Save the Date for the VAAS Fellows Luncheon 2022
Please join us for our Annual Fellows Luncheon celebration on Saturday, September 24th at the Silver Pavilion at the University of Vermont campus! You can contact Jeff Marshall at jeffrey.marshall@uvm.edu to RSVP for this exciting event.
You can download the RSVP form and return it along with a $25.00 check by mail to Jeff Marshall or you can pay online using the option below.
VAAS Fellows Luncheon
$25.00
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“Beer with a Painter”: Interview with VAAS Fellow Pat Adams in a Brooklyn Arts Magazine
We were excited to learn that Vermont artist and VAAS Fellow Pat Adams was recently interviewed by Jennifer Samet for Hyperallergic, an online Brooklyn-based arts magazine. Please enjoy the transcript of the interview below, courtesy of Hyperallergic.
You can see the original article published online here.
Pat Adams, “Out Come Out,” 1980, oil, isobutyl methacrylate, pastel, mica, eggshell and sand on linen, 80 x 80 inches (image courtesy of Alexandre Gallery)
What strikes me most about Pat Adams, whom I visited at her Bennington, Vermont home, is her deeply appreciative nature. She communicates a sense of gratitude for a life in art, for her teachers, her family, and being a mother. This appreciation, it seems, is what allows her to truly see the beauty in the earth and nature, through layers of complication, chaos, and everyday labor. Connected to this is her consciousness of privilege. Adams recognized, in our conversation, her grandparents’ labor — working relatively barren land in Montana — but also the injustice that this land was taken from the Blackfoot Indians.
Adams’s abstract paintings are embedded with these layers. They include elegant arabesques and undulations, perfect circles, diamonds and star shapes. However, they also have networks of scrawled looping marks atop their ground. Adams incorporates grit into her paintings: mica, crushed eggshells, mother-of-pearl, and sand. This grit both sparkles and encrusts her surfaces. Recurring marks form pathways. They trace circles and record history: the steps others have taken on the same land, the markings they have left. The paintings reflect time in contemplation, and allow many forms, elements, and sensual experiences to gather, rather than one specific moment or place.
These collections and gatherings are physically present in Adams’s home and studio, where one sees tables and walls covered with fossils, shells, wood, cut fabrics, jars of pigments, grit and binder, shards of cut paper, quick sketches, clippings of art reproductions marked with diagrammatic notations, and stacks of records near a turntable.
Adams was born in Stockton, California, in 1928. She received a Bachelor of Arts degree from the University of California, Berkeley, in 1949, and also studied at the California College of Arts and Crafts and the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. In 1950, she moved to New York City and enrolled in the art program at the Brooklyn Museum Art School. She taught at Bennington College from 1964 to 1993, and served as Visiting Professor of Art in Yale University’s Master of Fine Arts program from 1990 to 1994. Adams had 20 solo exhibitions at the Zabriskie Gallery between 1954 and 1997. Her work is represented by Alexandre Gallery, where she is the subject of a presentation at the Independent Art Show from September 9–12, 2021. A solo exhibition of Adams’s work will be held in the spring of 2022 at Alexandre’s new space at 291 Grand Street, New York.
Jennifer Samet: Can you tell me about formative experiences with art from your childhood? I know that you have connected your experiences fishing with your father to some of your compositional ideas about painting.
Pat Adams: I grew up in Stockton, California. It is a port 70 miles inland. Fishing was a weekend family activity. Stockton has wonderful channels; in that area, two rivers came together and created a delta. The earth there was so rich that the San Joaquin Valley was a magnificent agricultural center. We all ate all the different kinds of fish. In fact, in those days, there my dad could go to a stream with a fishing tool called a gaff, reach over a bridge, and bring out a big salmon. What was important to me was looking, as we sat on the banks of the river, to watch the fronds of a Tule plant twist and arc in the wind or bend under the weight of a red-winged blackbird. It was so quiet.
My grandmother lived with us, and thank goodness, she was there to support my interest in art. She gave me a full adult painting set when I was 12. Her mother painted, and I have one of her paintings. They loved art, and they all played the piano. They were living in the most godforsaken area in Montana at the end of the 19th century. Making something out of nothing, and being inventive, was something that came to me from both sides of my family. If you find a piece of string, you’re going to make something out of it.
I could take my bicycle and go down to the Haggin Museum in Stockton. I saw paintings when I was 10 years old. In that little museum are two paintings by James Baker Pyne, who was Turner’s only student. When, later on, I saw Turner in the Tate, I thought, I know who this is. It was one of the very fortunate things that occurred in my life.
Another one was being taken by my history teacher to see the opening ceremony of the United Nations at the Opera House in San Francisco, in the spring of 1945. The idea of one world — E. Pluribus, Unum, one of many — was a tremendous influence on me. The two atomic bombs were dropped that summer.
JS: You studied at the University of California, Berkeley. Who were some of your meaningful teachers?
PA: The faculty I studied with at Berkeley all studied with Hans Hofmann. I experienced a kind of proto-formalism in the art courses I took there. Therefore, I already knew about these ideas before I came to Bennington College, where Clement Greenberg had strong ties.
The person I loved working with was Max Beckmann, for just two months before he died. I studied with him at the Brooklyn Museum Art School in New York. He was a lovely fellow. He hardly spoke English; his wife would come around and talk. He would stand and draw over your work. That’s how he taught. What I learned from him was the wonderful concentration in how he would stand. You felt it was coming from his feet. We would walk and talk together after class; I remember us standing over the subway vent across from the Brooklyn Museum, because it was warm there.
I always had wonderful teachers. You should never underestimate luck. It’s probably the most incredible thing that happens, fortuna [good fortune] matched with sapienza [wisdom].
Every summer between university semesters at Berkeley, I would go to some place, like the Art Institute of Chicago, to study painting. But I also loved political science, anthropology, paleontology, and physics. I have these interests which I feel have fed my imagination. The imagination synthesizes all of our capacities. It picks up our sensibility, our feeling, our knowledge.
JS: Can you tell me more specifically about how the sciences have fed your work and your ideas?
PA: Everything I took from is really about the beginning. Physics is about the atom, which is two pieces of dirt hitting each other, Lucretius says. That is how the planets started. To watch how form modulates over time, and how time changes forms, is compelling. It helps formulate certain questions. My subject matter has been led by questions, wondering how things begin. My subject matter is qualities intrinsic to form.
I’m not a scholar, so I don’t really follow through the entire investigation. I come across a little thing, and think about it. That’s why I use the word “quiddities” to refer to the things I pick up and have an interest in, which may not have a name. I have a collection of these “what-nesses.” These bits and pieces, out of context, are fractured, like a little shard. But as they collect, they turn into forms that I want to use. For example, undulation is something that has mesmerized me forever.
JS: Albert Barnes’s text, The Art of Painting, was significant to you. You were introduced to it by your Berkeley professor Margaret O’Hagan. What do you appreciate about this book?
PA: The Art of Painting was absolutely formative. Barnes was a chemist, so he thought of the formal components: color, shape, and line, as he did in chemistry. They were like carbon, nitrogen, and helium. That was such a lucid parallel; I think he was marvelously important.
JS: You made small-scale work in the 1950s and ’60s, a time when monumental paintings were championed. I wondered if this was connected to your interest in American visionary painters like Ralph Albert Blakelock and Albert Pinkham Ryder.
PA: I really like my small works most of all. I didn’t start making large paintings until the late 1960s, after I had moved to Bennington, and had the time, space, and money. But I think my interest in smaller-scale work may have been inspired by seeing the Lindisfarne Gospel manuscript in London, on a trip to Europe in 1951–52.
I was traveling so much that I had to work in a small size to fit into my suitcase and wooden paintbox. And the year I worked at home in Stockton, I worked in the laundry room on one of the trays over the sink. Also, I loved Quattrocento Italian painting. In 1948, I had spent a summer at the Art Institute of Chicago, where there was a corridor of Quattrocento paintings. The question of size as a topic was never of interest to me. I was thinking about the materials I had at hand, how I would pack my work and get it back to the studio.
JS: Was it during this early 1950s trip to London that you saw J.M.W. Turner’s paintings? What interests you, specifically, about Turner’s work?
PA: Yes, on the way home from Italy, we stopped at the Prado before going to London. I saw Hieronymus Bosch’s “Garden of Earthly Delights” (1490–1500), which really knocked me out, because of the punctuation of very sharp little shapes in white, blue, red, and black on a field of tertiary color. That influenced me. Of course, Joan Miró comes out of that. In London, we saw Turner’s paintings and watercolors. What I love is that when you look at the open glazes, nothing occurs except the slow shift of pink and orange — an amount and placement determined in relation to the format.
JS: How did your work start to evolve technically during your time in Bennington?
PA: In the 1960s I saw a show of Maurice Prendergast’s monoprints. I loved the withdrawal of the paint. I went home and got a 4 by 8 piece of Masonite and I painted on that, and then flipped it over and pressed it onto canvas. A loaded brush can be excellent in some ways, but very limiting in others. In the early 1970s, I had a student whose father worked at Chemfab. She brought me a 4 by 8 piece of a flexible material that was coated in Teflon. It was a good surface: I could paint on it; I could easily flip it, and imprint it. I have many different techniques that I can employ in painting.
The idea of moveable walls came to me from Angelo Ippolito. I met him early in the 1950s and went to his studio. He had an independent wall. When I came to Bennington, I had the carpenter here make me a moveable wall. The wall could also be brought down flat to the floor so that I could do things like imprint dust pigment, blot with ink, and then bring the painting back up. Large canvases started at the end of the 1960s and the ’70s.
I have the most marvelous situation here in Bennington, although I miss New York terribly. My experience in New York was really very brief, but what was grand about it was I always felt I was a New Yorker because of [art dealer] Virginia Zabriskie. We were so close, and like two girls going through a lot. I would stay with her when I went into the city. Somehow I never felt that I had moved to Bennington. But here I am. A family person. A citizen of this community. I taught here for 30 years. But in my mind, I’m really a one-worlder type.
JS: Yes, I know you continued to travel a lot; how did this impact you and your work?
PA: My second husband was a colleague of mine, Arnold Ricks, who was a history professor here at Bennington College. In 1973, we took off with my two sons on a four-month trip through Egypt, Iran, Turkey, and all of Europe. My friends all laughed and said, “You’re taking a man who’s not had children, who’s not been married before, with two adolescent boys.” They, however, were unaware that my sons, Matt and Jase, had asked me if we could take Arnold with us on my sabbatical.
As I run around to different places, I’ve been confirmed in how solid Homo Sapiens is. We all want similar things. A little while ago I came across the Sanskrit word for many-sidedness: anekantavada. We are all trying to reach truth. We have to listen to whatever we hear. We may disagree with it, but there could be an aspect of truth that can help us form an idea.
JS: You have studied connections between art and neuroscience. Can you tell me more about these ideas?
PA: Neuroscientists are continuing to determine that there are fixed locations in the brain waiting for stimulation. That is fascinating. As an artist, I have a strong sense of want. It’s not that I myself want. It is almost that there are certain things outside myself that are awaiting to be told, awaiting to be said, awaiting to be exercised.
Our physiology, for our health, wants to have the pleasure and engagement with experiences that only occur in dance, in music, in the arts. The climate is increasingly removing people from that kind of experience. Art experience is substituted by spectacle. It would be wonderful if we could start over again and let people know the great pleasures of texture, for instance. Paintings pose and solve questions that relate to our daily encounters. How much? What position? What is proportionate? When you look at a painting, you see those things exercised, so that you have a chance to experience all of those concerns safely, and with a happy ending.
I always wonder why in the world we have something like art, and flowers. It must have a survival benefit. Homeostasis is about equilibrium and wellbeing. Painting, by arriving at a sense of balance, is giving us the stability that we need to be able to continue. We are so concerned with social issues right now — which we do need to be concerned with. However, I don’t think that is art’s only role. We don’t respond to images of destruction with the sort of equilibrium that we need.
JS: Your work often explores recurrence and repetition. Why is that?
PA: It is one of the desires, when you think about music and dance, the making of a mark, the sense of beat, repetition, occurrence, interval. I think those elements of my work may reflect that I studied music and dance for 10 years as a child. You see this recurrence in nature, you feel it as you walk. The beats of a drummer in a marching procession are so moving. They settle everything down and allow us to contemplate, commune.
JS: How is the scientific concept of Just Noticeable Difference (JND) relevant to how you think about painting? I think about how two similar forms may overlap or intersect in your painting.
PA: I have taken this theory and pulled it out of context. It is the difference threshold: the minimum level of stimulation that a person can detect 50 percent of the time. When I came across JND, I thought it was a marvelous thing — to recognize distinctions. Recognizing similarity and difference is not only essential to navigate the world, but also essential to savor experience. That kind of exactitude, that kind of acuity, is necessary to really see and enjoy the richness out there before us.
If you simply glimpse something, recognize it, and give it a name, it is over. It is a very different experience from dwelling and noticing of what it consists. The New York Times recently published an article about the Black ceramicist David Drake. He made gorgeous dark pots. I couldn’t stop looking at them. That is marvelous. It holds you and you stay with it, and you try, but may never come up with a verbal, rational discussion of what that force was. I hope that everyone has that experience of being held by something, of having to question their own understanding.
Something that concerns me greatly is what I call the “visual transaction”: what goes on between the painter and the viewer. What are the steps of perception that need to take place so that the viewer gets to the point where they can reflect upon what has been released in their imagination?
JS: Can you tell me how your paintings begin?
PA: They start with an impulse. Sometimes I’ll just make a couple marks, or I’m remembering a particular blue. Then I may put the paper aside. Other times I may go a little bit further. Of course, when I work larger, I have to know more what I’m doing, and plan. But generally, I feel that I’m looking into the unknown.
Stockton, where I grew up, has a great deal of fog. You wait on a corner for a bus, and you just see white; there is nothing. Suddenly something starts to emerge. Painting is a little bit like that. I know that I am wanting, but I don’t know what it is. I just start and I add onto. The works continue to evolve. I never know where the end will be.
One of the things I like about painting is that you don’t know. The artist must have a willingness to not know, to have the tolerance and patience to await. Emergence is so important. It’s important that artists not return to the Renaissance where they were given the topics and subject matter. I think we need to provide evidence. Artists who sit and work quietly are allowing themselves to come into it. They are providing evidence of our species: what impels us, who we are, what we are, what we do, what we are thinking.
Honoring the Lives of Fellows Richard Lewontin, Jane Pitkin Curtis, and Sister Janice Ryan
Three VAAS Fellows have recently passed away, leaving behind legacies of service to their professional fields, their communities, and the world.
Please take a moment to read their stories below and join us in honoring their lives.
Richard Lewontin (1929-2021)
Richard Lewontin at Harvard University - photo provided from the Ernst Mayr Library and also from the archives of the Museum of Comparative Zoology at Harvard University
The American scientist Richard Lewontin, who has died aged 92, was intimately involved in some of the most important discoveries, and feuds, of evolutionary biology during the decades in which it passed from knowing that genes existed to specifying them in precise molecular terms.
His greatest contribution came in the 1960s, when he demonstrated the existence of very widespread genetic variation within species as well as between them. This research, with John Hubby at the University of Chicago, which had started with grinding up fruit flies, was extended to human beings in a paper published in 1972 that revealed the emptiness of traditional biological concepts of race.
Lewontin and those who followed his trail showed there is far more genetic diversity within “races” than between them. His work was not done directly on DNA, but by the analysis of the proteins that genes code for, establishing the combination of the four chemical bases of DNA instructing a cell to create a protein – before a single gene had been sequenced. This relatively simple experiment had far-reaching intellectual consequences, and nothing discovered subsequently has upset Lewontin’s conclusions.
However, if Lewontin’s work on genes considered as chemical sequences was uncontroversial, his views on genes as a metaphor – or an explanatory principle – became increasingly embattled with the rise of sociobiology, a discipline promoted by people working in the same building to which he had moved in 1973, the Museum of Comparative Zoology at Harvard. The two groups became embroiled in one of the longest and most bitter academic feuds of the recent past.
Lewontin, a ferocious polemicist from Marxist principles, had always been on the left. In 1971 he had resigned from the National Academy of Sciences, to which he had been elected three years earlier, in protest against its cooperation with the US Defense Department in the Vietnam war.
Lewontin fought against the world view championed by Richard Dawkins, which made genes or DNA the most important actors
Marxism gave him a perspective outside science, and a low view of his opponents’ motives. “As academics we are supported by society in a pretty nice way,” he once said. “To make a claim on the resources of society you have to do more than say ‘I want to satisfy my intellectual curiosity’ – that’s just a kind of masturbation that is not justified as far as I’m concerned. So you have to do politics. [And in politics,] science provides you with legitimacy. When you lose your legitimacy as a scientist, you lose your legitimacy as a commentator.”
He believed ruthless argument was central to the process of science, and arranged his lab at Harvard with individual offices set around a vast communal table so his students were forced to interact. He described his PhD supervisor, the great Ukrainian-American geneticist Theodosius Dobzhansky, as an “opponent” rather than a “mentor”, but added that both parties had enjoyed three years of arguing about everything.
This was not the case in the sociobiology wars. In the early 70s, a number of scientists began to explore the ways in which evolution may have shaped the instincts and the minds of animals, as well as their bodies. In fact, Lewontin himself had been the first to suggest the marriage of game theory with evolutionary theory that was central to the new field, back in 1961. But when his colleague at the museum, the entomologist EO Wilson, published Sociobiology, a huge book attempting to frame the understanding of humanity on the basis of evolutionary biology, Lewontin reacted with passionate scorn.
He thought it was bad science, which vastly underestimated the difficulty of tracing the links between DNA and behaviour. He also believed it was a cloak for rotten politics, and attacked it in savage personal terms: “Wilson’s book illustrates … the personal and social class prejudice of the researcher. Wilson joins the long parade of biological determinists whose work has served to buttress the institutions of their society by exonerating them from responsibility for social problems.
This was unfair, and for decades remained unforgiven.
For many years Lewontin fought against the worldview championed by Richard Dawkins, which made either genes or DNA the most important actors in it. He and his colleague Stephen Jay Gould launched an influential attack on the idea that everything that has evolved must have been singled out by natural selection. With the British biologist Steven Rose and with his friend Leo Kamin he wrote a book attacking sociobiology, Not in Our Genes (1984). His essays in the New York Review of Books eviscerated the project of evolutionary psychology.
Lewontin’s brutal polemic manner was counterbalanced by remarkable kindness and honesty in his professional life. He refused to take any undeserved credit for his students’ work and they repaid him with love and admiration, even when they disagreed with him.
Born in New York, Richard was the son of Lilian and Max Lewontin, a cloth broker. At Forest Hills high school he met Mary Jane Christianson; and their long, devoted marriage, from the age of 18, ended only with her death, three days before his.
He gained a biology degree (1951) at Harvard, a master’s in mathematical statistics and then his PhD (1954) at Columbia University. Before going to Chicago he held faculty posts at North Carolina State University and the University of Rochester, New York state. Once back at Harvard, he remained professor of zoology and biology until 1998.
He is survived by his sons, Timothy, David, Stephen and James, seven grandchildren and a great-grandchild.
-Andrew Brown
Steven Rose writes: Hilary Rose and I first met Dick Lewontin through the campaign against the Vietnam war. In 1969 we had been in Hanoi with Dick Levins, Lewontin’s longtime collaborator and friend, so when Lewontin came on sabbatical to England, it was natural he should make contact. Levins and Lewontin were members of Science for Vietnam, a group of students and academics that soon morphed into Science for the People, with its much broader critique of science under capitalism, while we had been among the founders of its close cousin, the British Society for Social Responsibility in Science. When Penguin proposed to Lewontin that he write a critique of sociobiology and genetic reductionism he approached me as co-author, along with the psychologist Leo Kamin.
The result was Not in Our Genes, planned and written in sessions in our Yorkshire farmhouse, Dick’s lab in Cambridge and his and Mary Jane’s cabin in upstate Vermont. His lab was a ferment of scientific and political activism, two floors up from Gould in the basement with the sociobiologist EO Wilson’s lab sandwiched between them. Wilson was said to avoid the elevator whenever Lewontin or Gould was in it – hence the title of one of Dick’s New York Review of Books essays: The Corpse in the Elevator.
Jane Pitkin Curtis (1918-2022)
Jane Pitkin Curtis and her husband, Will Curtis
Leaving the world a better place was one of Jane Pitkin Curtis’ constants in her 103 years of life. An artist, farmer, world traveler, book author and proud political activist, Curtis filled her days with meaningful experiences and interactions with others with whom she crossed paths. “She never slowed down until it was time to go,” Deborah Luquer, Curtis’ friend, said.
Curtis was an informed and involved citizen throughout her life, taking part in political protests and marches, including — until last October — attending Black Lives Matter vigils in Woodstock. Her knowledge about the world was fueled by her intense interest in people, their stories, thoughts and dreams.
“She had eagle eyes,” Luquer, an 82-year-old Hartland resident, said. “What made her different was her curiosity in others.” Curtis became hard of hearing as she got older, but she would always ask to hear a story told again because she had always been such an engaged listener, Luquer said. “She was full of character,” Luquer said. “She had a humility that isn’t around so much today.”
Even on her deathbed earlier this year, Curtis kept up with visitors, planned her own funeral, wrote her obituary ahead of time and remarked, “Who knew dying could be so much fun?” Curtis was born in Boston in 1918 and grew up in Massachusetts until she was a young adult.
While attending Smith College, where Curtis majored in art history and European history, she became a passionate artist and left behind a collection of beautiful watercolor paintings. In 1953, she moved with her husband, Will Curtis, to West Hartford where they became dairy farmers together.
Four years later, they moved to Hartland where they operated a dairy farm called Sugar Brook Farm. The Curtises also bought and ran the Yankee Bookshop in downtown Woodstock for 10 years in the 1960s, which led to them publishing a two-volume book series, The Nature of Things.
Inspiration for the books came from a radio show where Will advertised the bookshop on Vermont Public Radio; he shared short and amusing facts from nature, such as how many eyes a bee has or how high a smallmouth bass can jump out of the water. They saved the broadcasts, which Curtis later collected and made into a book.
In 1997, they moved from Hartland to Woodstock, where Curtis lived for the rest of her life, even after her husband’s death in 2011. The couple wrote and published several other books together on topics such as nature, birds and Calvin Coolidge, and they traveled across the world to buy new books and experience new things.
“They had very itchy feet,” Curtis’ daughter, Kate Donahue, a 77-year-old Hartland resident, said. At the airport, her mother “(would look) out at the planes thinking about where she would go next,” Donahue added.
Anthropology was another of Curtis’ interests, and it paired well with her love for travel. Curtis “set the path for me,” said Donahue, who works as an anthropology professor at Plymouth (N.H.) State University.
In addition to her husband, Curtis also took trips with her friend Ann Debevoise, a 96-year-old Woodstock resident. They traveled together to Italy and England, exploring the way things work in different places of the world. “We were there to get a feeling for the country and what people were doing and thinking,” Debevoise said.
Understanding the functioning of society and different communities was something Curtis achieved in part by being involved in her own. “She was such a dedicated person and a good citizen,” Debevoise said.
Curtis was involved in a number of local clubs and organizations, including the Green Mountain Club, the Hartland Planning Commission, the New Century Club in Woodstock and the Connecticut River Conservancy.
She loved reading political literature to educate herself and took ‘Learning Lab’ classes in Woodstock to explore historical topics and discuss current events.
Debevoise and Curtis attended the New Century Club together — a women’s group that met to discuss and write essays on history and politics — for many years. Debevoise was the club’s president from 2018 to 2020. The group members were given prompts, such as artist Henri Matisse’s quote “creativity takes courage,” and asked to reflect in writing. The group’s monthly meetings were informative and interesting, Debevoise said. “(Jane) and I shared ideas on (education) very strongly,” she added. When they were together, the friends chatted about the importance of the subjects that young children learn in their first years of school, such as history and geography.
Though she had some strong opinions, Curtis maintained an open-mindedness that allowed her to connect with people from all different walks of life, even if they opposed some of her viewpoints. “She was always kind to fools,” Luquer remembered. For someone of her generation, Curtis was a modern patriot, Luquer said. “She was a great patriot,” Luquer said. “She listened, and then she quietly went ahead and did what she thought was right.”
Throughout her life, Curtis embraced her citizenship as a political activist, participating in marches against the use of nuclear arms in Washington, D.C., protesting the Vietnam War in Montpelier, and, more recently, protesting the separation of immigrant families at the U.S.-Mexico border and attending the 2017 Women’s March in Montpelier.
In 2016, in her late 90s, Curtis helped form a community group which she called “Women for a Change,” which she led for a few years, encouraging voters to use their voice and be active political participants of their country.
She adopted a big tent philosophy and made sure to include a wide spectrum of political perspectives at Women for a Change meetings. She worried about the state of the country and its government. Still, she knew that in order to achieve a properly functioning democracy, appreciating and welcoming the diversity of thought in our society is a crucial step.
Through Women For a Change, around 25 members frequently “got together to ask what we could do for our country,” Luquer said. The group hosted speakers like Vermont Secretary of State Jim Condos, held mock elections and advocated for civics to be included and emphasized the curriculum at local schools.
She was “a mover, a shaker and an activist,” Donahue, her daughter, said. Her energy, self-sufficiency, sense of honor, integrity and intrepidness were a few elements of Curtis’ personality. “She felt guilty about being privileged,” Bill Donahue, Curtis’ son-in-law, said.
Curtis’ activism gave her a chance to realize her purpose, enact change and inspire others to do the same. “One of her last worries was: ‘Why am I so lucky?’ ” Luquer said.
In her hometown, she would walk the streets of Woodstock on her own, sometimes on walks for her health, sometimes as an activist. To honor her memory, funeral guests walked through the village of Woodstock as Curtis had done herself for so many years.
Sister Janice Ryan (1936-2022)
Sister Janice Ryan - photograph from the Sisters of Mercy
Sister Janice Ryan, a leading Vermont advocate for social justice, died Wednesday, according to state and federal officials. She was 86.
A member of the Sisters of Mercy, Ryan served as president of Trinity College of Vermont, deputy commissioner of the state Department of Corrections and education adviser to the late U.S. Sen. Jim Jeffords.
State Rep. Tiff Bluemle, D-Burlington, announced Ryan’s death Wednesday on the floor of the Vermont House.
“Her contributions to Vermont and, indeed, to this body are almost impossible to catalog,” Bluemle said. “But I’d suggest that those of us who knew her will remember most the example she set — of how to be both candid and kind, how to listen deeply and advocate fiercely, to balance idealism and practicality.”
Following her remarks, Bluemle called for a moment of silence to remember and honor Ryan’s contributions to the state.
In a written statement, U.S. Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., called Ryan “a force of nature” and “a human dynamo.”
“She made it her job to make policymakers uncomfortable as her way to achieving real change to help those who struggle,” Leahy said. “And indeed she made a real difference. The world is a better place for her selfless advocacy for others.”
The senator said he and his wife, Marcelle, visited Ryan last weekend, knowing the end was near.
“We were so moved to be with her one last time, as we said a prayer and to let her know what she means to us and to countless others,” Leahy said in the statement. “With all Vermonters, we sorely feel this painful loss.”
Born in Fairfield in 1936, Ryan joined the Sisters of Mercy while finishing high school in Burlington. She taught at the now-defunct Trinity College and, for 17 years, served as its president.
After the college closed, in 2001, Ryan became a cofounder of Mercy Connections, a Burlington-based nonprofit focused on empowering people through education, mentoring and entrepreneurial training. She helped the organization launch the Vermont Women’s Mentoring Program to support those transitioning from prison to the community.
“Sister Janice was deeply committed to the mission and work of our organization, which she championed throughout her life,” said Mercy Connections executive director Lisa Falcone.
Ryan was a tireless advocate for social justice, special education and criminal justice reform and received several awards for her work.
In 2006, she was recognized as one of four lifelong Vermonters who celebrated 50 years as a Sister of Mercy. In 2017, the Vermont Community Foundation honored her with a lifetime achievement award for community service.
“So many lives over so many years have been changed by Sister Janice during her long career,” Dan Smith, president and CEO of the Vermont Community Foundation, said at the time.
In 2018, Ryan received an award for excellence from the New England Board of Higher Education at the University of Vermont, according to Vermont Catholic.
“Life has given me many rich opportunities all of which were interesting and filled with challenges,” she said at the time.
In Washington, D.C., Ryan served as director of justice education and interfaith relations for the Justice Project. She also worked for Jeffords, the late senator from Vermont, and was project director of the Catholic Campaign to Ban Landmines.
State Rep. Heidi Scheuermann, R-Stowe, said she got to know Ryan when the two worked for Jeffords. She called Ryan “a fierce advocate for those less fortunate and marginalized.”
“When examining her life and her service to this state, I truly believe that Janice Ryan had as great an impact on this state as the most celebrated we know,” Scheuermann said.
Ryan fought for the passage of the Vermont Special Education Law and pushed for Congress to use it as a national model. She was also involved with the Innocence Protection Act, a first attempt in federal legislation to collect DNA to ensure that innocent people are not put to death.
In 2003, Ryan became the deputy commissioner of corrections in Vermont and called it “a life-changing event,” according to Vermont Catholic. She continued working with prisoners after she retired.
“It is a sad day,” Smith, of the Vermont Community Foundation, said in an emailed statement Wednesday. “Sister Janice was a remarkable person who touched countless lives across Vermont. She will be greatly missed.”
Honoring the Lives of Fellows William Craig Metcalfe and Henry Nicolas Muller, III
The Vermont Academy of Arts and Sciences was saddened to learn of the passing of two of our Fellows over the past year.
The tributes below have been taken from Seven Days.
William Craig Metcalfe, 1935-2021
William Craig Metcalfe died early in the morning of November 22, 2021 — the feast day of the patron saint of music, Saint Cecilia — at the Arbors in Shelburne. His last few days were peaceful, with his wife, Elizabeth, and children, Sue and Scott, at his side. He was 86 years old. A teacher, performer, director and entrepreneur in music and scholarship, Bill made enormous contributions to musical life in his adopted home of Vermont and was beloved for his warmhearted generosity and wit, the breadth of his interests and enthusiasms, and his persuasive knack for combining intellectual rigor with open emotionality.
Bill was born on July 17, 1935, in Toronto, Ontario, the only child of Myrtle Reva Craig and Robert Henry Metcalfe. He attended Lawrence Park Collegiate in north Toronto, where an inspiring music teacher helped kindle his passion for conducting. He then studied history, French and Spanish at Victoria College, University of Toronto, earning a BA in 1958. During his college years, setting the pattern he would follow for his entire life, Bill devoted much of his time outside of his academic work to music, composing, arranging, conducting and directing productions of Gilbert and Sullivan operettas. The pianist for those G&S shows was Elizabeth Auld; a romance soon blossomed. Bill and Liz were married in May 1958 between final exams and graduation. They departed that summer for Minneapolis, where Bill pursued graduate studies in history at the University of Minnesota, earning an MA in 1959 and a PhD in 1967. The couple moved to Burlington in 1963, when Bill joined the faculty of the University of Vermont as a professor of history and assistant director of the nascent Canadian studies program.
“Applied schizophrenia is what I’m all about,” Bill told a Burlington Free Press writer in 1995, typically poking fun at his lifelong eclecticism and a career divided between passions for history, Canadian studies, teaching and music. He taught at UVM for 35 years, serving along the way as chair of both history and music, as well as director of Canadian studies. He was a witty and engaging lecturer and a warm and convivial colleague with a gift for bringing people together and enabling them to do their finest work. Bill was the first editor of The American Review of Canadian Studies (1973-89) and editor or coeditor of two books, Understanding Canada: A Multidisciplinary Introduction to Canadian Studies (1982) and Northern Exposures: Research on Canada in the United States (1993). His role in shaping the field of Canadian studies was recognized by the Donner Medal in Canadian Studies, awarded in 1993 by the Association for Canadian Studies in the United States, and an ACSUS Alumni Award in 2013.
But Bill loved music above all except his family. He was cofounder and codirector of the UVM Baroque Ensemble (1965-88), cofounder and frequent conductor of the Vermont Mozart Festival (1974-2010), and founder and conductor of the Oriana Singers (1981-2017). Bill, with characteristic idiosyncrasy, conducted with his left hand. He conducted more Bach, Handel, Mozart and Haydn than anything else, but his repertoire spanned centuries of music, from the Middle Ages and Renaissance through contemporary works, and he had a special fondness for English music from Purcell to Britten, including, of course, G&S. Bill was made a fellow of the Vermont Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2011 and, in 2015, together with Liz, was awarded the Walter Cerf Medal for Outstanding Achievement in the Arts by the Vermont Arts Council.
Bill was fascinated by geography and loved to travel with Liz; he loved good food and wine; he was an avid reader of mystery novels; he enjoyed nice watches and pens; he enjoyed life as much as he was able; he loved his family above all else.
Bill is survived by his wife, Liz; his son Scott, daughter-in-law Emily Walhout and granddaughter Anna of Watertown, Mass.; his daughter Sue, son-in-law Andrew Speno, granddaughter Erin and her husband, Brandon Stout, and grandson Benjamin Speno of Cincinnati and Columbus, Ohio; sisters-in-law Jan Lord of Guelph, Ontario, and Cathy Davin of Tucson, Ariz.; his late sister-in-law Susan’s husband, Jack Hansen, of Thunder Bay, Ontario, and their children Josh and Emily and their families; and his Canadian cousins, Alan McCormack and Trevor Metcalfe and his wife, Teresa.
Bill’s family is very grateful to the staffs of the memory care unit at the Residence at Quarry Hill and the Arbors in Shelburne for their gentle care for Bill in the last few years as he struggled with dementia. Donations in Bill’s memory may be made to the Vermont Youth Orchestra (vyo.org) or the Cure Alzheimer’s Fund (curealz.org). A memorial celebration of Bill’s life is planned for the spring of 2022.
[Originally published for Seven Days here]
Henry Nicholas Muller, III, 1938-2022
Henry Nicholas “Nick” Muller, 83, passed away peacefully at his home in Essex, N.Y., on May 31, 2022. Nick was born in 1938 to Henry Nicholas Muller Jr. and Harriet Kerschner Muller. Nick was widely regarded for his Vermont-history scholarship, as well as for his teaching and organizational leadership in higher education and the cultural sector. After earning a BA from Dartmouth and an MA and PhD from the Universityof Rochester, he taught history at the University of Vermont before assuming the presidency of Colby-Sawyer College. Nick later directed the state historical society of Wisconsin and served as CEO for the Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation. He generously contributed his time to multiple organizations, including the Essex Community Fund, the Vermont Historical Society and Fort Ticonderoga, among other entities.
As an athlete, Nick competed at a high level — making the All-Ivy League soccer team in his junior and senior seasons at Dartmouth — and played softball, racquetball and numerous other sports. He was an avid sailor and die-hard Pittsburgh Steelers fan who loved word games, gardening and writing thoughtful letters to family, friends and colleagues.
Nick was married to Nancy Clagett Dutton and later to Carol Gray Muller, whom he was with until she passed in 2021. He is survived by two sons, Charles and Brook Muller; three step-children, Deborah Graisser and John and Tony Gray; and six grandchildren.
A gathering to celebrate Nick’s life will take place at the Essex CFES Center from 3-6 p.m. on September 21, 2022.
Those wishing to make contributions in Nick’s memory are encouraged to donate to the Essex Community Fund, the Center for Research on Vermont and the Vermont Historical Society. Gifts to the CRV can be sent to Richard Watts, Director, Billings Library, B-403, University of Vermont, Burlington, Vt., 05405. For the Vermont Historical Society: Tori Hart, Director of Development, 60 Washington Street, Barre, Vt., 05641.
[Originally published for Seven Days here]
VAAS Welcomes Slate of 2021 Fellows
The Vermont Academy of Arts and Sciences is excited to welcome our slate of three new Fellows for 2021.
Our annual Fellows Luncheons have had to be postponed for the last two years due to the COVID-19 pandemic, but we are planning to celebrate our 2020 and 2021 Fellows at an upcoming luncheon in September at the UVM campus. Keep an eye out for your invitation!
You can learn more about our 2021 Fellows below.
Chard deNiord, Poet Laureate
Chard deNiord is an American author, poet and teacher who lives in Westminster West, Vermont with his wife Liz. He is the author of six books of poetry, including Asleep in the Fire (University of Alabama, 1990), Sharp Golden Thorn (2003), Night Mowing (2005), The Double Truth (2011), Interstate (2015), and In My Unknowing (2020), all published by the University of Pittsburgh. He has also published two books of interviews with American poets, Sad Friends, Drowned Lovers, Stapled Songs: Conversations and Reflections on 20th Century American Poets (2011) which includes interviews with Robert Bly, Lucile Clifton, Donald Hall, Galway Kinnell, Maxine Kumin and Ruth Stone among others and I Would Lie to You if I Could: Interviews with Ten American Poets (2018). In 2017 deNiord co-edited an anthology of Vermont poetry with Sidney Lea, Roads Taken: Contemporary Vermont Poetry (Green Writers Press). He has published over 30 essays on poetry and writing in a number of journals and newspapers, including The Harvard Review, The New England Review, Poetry International, The Green Mountain Review and The Cortland Review among others. He was Vermont’s most recent Poet Laureate, serving from 2015-2019.
DeNiord was born in New Haven, CT in 1952, and raised in Virginia. He earned a B.A. in religious studies at Lynchburg College, a Master of Divinity from Yale, and a Master of Fine Arts from the University of Iowa Writer’s Workshop. He taught comparative religion and philosophy at a number of private schools, including the Putney School before moving to Providence College.
DeNiord is currently teaches English and Creative Writing at Providence College where he is a Professor of English. He has been a Poetry Fellow at the Swanee Writer’s Conference and the Allan Collins Scholar in Poetry at the Bread Loaf Writer’s Conference in Middlebury. He co-founded the New England College Master of Fine Arts program in poetry. He is a frequent reader in Vermont and New England.
Emily Bernard, Writer
South Burlington
Emily Bernard is the Julian Lindsay Green and Gold Professor of English at the University of Vermont and the author of numerous books, articles, and essays. The winner of many distinguished awards for her writing, Professor Bernard received her bachelor and doctoral degrees from Yale University. She began teaching at the University of Vermont in 2004(?) and since that time has inspired, challenged, and befriended thousands of students, colleagues, and readers through her teaching and writing.
The New York Times selected her first book, Remember Me to Harlem: The Letters of Langston Hughes and Carl Van Vechten, as a Notable Book of the Year. Her recent memoir, Black is the Body: Stories from my Grandmother’s Time, My Mother’s Time, and Mine, won the Isherwood Prize for Autobiographical Prose from the Los Angeles Times. In addition, she has written Some of My Best Friends: Writings on Interracial Friendships, and Carl Van Vechten and the Harlem Renaissance. As noted in her website biography, Professor Bernard “has received fellowships and grants from Yale University, Harvard University, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Vermont Arts Council, the Vermont Studio Center, and The MacDowell Colony.”
In Black is the Body, Professor Bernard personalizes the themes that dominate her scholarly work: the quest for interracial understanding, the struggles around defining Blackness as personal and cultural identity, and the powerful examples of the great ones, writers and artists as well as family matriarchs, who came before.
Over the course of twenty years Emily Bernard has emerged as a leading scholar of Black literature, and as a beloved teacher and colleague at the University of Vermont.
Mark Levine, MD
Vermont Commissioner of Health
“Right Man, Right Place, Right Time: Health Commissioner Mark Levine, MD” (vermontbiz 3/14/2021)
Dr. Mark Levine is the Vermont Commissioner of Health. He was appointed to this position by Vermont Governor Phil Scott in March 2017. The following background information was taken from https://www.healthvermont.gov/about-us/organization-locations/our-leaders
“Prior to his appointment, Dr. Levine was a professor of medicine at the University of Vermont, associate dean for graduate medical education, and designated institutional official at the College of Medicine and UVM Medical Center. He also served as vice chair for education in the Department of Medicine.
Dr. Levine received his B.A. in biology from the University of Connecticut and M.D. from the University of Rochester. He completed his internal medicine residency and chief resident year at the University of Vermont, and a fellowship in general internal medicine at the University of North Carolina. Dr. Levine’s general internal medicine practice focused on health promotion and disease prevention, preventative health screening and clinical nutrition, chronic disease management, and solving complex diagnostic dilemmas.
With this experience, Dr. Levine understands the challenges our health care system holds for both patients and physicians. This informs his interest in improving public health through policies that foster a culture of health.
Dr. Levine has served on the American College of Physicians Board of Regents, and as governor of its Vermont chapter; as vice president and president-elect of the Vermont Medical Society; and was a longstanding member of the Vermont Department of Health’s Primary Care-Public Health Integration Workgroup. He successfully directed large NIH and HRSA educational grants related to nutrition-preventive medicine competencies for general physicians.”
Dr. Mark Levine has led the Vermont Health Department’s response to the Coronavirus pandemic. There have been many news stories regarding Dr. Levine’s exemplary leadership during this unprecedented time. The following is taken from https://vermontbiz.com/news/2021/march/14/right-man-right-place-right-time-health-commissioner-mark-levine-md.
“In September 2020, Dr. Anthony Fauci, head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease, video-visited a Vermont press conference with Governor Scott and Commissioner of Public Health and Dr. Mark Levine. He called Vermont “a model for the rest of the nation” and said he wished he “could bottle (the state's response) and take it with me when I go around talking to other parts of the country."
People believe that Dr Levine — a very tall man at 6' 5”, sort of wonky, smart, accessible, calm, earnest and a surprisingly witty man —has been the right man in the right place at the right time. Scott certainly believes it. He calls Dr Levine, whom he appointed to be health commissioner in 2017, “Vermont's own Dr Fauci.”
“Dr Levine’s expertise and talent were clear from the start, that’s why we wanted him on our team,” Scott said. “But I think what makes him so well suited to help us navigate this once-in-a-century health crisis is his even-keeled style and his ability to explain and offer solutions to complex problems in a way that the everyday Vermonter understands. His counsel has had a huge impact on Vermont’s nation-leading response. I think Vermonters have been able to see for themselves, in the nearly 240 hours’ worth of media briefings we’ve had since March, why his thoughtful and compassionate demeanor makes him the right person for the job.”
Dr. Mark Levine is most deserving of being recognized for his many accomplishments by being selected as a Fellow in the Vermont Academy of Arts and Sciences.
VAAS Board Member, Noah Coburn, Publishes Article on Inside Higher Ed
[Noah Coburn, Political Anthropologist and Associate Dean of Curriculum and Pedagogy at Bennington College]
The Vermont Academy of Arts and Sciences is excited to announce that one of our board members has co-authored an article for Inside Higher Ed! In the article, Noah Coburn, a socio-cultural anthropologist focusing on political structures and violence in the Middle East and Central Asia, and his two co-authors reflect on their time teaching students from and about Afghanistan in a remote class that included students from around the world and international scholars. In particular, the authors examine education in the region in light of Taliban restrictions and offer their remote class as a way to help support students and scholars in Afghanistan during this crisis.
You can read up on all the details of this remarkable project by clicking here.
Vermont Academy of Arts and Science Responds to the Ukraine Crisis
Studying Vowels in Southwestern Vermont
On October 20, 2021, Bennington College faculty member Thomas Leddy-Cecere and Malhy Méndez '20 presented original sociolinguistic research on speech in the Bennington region as part of New Ways of Analyzing Variation 49, the premiere North American sociolinguistics conference. The fieldwork for this research—the first carried out in the Bennington area since 1939—was conducted by Bennington students as part of Leddy-Cecere’s Spring 2019 class Language and Society in Vermont and its Neighbors.
This work belongs to a subfield of linguistics known as "sociophonetics," which explores connections between the sounds of speech and elements of speakers' social identities.
During the course, members of the class used specialized recording equipment to conduct interviews with residents of Bennington and surrounding communities. At each interview, participants discussed life in their home town/region and their relationship to it, and also completed read-aloud tasks designed to gather data about particular types of sounds. Interview recordings were then processed using spectral analysis software to measure the component frequencies of those sounds, which were then studied using statistical methods to identify relevant trends.
The first round of results focused on interviews with 20 speakers, ranging from their teens to their seventies, raised and currently residing in Bennington or one of thirteen surrounding communities in Vermont, New York, and Massachusetts.
"We were specifically interested in how these speakers produced the vowels in words like cart, cot and caught -- which linguists label 'low back vowels,' and have elsewhere noted to be a source of significant variation in the pronunciation North American English," said Leddy-Cecere.
Previous research Leddy-Cecere's class reviewed established that west and south of Bennington, the vowels of words like cart and cot tend to be produced similarly, with those of words like caught standing out as distinct; north and east of the Bennington region, words like cot and caught are commonly pronounced with the same vowel, and those like cart with a different one.
"We wanted to understand how speakers in the Bennington area would align with these broader trends, and if these alignments might tell us anything about those speakers' social connections and orientations," said Leddy-Cecere.
After statistically comparing over 6,000 individual vowel measurements, Leddy-Cecere and Mendez identified a fair amount of variability across the speech of their 20 participants: 11 of the 20 speakers pronounced the cart and cot vowels the same and the caught vowel differently, 5 pronounced the cot and caught vowels the same and the cart vowel differently, 3 pronounced all three vowels distinctly, and 1 pronounced all three vowels the same.
This study represents a change from the last—and only—time the Bennington area was linguistically surveyed, as part of the Linguistic Atlas of New England project (H. Kurath 1939). At that time, neither the differentiation of the cart and cot vowels nor the nondifferentiation of the cot and caught vowels were identified as typical for the region, though they were (and remain) well established elsewhere in Vermont.
The appearance of these accent features among some speakers in and around Bennington in this recent data suggests that the area's level of linguistic integration with the rest of Vermont, though far from complete, has increased over time. This interpretation is supported by the associations of these features with particular social factors: those who speak in these ways were found to predominantly be younger (<40), and to live in more northerly parts of the survey area, closer to the features' traditional Vermont territory.
The study also found evidence of important, ongoing connections between ways of speaking in Bennington and neighboring Upstate New York.
Among those speakers who maintained a differentiation between the vowels of cot and caught, most (11 of 14) displayed a unique "twist" on this feature, which is thought to have arisen relatively recently in northeastern New York. This twist involves the resorting of some words, which have historically contained the vowel of cot to instead contain the caught vowel. An example is golf, which speakers pronounced like gaw-lf, rather than the expected gah-lf. That this New York-based linguistic innovation is present in Bennington, alongside more Vermont-oriented traits, shows that the Bennington region's inter-state connections remain strong and constitute a key part of our area's social fabric to this day.
"Our work, though placed on hold due to the COVID-19 pandemic, is ongoing, and we look forward to corroborating and building upon these observations with the help of more Bennington students and local community members as our investigations resume," said Leddy-Cecere.
[Note: This article originally appeared on Bennington College’s website here - reproduced on the VAAS website with their permission.]
VAAS President, Kevin Fleming, Interviewed by Seven Days!
[Vermont Granite Museum Director, Scott McLaughlin]
Vermont Academy of Arts & Sciences President, Kevin Fleming, was interviewed by Seven Days to talk about the collaboration with the Vermont Granite Museum, VAAS, and Norwich University to develop a Stone Arts degree program. Click here to read the full article.