Compost

Non-Profit Real Estate Development for Artists, Writers,

and Information Technology Workers

Compost Art Center real estate development strives to create homes for Artists / Writers and remote Information Technology Entrepreneurs. Compost provides visual and performing artists, designers, writers, musicians, technology designers and entrepreneurs with live-work studio space in a creative, vibrant atmosphere that nurtures innovation and communication. Compost Art Center projects are located in Hardwick, Vermont, Sag Harbor, New York, and Shenandoah Pennsylvania.

The Founders, Jamie Day and Clifford Jackman, became focused on residency programs after Jackman worked at the Nantucket School of Design and Art (NISDA) and The Guild Hall in East Hampton, NY – where he gained immense knowledge about the unique opportunities for social benefit as well as the investment potential for philanthropic investors who are committed to the advancement of the fine arts.

FOUNDERS STATEMENTS

Jamie Day – After taking art classes at The Art’s Student League and The School of Visual Arts, it seemed to me that the Art schools were creating generations of art school graduates without a common goal or sense of Fine Art responsibility. Art schools refuse to teach artists how to sell your work or financially support your work.

Clifford Jackman – After attending art schools in New York (Fashion Institute of Technology) and Boston (Massachusetts College of Art) and also being in the military, I realized the problem with art schools. They didn’t teach graduates to respect each other, balance a checkbook and/or build the Fine Art industry and livelihood. There was not, nor is there at this time any Fine Art Unions, or industry groups protecting the Fine Artist industry and livelihood. Essentially there was NO planning, or communication about the future, and most damaging to the fine arts industry was that there was no esprits de corpse.

Art school academia taught us nothing about food, clothing and shelter. They taught us to worm/sleep, your way into gallery representation or die poor and unknown. I wanted a different Fine-Art life, so Jamie and I, create live/work homes for artists/writers and entrepreneurs in rural America.

2009 Sag Harbor

Pic 14 Second Floor Barn

PH-View-West1

ART AS FINANCIAL ASSET

Clifford Jackman – In the mid 1990’s there was also the negative conversion of Fine Art into an asset class for the rich. Financial advisors, galleries, art administrators,  museums, and all their sleazy sales people converted lame art into a commodity and lame artists into entertainers (Charles Saatchi/Damian Hirst). These art administrators (seven administrators make a living off of one artist’s work) catered to the extremely wealthy looking for asset protection and/or cultural capital.

Nobody is nurturing the current art scene. Art fairs and Etsy has not raised the annual income of art and writer grads. Artists’ and writers’ annual salary continues to fall below a livable wage and is below that of a ditch-digger.

On the other side of the economic spectrum – the low income and poverty side of America in urban, suburban, and rural areas – non-profit art groups financially support “the children’s art program” and “the senior citizen’s art therapy” within their community, BUT NOT THE INDIVIDUAL ARTIST.  That’s because these non-profits don’t care about artists or the current art scene – they only care about their salaries.

Art administrators don’t want to lose funding like they did with the National Endowment for the Arts in the 1990’s. That’s because grants were awarded to individual artist like Karen Finley, Andres Serrano, and David Wojnarowicz. These art admin or artsy salespeople are damaging artists and the current art scene because they are siphoning money away from the artist that should help recent art grads and current art creation.

I saw the need here for ARTIST-RUN residencies – eliminating the over-reaching art administrative problem, and giving more power to the artist.

COMPOST MISSION

Compost Art Center’s Mission is to enable artists, writers, inventors, and IT entrepreneurs to work on their next creative project while living in an affordable, harmonious, and productive setting. Our non-profit mission is to create and provide affordable living and working space. Our projects encourage artists to participate in the use of their imagination and experimental vision in order to establish the role of the fine artist and small business entrepreneurs as a vibrant and central participant in the community where they live and work.

COMPOST PHILOSOPHY & INSPIRATION

We both drive our philosophical inspiration from the 1900’s New England Transcendentalist movement that included Ralph Emerson’s Self-Awareness,  Henry Thoreau’s Walden, and Edith Wharton’s Ethan Frome. Artistically we work off of the expressionistic painter and writer Robert Henri – especially his book – “The Art Spirit.” And of course we get energy from Walt Whitman’s “This Compost” poem. And like Walt – we drive our “Plough” “Beholding the compost” and work on our art, and/or our “Leavings.”

Timeline

1997 ♦

RENT… OR OPEN A RESTAURANT IN SANTA FE –

Jamie Day – As we both graduated art schools in the mid 1990’s the gentrification of the artist’s and writer’s neighborhoods was in full swing in both Boston (Central Square/Cambridge, Fort Point/Boston, and Jamaica Plain/ West Roxbury/Boston). And in New York (All Downtown Manhattan) and Williamsburg, Brooklyn. In these gentrified areas rent had risen to quickly to get any serious fine art or entrepreneurial work done.

The play and then movie RENT describes these trials and tribulations of young artists in NYC in the 1990’s. Also at this time was the expansion of the internet, so we could do good research and more important – listen to our favorite college radio stations on line. The internet made it possible to live anywhere as long as it had a decent internet connection. We decided to leave NYC and not “Open a Restaurant in Sant Fe,” but open a restaurant in the northeast Kingdom of Vermont.

1997 ♦

1997 Compost Studios

1997 Compost Gallery

1997 Compost Farm

Compost Studios

1999 ♦

1999 Compost Factory as Furniture and Undertaker

VT Factory Tagged

1999 VT Factory Rear 2

1999 Egress Restaurant and ResidencyBuilding

2004 ♦

1 – Cuba Funds the Arts!!!

2 – 2004 Cuba National Art Schools and Chilling on Rooftops as the Electricity goes Of and On

3 – 2004 Drove Across Entire Island! Cops Everywhere! Getting Gas in Cuba !!

4 – 2004 Trinadad, Cuba

2004, Compost Art Center worked with Amistad

Fundacion, a Cuban and Duke University cultural exchange program. Amistad Fundacion was working with the Town of Easthampton who had set up a Sister-City program with Playa, Havana in Cuba. Compost Ar Center hosted/supported Cuban artists in the Hamptons and had gallery shows in Amagansett and Sagaponack.

Compost also coordinated American artists visiting and working in Cuba.

2003 ♦

Sagaponack Compound

♦ 2006 – 2012

2006-2012 NYC

2006-2012 NYC (1)

2006-2012 NYC

COMPOST Art Center Development  –  Division Street, Chinatown, NYC 2012

2008 – 2012 ♦

2009 Sag Harbor

2009 Sag Harbor 3

2009 Sag Harbor 2 (1)

2008-2012 Sag Harbor

2014 ♦

2014 Compost Studio Kitchen on DivisionStreet, Chinatown, NYC

2014 Compost Studios on Division Street, Chinatown, NYC (1)

2014 Compost Studios on Division Street, Chinatown, NYC 1

2014 Compost Studios on Division Street, Chinatown, NYC

2014 ♦

2014 Eagles Nest1

2014 Eagles Nest3

2014 Eagles Nest4

2014 – 2022

In 2014 Compost Art Center started two new projects. Eagles Nest in Southampton, NY-a 20-acre compound that we’re currently offering as a rental or residency the cabin to aritsts/writers and IT professional, Please contact Compost for more information.

Another successful Compost story with American Main Street real estate and American poverty. The build-out in Pennsylvania coal-country Appalachia and/or Pennstucky took 5 years and then in 2022 the building was sold to a local (Catawissa) musician and artist who works in NYC as a Production Manager.            

Besides being the new owner of one of the finest buildings in Shendoh (local name) the new owner plans on creating future art businesses that will help downtown Pennsylvania grow in a positive, artistic, and regenerative manner.

2021 ♦

2021 PA1

2021 PA2

2021 PA3

2021 PA4

And in 2021 Compost Art Center finished renovation of a 7200 sf brick and steel Federal building, just off Main Street, in a small Pennsylvanian coal-country town. The building is available for sale, rent, or a residency. Please contact Compost for more information.

2022 ♦

West-View

West-View-(2)

Southwest-View-(2)

Southeast-View

2024 ♦

After1

After2

After3

Shopping for Salvation at the Compost Gallery in Hardwick

by Michael Woodhouse

Hardwick—I’ll admit the lights attracted me. As I strolled down Main St. in Hardwick I caught my reflection in a store front mirror surrounded by holiday lights The image of myself I beheld was one that a side show mirror might reflect than that of a legitimate boutique. I stepped back and took in the entire front of the building and noticed a decorated, albeit dead fir tree in a shopping cart placed in the other display window. Embossed across the glass were the words Shopping for Salvation. Aha, my favorite sort of store. I went on in.

I suppose the first thing that assails the unwary visitor entering “Shopping for Salvation”, the newest offering at Compost Arts Center exhibition space, is the brightly painted walls, done in a vicious red. Is it to celebrate the season or was it used to agitate the spectator, like powder blue walls are used to calm the unruly mental patient. Although I prefer not to dwell on the space itself, this paint job is unbelievable and adds to the overall effect.

The flyer advertising for submissions asked for the artists to imagine a second coming and bring appropriate gifts for the savior (open to interpretation) born in a trailer somewhere in the Northeast Kingdom. Although a few of the pieces, including Jo Billing’s homemade clothes for Mary, Joseph and Jesus and a mysterious package which asks the viewer to make guesses on its content created by Patrick Kane, most strictly adhere to the calling, each piece can fit this description if only with the use of a little imagination.

Clifford Jackman’s mixed media installation, “Hmm … tastes like Almonds.” is a still life of a quick death. The victim, of course is Santa. It features an overturned living room scene complete with broken T.V. playing those sickening holiday specials. When one investigates the crime scene closer you are able to ascertain the perpetrator is a disgruntled youth who took his revenge after being denied a decent haul of gifts the previous year. The outline of Santa’s body on the floor is particularly satisfying. An exquisite leaded glass quasi-grandfather clock, “Bomb Clock, designed and fabricated by Fred Varney dominates the show. Encrypted within its multi-colored glass is a tableau of war and its aftermath. The slowly swinging pendulum creates an ominous doomsday effect. Well done. “Monopoly,” by Jill Waxman, a monstrous Florentine needlepoint hung on the back wall is brilliant. The image of several strange humanoids playing a board game boggles the observer on a few levels, notwithstanding the patience and effort required to create such detail and size with a medium such as yarn. Victor Huffs, beautifully macabre, “Afraid of the Hospital” depicts a cleverly created skeletal x-ray and seems to ask the question: Is this based on a bad experience? I will conclude this review with some advice. The first being, I highly recommend a visit to this festive, if not nauseatingly so, journey to the far end of a holiday greeting card gone wrong. The second, make sure to say hello to that handsome fellow reading in the back room.

“Shopping for Salvation” runs through February 14 at the Compost Exhibition Space, Main St., Hardwick. Hours are 12 p.n. to 5 p.m., Sat, and for by appointment (472-9613).

Out in the Mountains, 1998

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