A Nantucket sustainable arts collective leaves thespace
BY MARLI GUZZETTA INDEPENDENT ARTS EDITOR
Sitting at his drawing table with the angels of MC Escher and Jerry Garcia hovering for

inspiration, architect Chip Webster crafted the lot at 9 Amelia Drive, a mixed-use facility with several individual units. Today, the site houses Webster's environmentally oriented architecture firm, his apartment (upstairs), the offices of Plum TV and also an open unit outfitted with wooden floors, high ceilings and panoramic walls of windows. Webster called this unit "thespace."

Supported by Cisco Brewers, Nantucket Vineyards and Triple Eight Vodka, as well as individual contributors, "thespace" served as a creative headquarters since its inception in the fall of 2001. It was home to meditation and yoga classes, lectures, art exhibitions and performances, including the "Live and Local" series.

It provided accommodations for the Laughing Club of Nantucket, Dance Nantucket, One World Arts, A Women's Gathering, the Nantucket Aids Network, the Nantucket Tasters' Association and The Nantucket Art Council's Fall Arts Fest.

It hosted exhibits for artists "who may not have otherwise had a solo show on the island," according to its Website.

It did all these things up until Saturday night, when Webster opened its doors one last time to a party of creative friends before a physical therapist assumes thespace.

("Financially, it was not keeping itself going," Webster said of his reason for leasing thespace.)

Webster's role as patron of the arts is not happenstance. He is an adherent to sustainable architecture - "sustainable" meaning "having minimum impact on the earth," as he explained it - which is central to the idea of sustainable communities. Webster specializes in planning these communities, helping individuals who buy land and want to create a working co-existence, and art is a natural function of this co-existence.

"Art has a way of pulling people together, creating communities, which is a fundamental tenet of sustainability," said Webster, who noted that visual artists have also been at the forefront of social change. "Art is also one of the most powerful ways to have social change. It's communication from the soul, not from the mind, so it strikes a different chord."

On hand at the good-bye party were gallery owners and DJs, families and couples, artists and patrons - a variegated mix of people who have benefited from thespace either as an artist or participant or audience member.

Jewelry maker Deena Doyle set up a table of her earrings, made from findings bought online and beads she has collected from thrift store jewelry that she's taken apart. She has been a regular audience member at thespace's performances and also attended classes held there, like the Shambala Meditation Group.

"Being in this room is always really cool; it's all good energy. It's pretty sad that it's not going to be here," she said.

Even in its last hours, thespace amassed a network of artists and art fans with no degrees of separation.

Next to Doyle's display, Nantucket Land Council's Membership Coordinator Elisabeth Hazell, who runs the Shambala Meditation Group (now located at Nantucket Martial Arts), showcased a rainbow of her hand-made scarves. When she arrived on island a year ago, she became acquainted with thespace through her boyfriend, Eric Crawford.

Webster's friend and landscape designer, Crawford has been involved with thespace since its beginning. He is also a drawing artist who exhibited in thespace.

"What thespace is to me is a network of friends who are like-minded in that we are tolerant of the idea that we are different," Crawford said. "It's a community based on the idea of helping as opposed to rewarding or punishing."

Without thespace, Crawford said, he didn't think he would have had a venue or an occasion to show his work. "I never would have had a show until it was clear to me that the idea was sharing my art, not selling my art."

Sandy Walsh has been Webster's co-host for the creative salon, manager of thespace, and now serves as the Executive Director of Terra Communa, a nonprofit organization founded to promote the ideals originally represented by thespace - "to help create and support communities and organizations focused on holistic studies and the arts; promoting cultural diversity and collaborative creativity."

"Terra Communa uses thespace's larger concepts to create communities like thespace," Walsh said.

Sustainable architecture and art - it is not a new relationship. Even Wikipedia.com is cognizant of the affair between the two, with a subheading in its "Sustainable Architecture" entry that reads "Art in Sustainable Architecture: Art can be a powerfully positive social force. It can help to reduce stress in many situations, lowering the risk of stress-related health problems, both physical and mental."

It's a parallel construction: art forms are not isolated - Webster's architectural influences are musicians and artists - the same way ecosystems influence each other, the same way people influence each other, especially and specifically through their creative expression.

It might be said the greatest test of a self-sustaining community is to lose the buttressing of sustainable architecture and have no roof at all.

"Not having thespace just means we don't have the location to manifest what we do, so we are manifesting it outwardly, in other communities, through Terra Communa," Walsh said.

Terra Communa helps other like-minded communities evaluate and acquire property of their own, create design plans for the property and then construct guiding principles and organizational structures as well as networking and marketing plans.

"Gaava," a retreat and residential community located in the Colorado Rockies, is an example of Terra Communa's work. (Read more about it at www.gaava.com.)

"Now we're taking the ideas and concepts of thespace and spreading them further to other communities, as a kind of virtual thespace," Webster said, and then turned to greet another friend who came through the door of thespace to say goodbye, to say hello to the friends gathered between its walls.

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