Wassaic studios invite visitors

WASSAIC —Young people are always offended when someone of my generation compares a Happening to Woodstock — especially if it’s a Happening that involves art, music, an old farm in New York state and lots of long hair and loose-fitting clothes. So, I will not compare the Wassaic Project and its annual summer festival to Woodstock, even though it involves art, music, an old farm in New York state and lots of people with long hair and loose-fitting clothes. But if I were to make that comparison, I would mean it as a compliment.Here’s how the Wassaic Project works. In the town of Amenia, there is a hamlet (yes, a hamlet; it’s an actual governmental designation) called Wassaic. Wassaic is many things and it is nothing. It is a tiny little don’t-blink kind of a place where the center of town is not a church but a bar, called the Lantern Inn, where people gather from far and near to play pool every Wednesday night (if you come, bring your own stick). Wassaic was for most of its life an agricultural trading center.Its anchor buildings are a looming, angular building once known as Maxon Mills (for milling grain, not fabric); and a rangy, sprawling barn that was once owned by the Luther family and was used for auctioning off goats, chickens and cattle.For the past four years, Bowie Zunino, Eve Biddle and Jeff Barnett-Winsby have invited artists and musicians to come and create art in those former ag buildings, and to take part in a four-day celebration of the arts in August. The Wassaic Project Festival offers music, dance, literature, two-dimensional art, sculpture, performance art. There are installations in the former grain building — which was exquisitely restored by Bowie’s father, Tony Zunino (who lives in Kent and New York City) and his business partner, Richard Berry (who lives in Sharon and New York City). For the past two years there have also been artists in residence in Wassaic, working on longterm projects in what used to be pens for the livestock in the Luther barn. Their work is genuine and interesting and they are happy, even eager, to explain it to visitors who stop in for the monthly open studio tours (the last Saturday of each month, 2 to 4 p.m.).Some of the artists are there for a six-month stretch; others are there for just a month.On a Saturday, in June Chloe Watson from Baltimore, Md., was adding new watercolors to a collection of avatar-like hairstyles pinned up on the wall of her livestock pen/studio space. “I call it 73 Jerks,” she said, but with a disarming sweetness that tamed the ferocity of the title.In a larger pen down the hall, David Grainger (originally from Allentown, Pa., now living in Brooklyn) was building a small boat out of pink polystyrene. Eventually it will be covered with symbolic objects. He’s also plunking the faces of well-known media personalities on an expanse of paper that has been watercolored and collaged to look like ice floes in deep water. Ryan Frank (formerly of Brooklyn, now of Sharon) has a corner space that lacks light but has a double-height ceiling and a variety of barn textures: stone, wood, hay. He is using discarded wood palettes to create frames for oversized photos that are lit from behind. Adam Eckstrom of the duo Ghost of a Dream (formerly of Brooklyn, now of Wassaic) was carefully drawing the word “hope” on a wall in their studio, which has the most light and the most finished walls of almost any of the rooms in the barn. Eckstrom and his partner, Lauren Was, create art from the debris of other people’s dreams (thus, the name). Paintings and scupltures are made of castoff lottery tickets and discarded trophies, among other materials. The studio visits are fun and free (there will be one this. The summer festival, which is free and open to the public and is like, well, a 21st century Woodstock of the arts (shhh!) will be held from Aug. 5 to 7. Camping sites are available. To learn more, go online to www.wassaicproject.org.