Exactly one year ago, Artscope Magazine ran a story by Ami Bennitt of #ARTSTAYSHERE about the upcoming displacement of scores of artists inhabiting the spaces of the Cottage Street Studios, a converted mill building that had acted as Art Central in Easthampton, Massachusetts for 45 years. As is happening in many cities, the rents for studio space more than tripled, and most artists were unable to maintain their studios, some having occupied them for decades.
Andrea Zax is one of the many displaced artists, along with her husband, artist George Shaw. Zax makes wedding dresses for a large number of clientele as well as works on an eclectic mixture of fiber pieces. She had inhabited her spacious studio for nine years, nested in the community she had helped create. Shaw is a relative newcomer to Easthampton, with deep roots in the Boston art community. He had grabbed a space at Cottage Street as soon as was possible and after two years of the freedom that only a large, light-filled space can bring, was forced to vacate it.
Zax and Shaw could roll out of their house in Easthampton into their studios with all the benefits of a home studio, but with the bonus of the connection to the community through common space. Having had to leave Cottage Street, both artists have set up areas in their house and are making it work, although for Shaw, a sculptor of large and monumental objects of wood and mixed media and found objects, it is a little trickier.
Not one to shrug her shoulders and retreat into a cocoon, Zax took matters into her own hands to keep this tightly knit community going, realizing that it is vital not only to the artists, but to the city itself.