Why Walkaway?
A Naming Story…
We are often asked how we arrived at the name the Walkaway House. It’s a multi-tiered answer. We bought the house in the summer of 2017 and got married that fall. That first winter, Carolyn traveled solo to Greensboro, NC for a month-long stay at Elsewhere, the Living Museum and Artist Residency. While away, Ben stayed home and learned all he could about the 170 yr old beast of a building, with it's daunting 8000 sqft of unfamiliar plumbing, electric, and noisy but cozy steam heat.
For Carolyn, being in residence at Elsewhere was a field study of sorts into the endless creative possibilities of building a residency program. If you’re not familiar with Elsewhere: artists are invited to live in the three-story former thrift store of previous owner Sylvia Gray and the 58 year collection of material culture and surplus she left behind. It’s a living museum, where artists work among the hoard of matter, re-shaping and re-imagining its contents for the public.
We were still years away from becoming parents at that point, so while Carolyn was in residence Ben had plenty of time to himself that month. An avid reader of speculative fiction, he was making his way through Cory Doctorow’s Walkaways. Ben called Carolyn at Elsewhere one afternoon with the proposition "what if we call it the Walkaway House?” By that time we had already decided that hosting an artist residency on the premises would be at the core of the project. Carolyn agreed that the name had a certain ring to it. Perhaps it was because of it’s similarity to the Dreamaway Lodge, a long-standing restaurant and music venue in the southern Berkshires, or perhaps it was just the concept of “walking away” itself.
Ben continued, describing how the book was about a group of people in the future who choose to walk away from a dystopian ultra-capitalist world to form a new society of "walkaways” who live an intentional, semi-nomadic and communal way life where everything is built collectively with the help futuristic 3D printers that endlessly recycle and re-print matter. This concept struck a chord with Carolyn as she sat on the indoor swing in the front window of Elsewhere (where she had spent the weeks living in collective space and working with local technicians to 3D scan objects from the collection for her project Glimpse.)
She described to Ben how at Elsewhere, the museum collection functions as a closed system, where nothing new can enter and nothing can leave. At Elsewhere, they consider the collection to be a natural resource that is slowly being changed and depleted. She also expressed her awe at how everything at Elsewhere is designed and performed as an artwork including the kitchen space, the weekly cleaning hour and even the cocktail bar! This sequence of overlapping inspirations was the impetus to choose the Walkway House name right then and there, and to start building a program of our own without losing sight of the project as an artwork itself.
But that’s not all!
We further justified the naming of the Walkaway House with some Westbrook family lore. Ben’s parents are both historians and keeping track of their family lineage and storytelling go hand-in-hand. As the story goes, Ben’s ancestor Samuel Tippet walked west from New Jersey (after emigrating from Cornwall) all the way to Michigan and Minnesota in search of riches and a new way of life. Having given it a go in the mining industry, he soon decided it was not for him and walked all the way back to New Jersey to embark on a different career path. When Ben and Carolyn first moved from Western, MA to Michigan in 2014 for Carolyn to get her MFA, Ben’s dad sent them both an email retelling this story and reminding them they could always “walk away” and come back East. Which, of course, we did!
And, last but not least, we’re located at the end of Main street, just at the edge of North Adams’ downtown cultural district. The Walkaway House is just a “walk away” from anything you might need, including the world class contemporary art museum, MASS MoCA.
Why we do it…
For Artists
To provide space, time and support for artists to explore new ideas and create new work at a welcomed remove from the distractions and obligations of “regular” life.
To provide a comfortable and inviting new context that inspires creative growth and introduces artists to new perspectives while helping them to expand their creative network.
To create a safe and comfortable, anti-racist and queer friendly environment for artists to tend to their work.
For our Community
To introduce diverse creative voices that will enliven our cultural landscape and contribute to the creative revitalization of our town, while promoting North Adams as a place where artists can live fulfilling and sustainable creative lives.
To envision a positive and inclusive future for how outdated architectural infrastructure in North Adams can be used for cultural benefit by bringing new life and energy to this magnificent building that, for years, had been “stuck," waiting for new purpose.
To support the creation of new ideas that will ultimately seep into our greater cultural landscape, providing the public with new ways of seeing and experiencing the world around us.
For us
To re-envision how the contemporary nuclear family occupies domestic space and to expand that space to include opportunities for others to participate in a shared vision, building an expanded network of artists from across the globe with a shared connection to place.
To envision possible futures for how artists may live sustainably, in community and with support, even outside of the major metropolitan art hubs.