About Us
Carolyn Clayton and Ben Westbrook moved to North Adams in 2017. The motivating factors behind our move was how might we prototype a model for a sustainable artist existence outside of a major metropolitan area, and how might we bring other artists into that space. With the support of our friends and family, we took on the project of renovating an 8000 sq ft former dental office/historic home that has since become the Walkaway House.
Ben Westbrook has twenty years of custom ironwork, fabrication and mentorship experience. He received a BA from Hampshire College in 2002 where he specialized in blacksmithing. In 2003 he started BMW Ironworks, now Hammer on Steel, which he has been successfully operating ever since. Before settling back in Western Massachusetts, Ben traveled the country working as a journeyman blacksmith to a range of master blacksmiths in Wyoming, Brooklyn and San Fransisco. Ben’s expertise may be in shaping hot steel into new and organic forms, but his passion for the craft goes hand in hand with sharing his skills through teaching.
Carolyn Clayton makes installations, participatory systems, and sculptural displays that encourage viewers to consider their relationship to the material world and the objects in it. She received her MFA from University of Michigan in 2016 (with a certificate in Museum Studies) and her BFA from Carnegie Mellon University in 2009. She was awarded the Dedalus Foundation MFA Fellowship in sculpture in 2016 and a National Arts Strategy Creative Community Fellowship in 2018, where she began to develop the concept for the Walkaway House. She currently works as the studio coordinator for the Studios at MASS MoCA, a program of Assets for Artists.
Wylie Westbrook is a Three year Old outdoor enthusiast. He loves waterfalls, flowers, rocks, y-sticks, rivers, mountains (and you get the picture.) He’s Loving growing up in a lively household of artists and guests, and is always eager to give a tour.
Eva (Bean) is an enthusiastically energetic and loving little pit mix. Carolyn rescued Eva from Toledo, Ohio when she finished grad school in Michigan. Eva is delighted to now be in the Berkshires, going for trail runs with Carolyn whenever possible. She loves carrots, kale stems and strangers.
RIP - Lindsay Sophia the Great (Smoonj) Was a beautiful snowshoe Siamese kitty. She’s lived with Ben for nineteen years. She Enjoyed water from the faucet, wandering around outside, and pâté. She lived a long happy life and left the world gracefully in 2021.
About the Building
Origins - A Home and a Place of Work
Built in 1853, the building we now call the Walkaway House was the home of Henry Millard and family. Millard was an early pioneer of industry in North Adams, behind one of the city’s first shoe manufacturing companies. The factory was located on Union Street and eventually become the Wall-Streeter Shoe Company when it changed ownership in 1912.
While we don’t know too much about that early era and how the building was used, we have gleaned from local knowledge and hearsay that the building served as a home to numerous owners and renters alongside various businesses. Around mid-century it was the Pringle Funeral Home and in 1973 it was purchased by Robert Auge and became the Pringle-Auge Funeral Home. After the funeral home era it transitioned into a dental office, eventually bought and further transformed by Dr. Gene Messenger into Messenger Dental. The office and labs were located on the first floor and finished basement and his family lived upstairs on the top two floors. In 2010 Messenger Dental moved down to Curran Highway where it’s still operating today.
The building was on the market for about 6 years before we came along. A building that large, that had not been split up into units and had the various odd marks of a former dental practice was perhaps not the easiest thing to sell in 2017. Coated from floor to ceiling in every room with floral wallpaper from the 90’s, green carpet sweeping through the first floor and holes in the hardwood where former dental pipes protruded, it needed some serious creative re-imagining.
Walking through the doors for the first time, we felt an uncanny sense of belonging in the place (as daunting and unexpected as that was from the outside.) Perhaps this makes more sense when you look at our own pasts. Carolyn’s dad is a dentist and her mom is an orthodontist. Growing up, her dad ran his practice out of the basement in their family home. There were always patients coming and going. Ben grew up in Crown Point, NY with historians for parents. His dad was the former director of Fort Ticonderoga and his mom an independent historian and writer, translating local histories into books and exhibitions. Their family landed in a similarly grand (and difficult to heat) historic home way upstate.
We loved that there was room for Ben’s shop out back and Carolyn’s studio on the first floor and so SO much more all under one roof. It was 2017 and the price was right, a result of having been on the market for 6 years. Knowing we were good at tackling ambitious projects together, having done so with ease for years, we jumped right in and took on the biggest project to date. The wallpaper steaming and scraping began immediately and would continue for the next three years!