At the Barn With Albee’s ColonistsBY CARISSA KATZ

Thursday, July 31, 2003

T here is no sign directingyou to the Edward F.Albee Foundation’s

William Flanagan MemorialCreative Persons Center. Only astreet number painted on a bit ofwood marks the center’s drive-way, off a winding Montauk road.

At the driveway’s end, a fewhundred feet in, surrounded by athicket of brambles and trees, awhite gambrel-roofed barnstands. It serves as a home andwork space for an ever-changingcast of artists and writers in thefoundation’s residency program.

Each month for four months ofthe year, three artists and twowriters selected from a pool ofseveral hundred applicants set uphouse at the center to indulgetheir creative passions or whim-sies, work on long-simmeringprojects or start new ones, andgenerally take advantage of a rareopportunity to focus solely ontheir work.

“Just the concentratedtime is great. It reallypropels you todevelop ideas a lotfaster,” saidSusanna Starr, asculptor fromManhattanwho isone

of five residents at the center thismonth.

In her studio, tables werecrammed with squeeze bottlesfilled with every imaginable colorof acrylic paint. Other tables helda tall stack of cylindrical makeupsponges and large, lacy slices ofindustrial sponge. On the floor,there were big squares of vibrant-ly colored sponge. “I wanted tofind a material I could containcolor and space with,” Ms. Starrsaid. “This is a period of time totry things.” She will show herwork at Southampton College inAugust.

At the other end of the barn,Stacey Gottlieb, a fiction writerfrom Manhattan, had taken overthe barn’s tiny dining room.Working in a kind of frenzy, shetaped bits of scribbled notes to adoor, making a collage of wordsthat she later described as a storymap.

“I’m walking around every daysaying, ‘I can’t believe somebodygave me this house for themonth. It’s the best thing thatever happened to me,’” Ms.Gottlieb said. “The thing Ithought I came here to do was

finish this collection of stories I’dbeen working on.” Soon she real-

ized that one of the stories,“unbeknownst to me, is anovel that I was startingto map out.”

Ms. Gottlieb thinksthat having the timeand space to really get

inside her work theway she has thismonth allowedher to take it to

the next level. “I guess that’s Mr.Albee’s idea,” she said.

“You can’t help but sort ofwonder, hypothesize what thehand behind the curtain has envi-sioned,” Ms. Gottlieb said. “Ithink some nights we feel likemaybe we’re really in an Albeeplay, that someone somewhere istaking notes.”

Mr. Albee, who visits daily todeliver the mail, enjoys peekingin on the “colonists,” as he callsthem. “I snoop,” he admitted.“I’m a snooper, but I try not tointrude. I make sure people areworking, not spending the entiremonth at the beach.”

Mr. Albee, the three-timePulitzer Prize-winning play-wright whose works include“Three Tall Women” and “Who’sAfraid of Virginia Woolf,” choosesthe visual artists himself.

“I think we tend to prefer theadventuresome rather than thepeople out here who just paintthe sunsets,” he said of his choic-es. “I don’t have to like them, butI think I have to find somethingadmirable that’s going on in theirwork.”

He has someone else reviewthe several hundred plays, nov-els, and volumes of poetry thatcome in with writers’ applicationsfor residencies.

“We don’t discourage anybodywho’s talented and,” he said,pausing, “not realistic.” Once thelist has been narrowed down Mr.Albee and the foundation board“see if people can fit their livesinto the months that are avail-able,” he said. “We tell them thatwe’re only open four or fivemonths a year, that it’s a veryimpromptu place, that they’re

Making use of ample floor space in her studio at the AlbeeFoundation’s William Flanagan Memorial Creative PersonsCenter, the sculptor Susanna Starr saturates a large sheet ofsponge with vibrant acrylic paint. Carissa Katz Photos

“We wanted to keep it a low-key, low-expense private foundationthat people would come to to do serious work,” Edward Albeesaid, explaining the foundation’s residency program in Montauk.

going to have to take care ofthemselves.”

Rex Lau, a painter, and DianeMayo, a ceramic artist, who liveand work in a small red cottagenext to the barn in the summer,oversee it to some extent. Butthey do not coddle the residents.

Unlike other artist coloniessuch as the MacDowell Colony inPeterborough, N.H., and Yaddoin Saratoga Springs, N.Y., Mr.Albee’s center leaves the colonistslargely to their own devices.

They prepare their own mealsand make their own schedules.Their rooms are simple andmostly unadorned, save for thepaintings or sculptures previousresidents have left behind. Theysleep on thin mattresses set onno-frills metal frames.

The writers get the biggerrooms, which include a desk.There is a common room with anold television set, couches, andbookshelves stocked with artbooks and literary journals.

The surroundings are inten-tionally spartan. “We wanted tokeep it a low-key, low-expenseprivate foundation that peoplewould come to to do seriouswork,” Mr. Albee explained.

“It’s not Yaddo, where peoplelive in mansions and are servedhuge dinners every night on spe-cial china. Nor is it theMacDowell Colony, where peo-ple’s lunches arrive at their studiodoors at 12 and they’re notallowed to talk to anybody until 6o’clock in the evening.”

Some of the other colonies also

have budgets of several milliondollars a year. “I don’t see howour budget ever gets above$50,000,” Mr. Albee said.

This year, the foundation ismounting a capital fund-raisingcampaign for the first time in its37-year history “because theplace was falling apart,” the play-wright said.

“We have trouble gettingmoney from other foundations andcharitable foundations because wedon’t do things according to theirrules,” Mr. Albee said.

The capital campaign willallow the foundation to fix theroof, add a fresh coat of paint, andinsulate the barn so that residen-cies might be offered for a longerportion of the year.

When he set up the foundationin 1966, Mr. Albee wanted to pro-vide an alternative to the othercolonies, which tended to servepeople who were more estab-lished or successful in their fields.

“We thought that maybe weshould do two things here — getpeople at the cusp, young people,before they necessarily had madeit, or occasionally people whowere older who had been forgot-ten and whose careers hadn’t goneso well, but were still doing inter-esting work, because they couldteach the younger people.”

The residents are generally intheir 20s, 30s, and 40s, and a fewhave been in their 50s and late 60s.Although the foundation does notformally track the careers of for-mer residents and neither publish-es a newsletter nor solicits contri-

butions from alumni, board mem-bers and Mr. Albee do manage tokeep up with many who havespent time at the barn. Some, likethe writers Spalding Gray, A.M.Homes, Amy Bloom, and AdrianLeBlanc have since gained consid-erable recognition. Ms. LeBlancspent part of her month at the cen-ter visiting people in prison whileresearching her recently publishedbook “Random Family: Love,Drugs, Trouble, and Coming ofAge in the Bronx.”

Others have drifted away fromart or writing to pursue differentcareers. Young people often “runout of steam,” Mr. Albee said.“Some of them have a talent thatgoes on for three or four years andthen something happens to thetalent. Or, if they’re playwrights,they decide to go to Hollywoodand write scripts instead and younever hear from them again.”

Some colonists have beeninvited back to the barn inMontauk two or three times. Onerefused to leave when her monthwas up. “She was greeting peoplewhen they came in and showingthem around like it was herhouse,” Mr. Lau said.

“Every once in a while some-body gets hysterical,” Mr. Albeesaid. “We had one many yearsago who was so scared of thecountry he slept in his car.”

“For the first two weeks,” Mr.Lau added.

There was an artist whothought she was Janis Joplin andbehaved that way. Marriageshave resulted from a meeting atthe barn. Once, there was a fist-fight in the driveway.

“For the most part, peoplecome and work seriously,” Mr.Lau said.

“I think most of the peoplethat are here are pretty motivatedand pretty focused,” Ms. Starr,the sculptor, said. Given theopportunity to focus so intentlyon a project, she said, “you wantto work, you don’t want to stop.”

“The best thing about thisplace, I think, is that people ofdifferent disciplines get to inter-act and they don’t usually get to,”Mr. Albee said.

The colonists agreed. “I thinkit’s wonderful that you can bewith people of another genre,”Ms. Gottlieb said.

Ms. Starr has found that “thereare a lot of crossover ideas. Wetalk about books, about movies,about art, about writing. I have awhole book list now,” she said.After realizing that they wereboth interested in “the samequirky things,” Ms. Starr and Ms.Gottlieb might even collaborate

on a project. “Sometimes we share the

cooking of meals together or goout together,” said ArnoldFanning, an Irish playwright wholives in New York. He has beenat other residency programs, butlikes the openness of the AlbeeFoundation. “It’s basically like acommune, your own little writ-ing home with other artists.”

“Inevitably there are thingsthat, wherever you are, have away of cutting into the workday,”Ms. Gottlieb said. “That I’mtotally inaccessible here is sonice. I don’t have e-mail on mylaptop and there’s no cell phonereception and the house phone’susually busy if someone’s on thephone or on line.”

For her, the place functionsjust as she believes Mr. Albeeintended it to. “It’s sort of likebungee jumping coming here.You leave everything in yourlife,” she said.

“I feel like it is part of his sensethat something good, creatively, ifnot emotionally and psychically,will come from shaking up theroutine a little,” she said. “I don’tknow if it’s the time or the place,but I really haven’t gotten thismuch done for a long time.”

Rick Lewis, a painter workingin the studio next to Ms. Starr’s,said it is not just Mr. Albee’s cen-ter, but the South Fork in gener-al that speaks to him. Originallyfrom Texas, he now lives inBrooklyn. He first came to thebarn three years ago and returnedin July. His primitive paintingshave an earthy palette that couldhave been mixed from the sandand soil of Montauk.

“There’s something aboutbeing in this area. There’s sometype of vibration in this place thatI’m drawn to,” he said. “By com-ing back here, I wanted to seewhat would happen if I came fullcircle, to see how the work wasreinformed.” He has also rented ahouse in Springs for the summer.

“I feel like maybe this placehas something special,” Ms.Gottlieb said. “It’s like camp,how kids come back from thesummer seemingly years olderthan when they left.”

Ms. Gottlieb, Mr. Fanning, Mr.Lewis, Ms. Starr, and SusanParker, a writer from Oakland,Calif., who was also in residencein July, will pack up their bagsand manuscripts, paintings andsculptures, canvases and sponges,and leave Mr. Albee’s barn today.Tomorrow, a new group willarrive to fill their shoes. ■

Arnold Fanning, at work in his room, below, was among thewriters in residence this month.