Update from Vermont

Since graduating RISD in 1995 I spent over 20 years doing illustration and design. From freelance work in print and digital spaces, to magazines and books for both adults and children, my work generally focused around Natural History, Scientific Illustration and animals. This led to a series of projects for the Harvard Museum of Natural History for their permanent exhibits as well as decades of text book illustration and, finally, a full time design position for EBSCO Publishing. Over time my interest in illustration and design began to wane and, though it stayed my primary form of income as I helped raise my son, beginning in 2014 I unexpectedly developed a deep passion for presenting and producing dance and performance art. I began spending much of my off-time developing workshops, performances and events in and around Boston. In 2016, another artist and myself founded the Lion's Jaw Festival, an experimental dance festival first housed in Central Square at the now closed Green Street Studios. Lion's Jaw ran for 5 years through 2020 and was not only a beautiful and radical endeavor but made clear to me personally that this was what I wanted to do with the rest of my life.

During the pandemic, like many others, I began to think of significant shifts I wanted to make in my life and how I wanted to serve artists and art-making and create a space for that. After talking things through with my then 17-year old son and discussing potential collaborations with another colleague of mine I decided to make the move.

In February of 2021, after many months of discussion, I left my job at EBSCO and sold my house in Boston MA. Later that month I purchased a 10k square foot vacant country Inn on 50 acres of land just outside of Bellow's Falls with my colleague Nuria Bowart, beginning the process of turning it into an Arts Center focused on Contemporary Performance Dance and Multimedia.

Now in its fourth year, the Field Center is a year-round, fully non-profit, educational space committed to serving artists that centers the teaching, learning and development of performance and dance practices. Following in the steps of institutions such as Black Mountain College and others, we are an accessible, non-competitive institution that allows for teachers to teach in non-academic settings and for adult-learners and working artists to spend 4 days to 2 weeks diving deeply in the work. Programming at the Field Center is generally divided between weekend-long events and longer workshops/intensives in which small groups live and  work together for 7-14 days at a time, generally led by 1-2 teachers from a variety of disciplines. During the summer months we host a variety of festivals and cultural events. Though we focus on Performance and Dance practices, we have workshops that include drawing, sound and video design, costuming and set design and explorations into anatomy and body mechanics.

Thanks to the Amtrak station in Bellows Falls, we are proud to say that over half of our current participants in our events travel to us from Washington D.C., Baltimore, Philadelphia and New York City, however we are increasingly seeing local folks signing up as well.  Since our first programs in late 2021 we have hosted nearly 1k participants and dozens of teachers in over 300 workshops and events here! Find out more about us on our website www.thefieldcenter.com

This October we break ground on a large theatre and workshop space next to our main building. Through this new building we plan to host touring works, support local events, daily classes as well as host larger workshops, helping us more fully serve the local, regional and national communities!

The beginning only happens once and if you or someone you know might be interested in supporting the new theatre space, or in hearing more about this project generally - we are at such an exciting stage and are always happy to dive more deeply into how and what we are doing here! I invite you all to join the magic!

My son is now 20 years old and studying film and video at PACE University in Manhattan and often comes up to visit - and me him. Would love to connect with any classmates when I'm there!

Also, I love to give tours and show folks around here so please feel free to reach out if you're ever in the area and want to check out the Field Center!

I thank RISD every day for my incredible years there and for the experience of community it gave me that very much still informs what I see as a goal of the Field Center. To create rigorous, creative spaces where artists are working alongside one another while developing their work, asking questions and learning from renowned teachers who, themselves, are able to experiment and share their practices in non-academic ways.

May we all continue to cultivate space for art of all kinds to be made.

In movement,
Jared