Quarry Hill Creative Center

Quarry Hill Creative Center
The Commune
Motto: "To enjoy life and appreciate beauty and the esthetic of the creative person; to support and protect children from abuse and neglect; not to hunt or fish or kill animals."
Country United States
State Vermont
City Rochester
Corporation Lyman Hall, Inc.
Foundation 1946
Founded by Irving Fiske and Barbara Hall Fiske
Government
 • administrators Brion McFarlin and Isabella Fiske McFarlin
Area
 • Total 200 acres (80 ha)
Population (1990s)[1]
 • Total 90 (full-time)

Quarry Hill Creative Center, in Rochester, Vermont, is Vermont's oldest alternative living group or community.[2] It was founded in 1946 by Irving Fiske, a playwright, writer, and public speaker; and his wife, Barbara Hall Fiske, an artist and one of the few female cartoonists of the Golden Age of Comic Books.

Fiske family

Irving and Barbara married on January 8, 1946. They had two children, Isabella (also called "Ladybelle"), born August 12, 1950, in Randolph, Vermont; and William, born February 4, 1954, in Brooklyn, New York. During the 1950s and early 1960s, the family traveled to keep their children out of the strict public schools of the day, which the Fiskes regarded as "Dark Satanic Mills That Grind Men's Souls to Dust," in the words of William Blake. They did so on the advice of A.S. Neill of Summerhill School in England. The Fiskes were opposed to spanking and corporal punishment of children, indeed, punishment of any kind; and most schools of the time used corporal punishment.

In the mid-1960s, Barbara opened a storefront, The Gallery Gwen, in New York's East Village. There Barbara showed her paintings, along with those of others, and Irving began to give public talks on Tantra, Zen, Sufism, Hinduism, Christianity, Judaism, and atheism, among many other things. He became well-known around the Village, and soon speaking to standing-room-only audiences. Many associated him with R. Crumb's character Mr. Natural.[3] Becoming well-known in the counterculture both in the United States and elsewhere, Irving would also speak in colleges and churches on the East Coast, such as Goddard College in Plainfield, Vermont.

Barbara and Irving divorced in 1976. After a period of some tension, they reached a state of friendliness and mutual support, with the shared desire to see Quarry Hill continue. With the assistance of their son, William, and others, Barbara created a corporation to own the land, Lyman Hall, Inc.

Irving went on with all the activities that entertained him and promoted a more sane future for humanity for as long as he lived; he died of a stroke in Ocala, Florida, on April 25, 1990.[4]

In 1989, Barbara remarried Dr. Donald Calhoun (June 14, 1917 - May 5, 2009), a writer,[5] sociology professor, and a Quaker like herself. Barbara Fiske Calhoun lived and taught art at Quarry Hill until 2013,when she entered a nursing home. On April 28, 2014, Barbara Fiske Calhoun died at the age of 94.[1] A "Celebration of Life" in memory of Barbara Calhoun was held on September 14, 2014, at the Middlebury Friends (Quakers) Meeting in Middlebury, Vermont.

Isabella Fiske

Isabella, who studied writing, English, and psychology at Montpelier's adult degree program of Vermont College (The Union Institute & University took over the program while she was a student there and she was graduated with a B.A. in Creative Writing from that institution), became a writer and children's rights activist.

In the 1960s, Isabella became friends with many well-known underground cartoonists, including R. Crumb, Trina Robbins, Kim Deitch, and Spain Rodriguez. Isabella and Art Spiegelman, later author of the celebrated Pulitzer Prize-winning graphic novel Maus, met in 1966, through a group of Spiegelman's fellow-students at the State University of New York at Binghamton; and through Trina Robbins, who would later celebrate Barbara Hall Fiske in her book The Great Women Cartoonists. Spiegelman and Isabella became a couple in Binghamton, New York, in early 1968, during Spiegelman's well-documented nervous breakdown. They were together on the weekend Art Spiegelman's mother committed suicide, on May 21, 1968. These events are documented in the "Prisoner on the Hell Planet" section of Maus. Spiegelman and Isabella were deeply attached, with Isabella regarding him as already one of the great artists of the twentieth century. Spiegelman also seemed to enjoy Quarry Hill, and had relationships with other women there, but his core relationship was known by all to be with Isabella/Ladybelle.

Spiegelman and Isabella separated for a time in 1970 when he moved to San Francisco, but reunited in 1976. By mutual agreement, their relationship became platonic when, in 1977, Art married Françoise Mouly, whom Isabella considered a friend and an energetic and creative person.

Subsequently, Isabella married Brion McFarlin; they have a daughter named Joya, born c. 1972.[6]

As of 2014, Isabella focuses on the continuation of Quarry Hill Creative Center. She is also writing a memoir/life and times of her life and Quarry Hill's place in the counterculture.

William Fiske

William earned two Masters' Degrees, in computer science and in history, from the University of Vermont. He died in his sleep on July 18, 2008, in Burlington, Vermont. At the time of his death he was in the process of seeking a Ph.D in computer science.[7]

History

On April 10, 1946, the Fiskes bought 140 acres (0.57 km2) of mountain, meadow, and brook land in Rochester, Vermont. Their intention was to create an artists’ and writers’ retreat, a gathering place for creative and freethinking people.

When the countercultural movement of the 1960s and 1970s began, hundreds of people, from all over the world, began to pour through Quarry Hill.[1] Many people wanted to build houses at Quarry Hill, and they did. The place was known for its international population and for its ideals about child care. Many children grew up at Quarry Hill and attended its own private K-12 school, the North Hollow School (which in 1987 had 16 students).[6] The school based on the principles of the Fiske family and of Summerhill School in England, and ran Free The Kids! Program, which offers educational material on the self- destructive and negative effect on children of spanking and other violence. Many graduates of the school have gone on to college and graduate school.

One of the well-known residents of Quarry Hill was the late Stephen Huneck, who lived at there during the mid- to late-1960s. Huneck later became a well-known folk artist, with a Dog Church with many carved dog images, in northern Vermont. He often said Barbara Fiske was one of his art teachers, and he called Isabella Fiske McFarlin till almost the end of his life (he committed suicide in 2010).[8]

In 1976, Irving and Barbara divorced, and a family-owned rental corporation, Lyman Hall, Inc., took over the land.

In 1978 Art Spiegelman, Françoise Mouly, and a number of Quarry Hill residents created Top-Drawer Rubber Stamp Company, a pictorial rubber stamp company featuring art by R. Crumb, Spiegelman, and other cartoonists and artists, including Barbara Fiske. This art rubber stamp company provided employment for many Quarry Hill residents, one of whom at the time was Laurence Mouly (now Larreché), Françoise Mouly's sister. Spiegelman and Mouly visited Quarry Hill into the 1990s, with their children, and had a longtime friendship with many residents of Quarry Hill.

Quarry Hill is presently (2014) managed by Brion McFarlin and Isabella Fiske McFarlin. It hosts about 24 fiull-time residents;[9] those with houses have lengthy easements.

Community structure

In the eyes of the Fiske family, Quarry Hill, known to many Vermonters as "The Commune," is not technically a commune. It has had communal, sharing, and mutual child-care aspects, and has done much to help develop and free the creative nature of those who come to live here even for a short time; but the land has always belonged to the Fiske family, and all personal property remains in the hands of its particular owner.[10][11]

The one central principle at Quarry Hill is that no violence towards children is permitted. Quarry Hill's land is under a covenant that outlaws spanking, slapping, and the denigration or neglect of children.

Quarry Hill also permits no hunting, fishing, or animal slaughter. But there are few other rules. One rule remains, however: no roosters allowed. This is considered by some to be a peculiar whim of those who enjoy sleeping. By others it is thought to be a necessity of human sanity. Each year, Quarry Hills hold an "All Night Costume Dance Party." People dance until dawn, whereupon they consume as many blueberry pancakes as they would like.

References

Notes

  1. 1 2 3 Associated Press "Vermont 'hippie commune' co-founder dies at 94," Salon (Apr. 29, 2014).
  2. ↑ Hartmann, Thom. The Last Hours of Ancient Sunlight (New York: Three Rivers Press / Random House, 2004), pp. 309-11, 315 — calls Quarry Hill "The oldest "intentional community in Vermont"
  3. ↑ Spiegelman, Art. MetaMaus (New York: Pantheon, 2011), pp. 24–25: "...my hippie girlfriend's father, Irving Fiske — the Mr. Natural of the commune I was involved with..."
  4. ↑ “Irving L. Fiske, 82: Created Community for Workers in Arts,” The New York Times (May 1, 1990)
  5. ↑ Spirituality and Community: An Autobiographical Memoir. ISBN 0-87047-101-5.
  6. 1 2 Trausch, V. "Where Have All the Flower Children Gone?" Boston Globe Sunday Magazine (August 2, 1987). Archived at the University of Vermont
  7. ↑ Obituary of William Fiske, Herald of Randolph (VT) (July 31, 2008).
  8. ↑ Freedom and Unity, The Vermont Movie, Part III (2013) — photo of Stephen Huneck standing by the old school bus at Quarry Hill in the 1960s.
  9. ↑ Williams, Maren. "She Changed Comics: Pre-Code & Golden Age: Barbara Hall," Comic Book Legal Defense Fund website (March 4, 2016).
  10. ↑ Ibert, Debbie. "Not a commune—just Fiske and all his friends," Gainesville Alligator (1972).
  11. ↑ Zind, Steve. 'A Paradise For Souls': Legacy Of The Quarry Hill 'Commune'," "Vermont Edition," Vermont Public Radio (May 21, 2014).

Sources

External links

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