October is a busy month for Free Columbia. Scroll down to see what we are doing and how you can participate, and join us every Wednesday night at 6pm for potluck suppers.
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A Window into the first weeks of the research project:
Columbia House fills up slowly, then all at once: first Destiny, then Robbie some days later, followed by five more interns rolling in on a fateful Sunday evening. We each carry our own wild arrival story: driving through the Carolina storms, cross-country mother-son road trips, encounters with border officials, two full days of flying around the world, and more. In the days before our start date of September 17, we are lit up by a conversation with local biodynamic farmers Hugh and Hanna, Destiny is painting a beautiful working calendar, and we come across a meeting in our living room of all the various folks helping carry Free Columbia.
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Here in Philmont, the leaves gently ask for warm autumn colors to emerge from within the many shades of green. This constellation of interns, with Seth and Nathaniel as guides, enter into the process of discovering each other and the surrounding area. Nathaniel introduces us to the project's geographical context through the farms, stores, nature, and mills around Philmont — and the yet-to-be-realized High Falls Theater. We share personal stories through biography work, and begin our first group-study with Henry David Thoreau's “Life Without Principle” each morning.
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Studying hard
Beyond settling in, our sessions during this first week are filled with teach-ins laying the groundwork for understanding what a local currency could mean. We discuss writings from existing local currency projects such as the Chiemgauer, Hudson Valley Current, and BerkShares. Learnings and questions are held around the nature of money, circulation, capital, civil society, democratic philanthropy, poverty, equity, and economic justice. With time, we start to be able to wrap our heads around these initially daunting concepts.
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For two days, we collaborate and learn with the Hudson Valley Current team in Kingston, New York. Chris Hewitt and David McCarthy bring a social enterprise approach here, and we start by unpacking questions of "what is money?" and "where does it come from?" We gain an understanding of the Hudson Valley Current's multi-party barter exchange system, alongside insights into their associated initiatives: Livelihood, the Current's newspaper, and SatisfyHunger, which strives to provide food to all. The Current itself has not yet been printed on paper – instead, we use it digitally through their website, an app, and SMS! We put our spending power into practice when we visit a candy store and a CSA farm, and now we are excited to earn Currents by helping Chris out at their next event. This time, Free Columbia and the Hudson Valley Current collectively host an evening Italian-style Piazza hangout, sharing food, games, and all-round good conversation with locals. We are looking forward to when we can share our currency proposal with the Current team, as well as Susan Witt and Jean Giblette.
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Wednesday Potlucks at the Columbia House
Engaging with the Philmont community is a key principle of the project. We've just begun to embody this, through some community service work as well as hosting open potluck dinners Wednesdays at 6pm to invite others into the project's journey. Soon, we hope to be able to have meaningful collaboration with many more local people and institutions.
Working in the Philmont community
In addition, we are stepping into the direct research/surveying phase of the project. So far, we have each researched a sector of Columbia County through books and the internet, and assembled an initial portrait of the region. We covered a wide variety of qualities such as population, income statistics, banking institutions, governance, major industries, major cultural and religious institutions, demographics, indigenous peoples, and history of the economy. Looking ahead to our next steps, we will move into designing how we will directly survey the people and businesses of the local economy.
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Free Columbia had a very successful ART DISPERSAL in New Orleans at the AGM of the Anthroposophical Society. Many people were introduced to this form and enthusiastically became stewards of paintings, drawings and books. Thanks to participating artists: Patricia Homan Lynch, John Bloom, Leif Garbisch, Eric Mueller and Laura Summer for allowing us to disperse their work in New Orleans. Thank you to the Anthroposophical Society for hosting us so graciously. The theme of the work at the dispersal was Rudolf Steiner's 12 moods - verses for the signs of the zodiac. We hope to have more themed dispersals in the future.
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Zoltán Döbröntei has arrived from Hungary to be our resident artist for the month of October.
This ART/capital Residency is a collaboration between Free Columbia and Lightforms-Art + Spirit - an arts center soon to be located in the neighboring town of Hudson. In January 2018 Free Columbia began collaborating with Lightforms-Art + Spirit, to offer Free Culture Residencies to selected visual artists from near and far. Artists all over the world are bearing inner riches like seeds in search of gardens, in search of sun and rain and nurture. We need these seeds today more than ever, as we need nature, as we need connection to sky and earth, and to each other; Free Columbia and Lightforms have come together to make studio space, practical support, and an annual fund available in service to nurturing creativity in and for community.
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Zoltán Döbröntei will create three paintings in dialogue with specific local sites. Zoltán said once, “The eternal task of art is to make visible how the destiny of the individual relates to the destiny of others, and the destiny of the community...”
Zoltán Döbröntei is a Hungarian artist and founder and leader of the Napút Academy in Hungary. The name “Napút” can be translated as “Sunway.” It is the first and only of its kind in Hungary, an artistic and research-based community with arts education as the main activity, though also weaving in the study of natural sciences.
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Within one day of his arrival Zoltan visited all of the places where his paintings will hang, talked with people about their hopes for what his paintings can bring, set up his studio and began to paint.Yesterday he finished dinner and headed out to the studio again. We are so grateful that he is here and also so grateful that his wife Maria has accompanied him and is translating for us.
If you would like to join us on November 3, Saturday, for an open studio festive farewell with both Zoltan and Jason Healy, our summer resident artist, do mark your calendars now. If you would like to meet Zoltan and Maria during the month of October please come to our every Wednesday night potluck suppers.
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The 4 images above are paintings by Zoltán Döbröntei
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