Artists' Space on Ryder Farm

ARTISTS’ SPACE ON RYDER FARM

Who doesn’t love authentic Ball mason jars? There is something so inherently charming about them.  I myself own three or four. Here at Space on Ryder Farm, a nascent artist retreat in a 200-year-old farmhouse, there is a closet full. We fill them with ice-cold water from label-less green wine bottles and drink cups full as we sit around a 10-foot dining room table that’s been in the Ryder family just as long.

At Ryder, clearing space to begin the residency program took a of lot effort. The main quarters were uninhabitable.  A whole vintage carriage was uncovered in a ramshackle barn, which now houses neatly stacked bales of hay and a low rise stage. The resident dog, Socks, chases a dozen ducks and turkeys around the hen house all day, while farm interns work two fields of organic greens and flowers. In the house, theater artists are cooking, cleaning, staging bedrooms for guests and caring for the artists that move through here every week during the summer months. As an arts organizer and a mother, I haven’t been on this end of the equation in a while and it feels really nice, even if a bit strange.

I consider myself lucky to have spent countless hours around tables with artists over the past 25 years since I first ran a residency with other artists in Saratoga Springs.  I was invited to manage the administrative end of a theater training program and then became the grant writer for the company in New York – it was the first of many transformative doors to open for me, and one I credit for putting me on the path I am on today.  Working for a non-profit arts organization is so familiar to me that I could almost take it for granted if I didn’t know how much work went into giving voice (and space) (and resources) to such a place.

Waking up on Ryder Farm this morning after two days of brainstorming with women including a dancer/performer, a theater artist/writer, and a Broadway producer and eating a frittata lovingly prepared by an innovative improv artist, I felt … valued. We roamed the ground freely, meeting in the Corn Crib, in the Gazebo, in the Barn and around the dining room table. My group spent an evening with the Space staff (all residents of Brooklyn), guest playwrights, dancers, and family members eating under the stars swapping celebrity citing stories and commiserating about how much time it takes to raise money.

As I walk back to my room to write this entry, the Executive Director and family member Emily Ryder is sweeping the wide planked floor in the sitting room surrounded by two-hundred year-old books, a grandfather clock and several drop-leaf tables. I am grateful for her and for her 20 and 30 something colleagues who have the energy to show me again that making space for work where none was before is not an insane idea, as hard as it is to build and maintain. They are part of that wonderful breed of human that knows in her DNA that process is key, that creativity needs room, that sharing work builds energy, that energy ignites momentum, and that momentum yields impact. To do something about it … now, that takes a lot of Balls.