would be through the Renwick, but they would have a Haystack connection. A lot of them came through Haystack specifically.

GK: [0:29:01] So, your time teaching and New Works, can you talk a little bit about the influence on your own work and studio practice that Haystack has had?

RS: [0:29:16] Yeah. The teaching, for me, was not so much about how I developed my own work, but it was always about giving back. My approach to teaching was not that I had this body of information that I needed to transfer to someone else. What I felt like my particular approach to teaching was that I had an ability to open up doors for people to walk through themselves and that what I was trying to do was help people to feel more confidence in their own creative abilities and then give them tools to enhance those creative abilities, certainly helping with technical stuff. But a lot of my teaching and the kind of courses I chose to teach there were about breaking through design barriers, breaking through – what I felt was a successful class was having students leave with five great new ideas that they couldn’t wait to do once they got back to their other places of making. There was nothing better than seeing one of my former Haystack students having a show somewhere. I could see the seeds of something that had developed in the class in a finished object in the show or on a postcard, or they would send me pictures and say, “I finally finished that piece.” That, for me, was how I wanted to teach at Haystack. It wasn’t so much – I mean, there were other faculty that were doing certain technical things and focuses, which was really interesting. But that wasn’t my approach because I just felt like everybody needed a range of techniques and skills, and that really what I was after was helping people find the core of their creative impetus and helping them to develop that. Plus, because most of my teaching at RISD was with graduate students – ninety-five percent of it was with graduate students – I was experienced in having people at a certain point in their career ready to make the next leap. My courses tended to be about that. My own creative development happened a lot at New Works. In fact, I had one solo show in the ’90s, and the main three pieces that constituted the flavor of that show were developed in New Works and quick sketches. So, I felt this real freedom and ability to really let my mind wander into new territory myself, doing for myself what I was trying to teach students how to in New Works. I also played with weird materials. I remember one time I was there; I worked the whole time in paper and twigs and things that were more two-dimensional than three-dimensional, although they had a three-dimensional quality to them. But really pushing myself into new areas that then, in retrospect, helped me to understand my other work better. It wasn’t necessarily that my work would move into this new area, but I’d bring that new knowledge into my existing work. So, it was very productive for me.

GK: [0:33:08] It sounds like there were some tangible outcomes from that, like the show that you had. You then sort of had a whole other life with Haystack, which was as a board trustee. Right?

RS: [0:33:32]Yeah.

GK: [0:33:33] So that’s like a whole – you’ve talked a little bit about some of those experiences, too. How did that happen? What inspired you to become a part of the board?

RS: [0:33:47] Well, I always really wanted to be on the board because I loved Haystack, and I felt like I could contribute to the board. When Alphonse was a board member, he really saw a lot of his role as advocating for the wood areas. I kind of started with that attitude, but it got much broader much more quickly for me. I loved dealing with – it was interesting because the two directors that I worked the closest with were Stu and Paul, and they had different philosophies about how the programming was done and the role of the program committee, which I was often on. I was also – a lot had to do with building and grounds and dealing with the studio spaces, etc. I loved the people on the board, and I loved the way that everyone there was a hundred percent committed to Haystack’s success. I would see these people four times a year, which was more than I was seeing my own family, extended family. It became a kind of family, and we couldn’t wait to see each other and catch up on each other’s lives. It was just such a productive and caring community. I really treasured my time as a trustee. So, I was on for nine years. I think I left – I can’t remember which stint, but I was president for a while. I left for nine years and then came back on for nine years. So, my boardship extended over that really long period of time, basically my whole adult life, because it was twenty-seven years, eighteen on and nine off. But even during the nine years between my two board stints, I was involved and went to events, came up to the school, and went to galas. When I was recently made a life trustee, I can’t explain how meaningful it was for me. There’s a lot of thinking that happens as you age about aging itself, and there was this aspect of it that felt like, oh my gosh, this means I’m really old now. This has been the end of a long trajectory. But that was pretty fleeting compared to the honor of just being forever affiliated with an organization that I cared so much about and that had contributed to making so much impact in so many people’s lives. The meaningfulness of that and the relationships that I built there are ongoing. It was just so meaningful to me to get that accolade and to acknowledge, in a formal way, my lifelong commitment to a place. That was just really special. I was very involved in the transition when Paul came in because it had been such a long prior directorship. Paul brought a really, I think, complementary but different approach than Stu, and I think made some really interesting advances in the campus, really upgraded it. At that point, I got involved with the dorms and the furniture project. We made all the furniture for the dorms, which included beds, different configured beds and storage, clothes storage drawers, and side tables. That was such a fun project, being really focused on having stayed in those cabins so much and knowing some of how people use those spaces, but also making something that reflected the kind of values of Haystack in terms of material use and sustainability and flexibility. Instead of a chest of drawers, we made drawers that rolled under the beds that you could roll out and put things in. So, some people probably put art supplies in, and others maybe put clothes, but it was this sense of making the furnishings represent the experience of being with Haystack and also make it nicer, hopefully make them esthetically part of this very esthetic place. So that was a real pleasure. Working on that, Paul was very supportive of that whole process. Then, I wasn’t officially on the search to bring in Perry [Price], but I was sort of an auxiliary part of it. I met the finalists and interviewed them. They were great candidates, so it was tough, but I just felt like Perry brought some things that were really needed at the specific moment that that search was happening. I haven’t had the opportunity to – he’s only been there for a short time, but it seems like he’s doing something important. He’s doing a really great job of taking things forward. Watching the success of the fundraising that I think Stu initiated, and Paul really took forward, Perry is cultivating as well. The incredible programs that those things allowed [inaudible] some of the renovations, the capital improvements, so many aspects of scholarships, which are so key. All of those things were so important to making Haystack not become a dilettante environment but really making it relevant to different generations and different economic groups, which added richness and complexity, too. It was one thing to just say you have scholarship funds, but then actually getting people there, getting the materials, the complexity of really thinking through what it meant to be a student there, were all things that I think advanced over the time that I was affiliated with Haystack in really good ways. Even having a library and a place where – having internet, all of these things that change over time – the Fab Lab, which was both a necessity for many different people who were using digital fabrication techniques in their work, but others who wanted to learn or dabble in it and also as a community bridge, so that people could come off-season and use the Fab Lab on the island as a resource. All of those things were huge advancements for the institution, but still kept its core identity. It never became something that it wasn’t always. That was really nice. Even with these new facilities and ways of being there in terms of access to things, it never felt like it was losing its identity.

GK: [0:42:17] Yeah. I think the access and the outward-facing part is an interesting change at Haystack, where it is a little bit more interconnected now – not too much. You still can’t really access wi-fi everywhere on campus. But the feeling, at least it seems to me, as someone who’s done a lot of these interviews and has been there in a lot of different iterations of my life, that there’s a sense of people come and don’t want to necessarily access the outside world. So, you have the access now, which is good. But it is very different than – well, let’s say when you were there in the ’90s. Can you briefly just describe what it was? How did you communicate with folks who were not at Haystack? Did you communicate that with them?

RS: [0:43:23] Yeah. I mean, as little as possible. But there was the confessional, the phone booth, which at certain times, like dinner time and stuff, usually had a line. I had a couple of hard things happen, where a family member had to go into the emergency room. So, I got a call from the dining hall saying, “Who’s Rosanne? There’s a message for you.” It wasn’t like you were totally isolated from the outside world, although getting from Deer Isle to an emergency situation was crazy. It was really far away. I think there was this sense of going there to be away, and most people didn’t want those outside influences as much. I was worried that having people bring cell phones and actually having service there would change that. For the first couple of years, it didn’t matter; you couldn’t use them until you got into Bangor or something. The internet, the access – the signal has improved, so people can actually use cell phones. I was afraid of that change, but honestly, the way people use them there, it’s not like when you’re looking for something nearest me. There’s nothing nearest you in Haystack. It was a little bit of a bump, but it didn’t really ruin anything or take away the magic or the sense of being away.

GK: [0:45:11] Yeah. The confessional is such a funny time capsule. [laughter]

RS: [0:45:18] It was such a great thing. I remember also a lot of people had not – I am someone that has spent a lot of time in the outdoors. I like to hike and bike in the outdoors. But I had students who really hadn’t spent time in the woods. So, we would go on these walks, or sometimes someone would lead a walk through the woods. Stu used to do that regularly. Some of them were so nervous and amazed. It was unfamiliar territory. I remember I asked the students at one point in one of the early parts of one of my classes to bring something in, like a found object or something, and someone said, “I found this amazing thing in the woods,” and they brought in this construction of twigs or something that was this shape. And they said, “Look at this. Look at this amazing thing that formed in nature.” I said, “I think that might be somebody’s work of art. I think you just brought in an installation.” They’re like, “Oh my goodness,” and they moved it back. But that naivete about what could happen in the woods or how things formed was real for some. There were two outstanding memories about – well, three actually – outstanding memories about being in those woods. One was standing next to a tree in the wind, and the root system is so shallow that you moved – the roots actually made you sway with the tree. If you did it on a windy day, you could actually feel like you’re a tree or a part of something that was really cool. Another one was actually with Lissa, walking in the woods, taking a walk together, and noticing little, tiny mouse nibbles in the mushrooms, just little teeth marks. The third thing, which was really amazing, was when I was there for New Works a couple of times, I actually slept out on the rocks. You would think that the rock would be really hard, but because of the tide moving under the rocks and this subtle shift, it was actually quite non-rigid. It’s hard to explain, but there was this sense that you were kind of moving with the sea just slightly. I had some of my best nights of sleep out there. I had a sleeping bag, so it wasn’t like I was directly on the rock, but I used to really love that sensation of sleeping on something which, in my mind, I thought was so hard as a rock, but actually was a very comfortable way to sleep. A lot of events on the rocks – the fires and the dinners and the parties out there and just sitting and staring, and all the ways that the bay changed from night to night. And the lobstering that was going on there. Learning that there were more islands in Maine than in the Caribbean. Just all of this stuff that was very magical over the years. So, when I would come back to Haystack, I would always drop my bag and then run down to the end of the deck and just look out and sort of say, “I’m back,” kind of feeling, and then come back up. It was a rhythm that you couldn’t wait to get back to because it had so much resonance when you were there.

GK: [0:49:26] Yeah. That’s so lovely. Not to say it’s spiritual by any means if it doesn’t feel that way, but it has the undertones of this ritualistic kind of going back and being in a place.

RS: [0:49:41] Definitely. There’s a subconscious knowing of this place that is spiritual, not maybe in a religious way, but in a very personal way.

GK: [0:49:56] Yeah. And I love the – it sounds like, as a furniture maker, maybe sleeping on the rocks was thinking about material. It’s a material, right?

RS: [0:50:05] Exactly. In one session, I asked students if they had ever kayaked in the sea, and only one had. I booked a morning kayak tour in Stonington for the whole class, and it was magical. Such a new perspective to see the land from that vantage point. And a great group bonding time. The sensation of being in that fantastic water up there directly showed up as an influence in several projects made in our session.

GK: [0:50:06] That’s great. So, that segues into just thinking of Haystack in a broader context and outside of your own personal experiences. What you saw or what you theorized – but I think for you, really, you probably saw this as a teacher and someone who was at RISD for so long working with students. Thinking about what people take away from their time at Haystack, could you speak a little bit about that? I know it’s a broad question.

RS: [0:50:44] For the most part, I think being immersed in a community of makers like that, eating together, doing nighttime programming together, was so remarkable for everyone that people left feeling so fulfilled and nourished. It wasn’t true for everyone. It would never be. I remember I convinced a number of other faculty at RISD in my department, who were also big Haystack advocates, to start a scholarship together. So, we started a RISD scholarship to help bring a RISD person to Haystack in the summer. I remember one of the earlier recipients of the scholarship saying that she didn’t really connect with the place. It was a little disappointing. She didn’t really have that great of an experience, and it shocked me because I felt like, how could you not? I was so excited that this person was going. But I think that happens. I mean, not everyone is in the right class or in the right state of mind. But I’m pretty sure that person went back and finally really connected with the place. There were interesting – one of the courses that – one of the sessions that I taught was a session where we did collaborations. It was the session where Bill Daley brought in, I think, a goat and had it set up on the deck. His class had to draw the goat every day. This farmer was bringing the goat in and out every day. It was interesting. People were collaborating with people in other media. I think actually Alphonse and Jamie Bennett did one, too. Jamie Bennett is an enamellist and also does two-dimensional work. They did something together. It actually led to some collaborative artwork being made, too, which was interesting. Stu and Susan were collaborating. So there was this sense of collaboration that happened, sometimes guided and sometimes just serendipitously that was really interesting. The walkthroughs at the end of each session and the auctions were always such great ways to celebrate what had happened there. The auctions went through a lot of changes, some more successful than others. Some of them felt not so great for the artists because their work was selling for really embarrassingly low amounts of money. But in other iterations, those auctions were really spirited and fun. I think people, for the most part, are left really transformed, and it’s why certain people came back again and again. They needed that dose of transformation or that dose of inspiration that came from the place. It came from the caliber of the faculty. It came from the commitment of the studios. I had been to other summer workshops, sometimes teaching, sometimes there with someone, and I don’t think that people worked as hard as they did at Haystack. In some of the other summer workshops I was in, people would work until dinner and then drink all night long or party. Some of that happened at Haystack, but not a lot. People couldn’t wait to get back into the studio. The amount of work that happened in one session, a good session in one week, was sometimes equivalent to what an elective class over a whole semester would accomplish in a different kind of academic situation. The dedication of students. It wasn’t like you had to make them work. They couldn’t wait to get back to work. That was really part of the reason that I think people left with this transformative experience; they fully dedicated themselves to whatever they were working on during the time that they were there. In a two-week session, it was amazing to see the kind of output of some of the artists who were there. In some of the studios – different from others – every studio was different, but sometimes, faculty were also making alongside of their students. So, seeing the generosity of showing your process and your techniques and your failures and your successes with students, that didn’t necessarily happen in other kinds of academic environments. That was also really interesting to see. The faculty were always great, at least – when I taught there, I never had the experience of a jerky faculty member. They were always really kind to each other and really interested in each other’s techniques and work and what was happening in their studio. As a teacher, too, there was this sense of sharing about, “Oh, I did this project,” and it was really interesting to see what happened and getting ideas from each other. It was not just infusing work as an artist but also as a faculty member.

GK: [0:56:55] Yeah. What was brought to mind when you were speaking is almost relating – sometimes work, even a studio practice, can feel like work, drudgery, or something. There’s something that I think happens in the Haystack model for many people, not everyone, but for many people, where you are compelled to be staying – it’s almost a badge of honor. “We were up until two in the morning working on this thing.” Maybe there’s something, maybe just speaking to what systems are in place there, that kind of allows for you to be that immersed in work.

RS: [0:57:48] But that’s connected. There’s not a lot else to do, too, at night. People don’t go out and see the town at night. Maybe someone would go out to dinner. But, even that, why go out to dinner? Because there’s dinner there for you. And dinners are really fun at Haystack. There was always a group sitting around the fireplace at night. But that was okay, too. They were learning from each other, sharing stories, and getting to know artists in other areas from other parts of the world. I think some of the conversations that happened around the fireplace were really an important part of people’s experience. There were also a lot of people that did not have access to a studio, and so they just wanted to take advantage of every minute, or they were really trying to learn something, learn a technique, or learn how to do something, and it took a lot of practice and trial and error. So, there were many reasons to be working a lot and not a lot of reasons to – I mean, there were also people that went into their cabins and wrote or read at night. It wasn’t like everyone was maniacal about working. But I would say most people were just so happy to have taken the time to be there and immerse themselves in their studio work that they wanted to savor every minute that was available to them. There were –

GK: [0:59:22] Yeah, that makes – oh, go ahead.

RS: [0:59:24] I was going to say there were some partner experiences where there was someone who was a better artist who was taking a class with a particular faculty member, and then they had a partner who was there, who was taking a class to accompany their spouse or partner or whatever. Some of those people were less serious. I mean, I had a few in the woodshop who were the husbands of weavers, or jewelers, or something. They had little hobby shops in their garages, and they weren’t the same kind of maker as a lot of their classmates, but they had life experiences to share, or they were very open to being – I remember one guy who made things from plans from Popular Mechanics, and I challenged him to make something that was really his own. He made this incredible little thing, a little box. He was so tickled with it because he never thought he had the ability to make something where he wasn’t following a plan. He also got a lot of positive feedback from his much more experienced-creatively classmates. That made them feel good, too, to see how they influenced him. So, the mix of students, with the preponderance of them being very serious students, was a really nice formula.

GK: [1:00:59] Well, yeah. That relates, too, to this question: are craft schools like this necessary institutions within the broader craft movement? So, I’ll pose that question to you with the addendum of thinking about how they’re really different than academia, right? Haystack, you can go – if you submit an application, you pay a fee, and you get accepted, you can go to an all-levels wood class that you might not have a lot of experience. It’s not an institution that requires an entry essay or a portfolio for most sessions. Some do, but they’re not as prevalent.

RS: [1:01:54] Well, it’s a rarity now. The whole DIY [do-it-yourself] movement and a lot of the television shows that were about making made it seem like you could be sort of flippantly a craftsperson, and that’s fine. I mean, there is that sort of arts and crafts, not in the former turn-of-the-century way, but in the way of hobbyists that is valid too. But the Martha Stewart magazines, with all the recipes and directions, are very different than pursuing a personal point of view. I think Haystack was much more geared to the latter. But there’s also just the joy of making, and that’s fine. Not everyone has to be professional about it or even like an avid hobbyist, but the importance of having an institution that does value the highest levels of craft and that helped to evolve the studio craft traditions into the future is something so important, and it’s partly why I went on the board because they allow forms of expression through making and through the knowledge of the hands and the connection to materials that are becoming increasingly void in a higher percentage of people’s lives. So, it’s not a preservation thing; it’s an evolution thing. To keep that evolving in contemporary times and forward is so critical to our humanity that I think the role of a school like Haystack is increasingly more important. I remember reading, probably twenty years ago, an article in The New York Times; it was an op-ed piece that a woman wrote talking about the importance of making and saying that the kind of gurus of the future, the leaders, the revered people would be those people that could use their hands because everything in our educational systems was removing those capacities, and we didn’t need to make our own bread, or we didn’t need to make our own homes or our own furniture, our own clothing or whatever anymore. So, the few people that knew how to make a violin or knew how to make a piece of jewelry would become revered because that knowledge would be so rare. It was kind of a dystopian view of the future, but it had some connection to realities that are increasingly true. Yet, when that happens, there’s this big drive to revert to the notion of working with one’s hands because it’s so satisfying and because you learn so much about yourself – there’s a book by Frank Wilson called The Hand, who’s been to Haystack and spoken there and loves Haystack. One of the things that he says in the book is that in human evolution, when the vestigial thumb evolved, the hand all of a sudden could do a lot more than it could before there were thumbs. At that point in time, the brain expanded dramatically in human evolution, and it was almost like the brain needed to be bigger to keep up with what the hand was learning. I love that image and have used it a lot in lectures that I’ve given, talking about the importance of hands-on learning because there are things that just can’t translate in other ways. There was an interesting session at Haystack with MIT that I attended at one of the conferences. There was a surgeon who brought out a robotic finger that was doing surgery, heart surgery, and we all got to play with it and tried to have it make a circle. He was commenting on the fact that artists were so much more adept than some of the physicians at actually making shapes with this thing because we knew the motion of making a true circle. But he also said something really interesting, which was that when surgeons were first using the robotic finger, they were having a really hard time because when they used the tool themselves, they could feel the heartbeat, and it made them realize they were working on a human being, and it gave them a heightened sense of responsibility. Whereas the robot, of course, was just doing its job. Again, that was sort of a metaphor for this sense of the perceptual intake that our hands provide. When you translate that to materials and the inherent individuality of character that materials have, that combination is so majestic. In parts of the world or cultures or in economic groups where they don’t have access to that experience, there’s just something lost that can be gained through that access. Haystack is a place that is carrying that forward in such important ways.

GK: [1:07:57] Yeah. Do you have visions for the future? Or hopes and dreams of Haystack’s place in the craft community? You’ve had so many accomplishments while you were on the board, and I just wonder if there are things that you hope for in the future of this institution.

RS: [1:08:28] The number one thing would be just access, which has always been a thing of mine. Even when I was in my own institution, it was a huge focus, and I was able to achieve the most scholarship funding cumulatively since the start of the institution. That was really important to me. Also, some sponsored graduate education, which had never happened before, and some faculty, new faculty appointments that were funded. I think doing that at Haystack – funding faculty who maybe couldn’t afford – I mean, they get paid, but having other kinds of tiers of faculty remuneration and also scholarships. My daughter, who’s very active politically, was always concerned that Haystack had an entry fee, saying that she didn’t think the school realized that fifty dollars, or whatever it was, was an impediment for people who were applying for scholarships. The scholarship program is fairly robust at Haystack. But having that be far more robust would be a dream of mine. I think the other thing that could be really interesting would be to bring Haystack out into the world. It’s so much about its place, but it’s also about its history and its values. And I think taking Haystack on the road maybe once a year where there are faculty that really know Haystack, and that could work together to form an almost Haystack-like curriculum that they could do in other locations around the world would be a way to expand Haystack’s reach. I think Haystack has done it in reverse by bringing people in from international locations to Haystack, which is great because the site is so special. But there’s something beyond the site that I think could live in the world in other ways and that I think could be really exciting. Beyond that, I think just sustaining itself and keeping the quality and the caliber with greater access to it would be enough. It doesn’t need to change. It needs to evolve as everything does. But I think sustaining it with care, as has been done to the environment and the campus, and creating more pathways for participating with Haystack would be what I would hope for the future.

GK: [1:11:27] Yeah. That access piece seems like something that has changed more recently and is continuing to evolve. But yeah, thanks for providing some of those insights. I don’t want to keep you past 1130. I wonder if there are any stories or memories that have come up for you as we’ve been talking that you’d like to share or anything that is kind of rattling around from stirring some of this that you haven’t said that you’d like to say.

RS: [1:12:01] Well, I had a flash of Bill Daley’s paper hats. Everybody wearing them, the little paper hats that he made. Bill Daley was a very influential teacher. I loved being there when he was there. He was a real gem of a teacher. Watching how much dedication he gave to his students was really so moving, as were many faculty who were there. I remember working in the blacksmith shop alongside Billie Tsien and Tod Williams.  These are incredibly successful architects working next to me in the blacksmith shop. We were all complete beginners and just laughing at our ineptitude but our bravery in trying out blacksmithing.

The cookies were incredible. The kitchen staff. I loved the kitchen staff. I used to always go back and talk to them, particularly as a trustee, because there were different iterations of food at Haystack, and some of them much better than others. But the absolute dedication of that staff and making sure that everyone ate well was really fantastic. Making hundreds of cookies and amazing big meals that somehow still felt like home cooking. Lino Tagliapietra, being there with his wife, making breakfast for everyone and pizza for everyone. The sense of how that built community and how cooking for ninety people or whatever it was – eighty or ninety people – is not an easy thing. They just went in there and did it like they did this every day. Special attention to people on their birthdays. A lot around food because that’s when everyone got together. I remember – this might have been – I can’t remember if it was a New Works or a session. But I remember the bacon, the trays of bacon. I remember we did a poetry workshop, and Liz Collins, who’s a great textile artist, wrote a poem called “Ode to Bacon.” I remember feeling like she really captured something that was in everybody’s mind but that people didn’t focus on. I probably will think of a hundred more once we get off the phone. But those are just things that have come to mind while we’ve been talking.

GK: [1:15:28] I don’t always do follow-ups, but I’m totally able to. So, if there’s a bunch of stuff, too, when we get the transcript – because I think, for me, sometimes it’s like sitting for an hour and a half or an hour-fifteen is enough. And then we can do another thing. But I’m also going to talk to Lino, so that’ll be really cool. [laughter]

RS: [1:15:59] Tell him that his eggs and his pizza made a big impact.

GK: [1:16:05] I remember that as a kid, even. Yeah, we would go for those. That was really special. Really, really great. Yeah.

RS: [1:16:17] Yeah. And also –

GK: [1:16:19] Go ahead.

RS: [1:16:20] About the wastewater system. All the many years of discussions about the wastewater system, which was a big part of the agenda in every trustee meeting – anyway, it seems like that’s been solved.

GK: [1:16:34] I am deeply involved in the facilities side of that school, being Gene’s daughter, but I think some of those systems conversations and also the troubleshooting and ingenuity behind some of the decisions that were made is actually very important to capture.

RS: [1:17:11] To the function of the place. Just one other memory that comes to mind is the special quality of the meadows, the beach there, and the fact that Haystack was allowed to cross over and go there, which felt a little bit away from campus, but it’s still the same coastline. It just was like everyone’s private place. You went there, and those rocks were covered in colored lichen, and the way it was different every night, that beach, that was a really special little outpost of the campus.

GK: [1:17:56] Yeah, I think that’s probably many people’s favorite place on Earth who have been there.

RS: [1:18:04]

Absolutely.

GK: [1:18:06] Well, Rosanne, we’ll stop now.

RS: [1:18:07] Great. Well, [inaudible].

GK: [1:18:10] Yeah. It’s great to see you, too. I’ll stop this recording.