A Husband and Wife Work Together But Apart at Maxon Mills

Maxon Mills in Wassaic, N.Y., was a simple grain elevator in the 1940s, hard up against the train tracks because it was at the center of a livestock auction complex in this rural part of Dutchess County.

It is now at the center of the Wassaic Project, a bustling artist community. Co-director and artist Eve Biddle has her studio within the building’s white walls. 

Biddle and the other founding co-directors — Jeff Barnett-Winsby, Bowie Zunino and Elan Bogarin — started the Wassaic Project in 2008. Biddle clarifies the group’s initial intentions: “We wanted to make a space that really integrated artists with the community that was already here.”

Biddle said she loves her personal space in the mill because “it’s great to be able to integrate my art and my work and my life. There’s no separation of the different things that I do in my life.”

Drawings by her 18-year-old sister, who recently stayed with her for four months, hang on one wall. Her children’s art is framed, on her desk, next to images of birds that were a collaboration between Biddle and her husband, contributing Wassaic Project artist Joshua Frankel. 

On a separate wall is her latest project, the New Relics series (which was on display at the new Geary gallery in Millerton, N.Y.; other pieces will be shown at the Williams College Museum of Art in 2022). All the relics are handmade, mostly crafted from clay.

They are like things, she said, that you might find on a walk in the woods “and you might not know whether they were real or fantastical or manmade or made by nature or left behind by some animal or actually a bone or if it was healthy or diseased.” 

Downstairs in the same building is Frankel’s studio — which at the time of this interview was largely bare. An animator, a painter and a composer (among other artistic titles), his newest work had been transported to Sharon, Conn., covering the walls of  the Standard Space gallery. His solo exhibition “Emergent System” was on display from July 2 to Aug. 15. 

To talk about his space and his inspirations, Frankel spoke while walking from the Maxon Mills to the nearby Luther Barn, where the livestock auctions were held and where the animals were kept in small pens that are now studio spaces.

The Luther Barn now has a community garden surrounding it. Inside, the old auctioneering stage is now a presentation platform for Wassaic Project resident artists.

Perhaps most important on Frankel’s tour is the print shop inside the green building’s wooden walls. Frankel does a lot of his work here, as does Biddle. 

Much of Frankel’s work involves collaboration with other artists. For instance, at the heart of “Emergent System” is an 11-minute animated film. For it,  he created 1,001 drawings on 60 sheets of paper, working “in conversation” with other artists.

Choreographer Faye Driscoll staged the interaction of the bodies featured in the film; Missy Mazzoli composed the music (on six grand pianos) to which the film is synchronized.

Music and ideas are at the heart of another of Frankel’s collaborative projects: an opera called “A Marvelous Order” about New York City planners Robert Moses and Jane Jacobs.

“Robert Moses built most of New York’s highways, the housing projects, the public swimming areas — but many of his projects caused a lot of displacement. 

“Jane Jacobs was an urban theorist and activist, and her rise coincides with Moses’  fall,” Frankel’ said. The two visionaries had conflicting visions. Where Moses cared about infrastructure, Jacobs cared about people. “She wants to make the sidewalk bigger, he wants to make the street bigger.”

For Frankel, “it’s a story about who controls the shape of the spaces in which we live and how decisions  about what to build and what to destroy get made, by whom and why.”

Frankel’s favorite part of working in Wassaic is “being part of the community of artists here. Animation can be quite solitary, so being able to pick my head up and go jump in the creek with friends in the hamlet is something I really treasure.” 

During COVID-19, Biddle and Frankel also shared their workspaces with their children. 

“They’re pretty great sculptors and drawers,” Biddle said warmly; creating with them was “really fun.”

Books that Josh Frankel recommends

• “The Death and Life of Great American Cities” by Jane Jacobs

“Jacobs’ revelatory writings about what makes a neighborhood vibrant, fun and the kind of place where we want to live — and the ideas at the heart of our opera, ‘A Marvelous Order.’ She writes about Greenwich Village (where I spent much of my childhood), but the ideas apply just as well to small towns like Wassaic.”

• “Urban Legends: The South Bronx in Representation and Ruin” by Peter L’Official

“A new book considering how The Bronx appears in our culture — through art, film, literature, and even insurance photography. So thorough, thoughtful and loving, it reveals not only the gaps between images and reality but also, by extension, points us toward the critical importance of cultural representation in general.”

• “The Radiance of the King” by Camara Laye

“I just finished this novel, recommended to me by Eve’s 18-year-old sister, Penina, about a European man traveling in West Africa, written in 1954, by the brilliant Guinean writer and thinker. It is hilarious, devastating and spectacularly beautiful.”

Books that Eve Biddle recommends

• “Just Us” by Claudia Rankine

• “Bloodchild” by Octavia Butler

• “Alternative Histories: New York Art Spaces, 1960 to 2010” edited by Lauren Rosati and Mary Anne Staniszewski

Joshua Frankel, an animator who is collaborating on an opera about Robert Moses, has created a silkscreen model of the displacement caused by the building of New York City highways, housing projects and infrastructure. Photo by Anabelle Baum

Eve Biddle, artist, sculptor and painter, is working on a new series, called New Relics, featuring painted clay sculptures that mimic the appearance of stray items found in the woods.  Photo by Anabelle Baum

Photo by Anabelle Baum

Joshua Frankel, an animator who is collaborating on an opera about Robert Moses, has created a silkscreen model of the displacement caused by the building of New York City highways, housing projects and infrastructure. Photo by Anabelle Baum