I’ve been thinking about what makes art possible — not just the making of it, but the conditions that allow it to exist. When I studied contact improvisation with Steve Paxton at Bennington and later danced with Trisha Brown in New Mexico, I learned that trust wasn’t an abstract concept; it was physical. You lean into another person and discover that their balance supports your own. That same principle — that generosity sustains creation — runs through the story of Judson Church, Black Mountain College, and the Chelsea Hotel. Each was a kind of living experiment in mutual reliance. This post explores how those places turned community into a medium, proving that art and generosity have always been intertwined.

While reading Fiona MacCarthy’s biography of Eric Gill, the English sculptor and designer, I was not only shocked by his behavior (read below), but also by the author’s matter-of-fact way of depicting it. Throughout history, we have had artists who behaved badly. In this “woke” era (I say that proudly), the inclination has been to “ghost” these artists. I advocate for something more nuanced. Let’s neither hide the facts nor erase the art. That doesn’t mean that there aren’t specific artworks I would like to stick a knife through, but that isn’t necessarily due to the bad behavior of the artist.