Despite being on different parts of the continent, participants glowed with presence as we met over Zoom to discuss the ARTeens program at The Art Garden in Shelburne Falls. Founder and co-director Jane Wegscheider joined the call while visiting a friend out west. Co-director Laura Iveson sat in her parked car on the way home from helping a Franklin County friend. Micah Goldstein, an ARTeens alum and volunteer, beamed in from British Columbia, where she has an artist’s residency. All three were doing what they do best: nourishing themselves and others while keeping creativity at the center. As ARTeens prepares for another session, let’s meet some of the people who help it thrive.
Wegscheider founded The Art Garden in 2009. Her role shifted recently as she welcomed longtime participant Iveson as co-director. Wegscheider has worked miracles while furthering The Art Garden’s mission: “a commitment to conversation, collaboration, community engagement and responsiveness to community needs.”
Wegscheider, who earned a master’s degree from the Art Institute of Chicago, was deeply influenced by exposure to art in her teens.
“My high school had a printmaking studio better than what most colleges had,” she said. “I knew early on that I wanted to be an artist, but my immigrant parents worried about stability, so I started college by studying journalism.” Before long, Wegscheider switched to art, and never looked back.
For her part, Iveson was told while growing up that her brother was the artist in the family. “I didn’t make representational art, so mine didn’t seem to count,” she recalled.
Later, while living in New Orleans, Iveson loved that the city’s history is “built on the idea of a creative community. Halloween is about making giant installations on your porch.” She was inspired by the “costuming and floats that are woven into (the city’s) life.” She took classes and embraced being an artist.
When Hurricane Katrina devastated the area, Iveson and her family relocated to western Massachusetts. At The Art Garden, Iveson was drawn to making theater sets and other forms of creativity. As we shall see, her artistry blossomed into examples of how art can be intrinsic to community celebrations and grieving processes.
Courtesy of Micah Goldstein
When Goldstein joined the interview, I recognized her from my pre-pandemic days as a substitute teacher at Four Rivers Charter School in Greenfield. I recall her as an 11th-grade student passionately urging her peers to consider participating in an Art Garden program. Goldstein, 26, is currently doing an artist’s residency on Gabriola Island, off the coast of Vancouver, British Columbia. Her trajectory is emblematic of how the ARTeens program has life-changing impacts on young folks. After Four Rivers, Goldstein earned a Bachelor of Fine Arts in film animation from Concordia University in Montreal. During COVID-19, she moved back to our area for a time, and was hired to revamp The Art Garden’s website.
Goldstein works primarily in animation, but also does printmaking, illustration and installation.
“I don’t know where I’d be if I hadn’t gotten involved with The Art Garden,” she said. “I was treated with respect and regarded as being on the same level as adult artists who’ve been doing their craft for decades.”
She added that volunteering with The Art Garden “taught me how to be in community, advocate for myself and make choices. When I made suggestions, the adults asked, ‘How can we make that possible?’ Their trust helped me have confidence in my ideas.”
She credits Wegscheider and Iveson for “always considering what a specific teen is interested in and uplifting what they want to do in very conscious ways.” Readers can view examples of Goldstein’s outstanding work at micahwgoldstein.com.
As ARTeens prepares for their spring session, its facilitators are excited about offering “a sense of community while nurturing uniqueness and engagement in a diverse and non-judgmental group that supports the development of skills for a lifelong journey as artists,” according to the organization’s website: theartgarden.org/for-teens
The seven-week session starts April 14; participants sign up for either Tuesdays or Thursdays. Iveson said, “The soft deadline to submit the interest form is April 6, but we accept teens until the program is full — about a dozen participants.”
Speaking from her own experience, Goldstein emphasized, “A crucial part of ARTeens is that many (participants) continue to work with us after they ‘age out’ of the teen program. We facilitate workshops, skill-share with the community, and work with children during our summer programming.”
The Art Garden also provides stipends for teens for participating in large-scale events. “At a time when things feel uncertain for a lot of young folks, being employed by The Art Garden helps in the financial sense, but also connects them to a larger intergenerational community and allows them to build skills and confidence,” Goldstein said.
For those who regard art as non-essential, consider this: in recent years, output from The Art Garden became focal points in two separate instances when local youngsters died unexpectedly. Large and small pieces of art — including massive birds, countless butterflies and blue fabric swirls representing wind — helped to ease many broken hearts in the hilltowns and beyond.
When Ursula Snow died in an ATV accident in the spring of 2019, volunteers from The Art Garden, led by Iveson, transformed the First Congregational Church in Ashfield into a multi-colored sensory wonder. And when Wegscheider’s only child, Ezekiel Heter-Wegscheider, died in 2022, The Art Garden showed up again. When Ezekiel’s memorial service was over, folks at the Charlemont Federated Church asked if the gorgeous art pieces could remain for a time — which they did, for months.
Ezekiel’s mom, the heart and soul of The Art Garden, reflected on what it was like to witness such artistry in tribute to Ezekiel. “It was grief and death and life integrated in a way that filled us as a community in that moment,” said Wegscheider. “It definitely filled me. It was so wonderful.”
Eveline MacDougall is the author of “Fiery Hope” and can be reached at eveline@amandlachorus.org.