Wassaic Project

Organizations

Wassaic Project

Organizations

Wassaic Project

Organizations

Wassaic Project

I’m a founding Co-Director at the Wassaic Project along with Bowie Zunino, Jeff Barnett-Winsby, and Elan Bogarin. When we started, we didn’t have a plan, but we had a lot of fun. We did want a community of emerging artists outside the competition of NYC and grad school where we could support each other and experiment. Since 2008 we’ve worked with more than 1,500 creatives. Read more about my story here and check out the Wassaic Project on our site.

I’m proud of all the work we do, and I’m extra EXTRA proud of our artists and our education program. I am endlessly grateful to the organizations and individuals and teams and minor miracles that have helped us along — sometimes a nudge, sometimes a heroic pushing the boulder up the mountain! Collaborations are why we exist.

These pieces are made instinctually drawing from a life of experience with illness, death, and our bodies incredible strength, resilience, and surprises. I started working with clay more seriously in the early 2000’s and made some significant installations with Bowie between 2007 and 2012. This series comes out of that—and strangely enough, writing this now, I realized that these have all been made since my kids were born. Go figure. They’re not directly about motherhood or birth, but that experience was transformative and beautiful but also disfiguring and made my body move and change in ways that still seem mysterious and just plain weird.

Maxon Mills

A band plays for an audience of attendees at the Wassaic Project festival.

Wassaic Project Summer Festival, 2018

A wide shot photograph depicts an audience watching a band outdoors at the Wassaic Project with a starry sky above them.

Wassaic Project Summer Festival, 2018

Mission

The Wassaic Project, a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization, uses art and arts education to foster positive social change. We nurture connections between our artists and our neighbors facilitating a mutual broadening of perspectives and respect across economic and cultural boundaries.

Several people who are participants in a retreat pose next to a pickup truck in the summer sunshine.

Hamiltonian Gallery Retreat

Vision

The Wassaic Project envisions a community in the Hamlet of Wassaic and its surrounding region that is socially inclusive, generous, cooperative, and economically vibrant.

We engage in a collaborative effort with members of our community to develop programs that are creative, experimental, and accessible across the economic spectrum.

We build local pride and community vitality by an informed sense of the past and a clear, contemporary, innovative, and compassionate look toward the future.

We foster the youth in our community and help them realize their full potential.

We aim to be financially stable with a creative staff and multiple partners — nonprofit, public, and private.

It is our hope that the work that we do in Wassaic will be shared nationwide and serve as a toolkit for community revitalization through the arts and the spirit of generosity. Above all else, we honor and respect our community.