The Art Resource Association officially began on November 17, 1975. On that day, cofounders Patricia de Gogorza and her husband, James Gahagan, registered the ARA as a nonprofit with the state of Vermont.

Pat and Jim had moved to Vermont in 1971 from New York City where they were part of a dynamic art community. Jim, an abstract expressionist painter, was associate director of the Hans Hofmann School and taught painting at Pratt Institute, while Pat, a printmaker and sculptor, taught art at Bard College.

Jim’s connections to Vermont, dating back to his days as an undergraduate student at Goddard College, in part drew them to Vermont. They settled into the house they had bought on Dog Pond Road, South Woodbury, in 1964, and from 1971 to 1974, they ran an art school during the summers, building a geodesic dome on the property for art classes and nightly figure drawing sessions.

“People who weren’t happy with their art education elsewhere were drawn to come here,” says Pat of that time. Artists from New York would come up from the city to enjoy summer in Vermont, while improving their art and communing with other artists.

Though the school provided some community, Pat and Jim realized something more was needed to connect the many artists living and working apart in the hills of Vermont. As Pat commented during a recent interview, “I think of artists in Vermont like raisins in a cookie. They’re separated, may not know about each other’s existence, but still they’re altogether in the same cookie, Vermont.”

Pat and Jim conceived of an organization that would gather together artists to learn from one another and share their work. They wanted to offer education and exhibition opportunities, while also providing a source of income for themselves and other artists.

Workshops, Exhibitions, Vizart

They got a three-year grant from the NEA and also secured funding for two employees—Jean Sousa and Ruth Cohan—through CETA (Comprehensive Employment and Training Act). Another early employee was Sarah Munro whose position, spanning 1978 to 1979, was funded through a VCA (Vermont Council on the Arts) grant. Ruth worked for the ARA for one year, leaving in 1980. Jean was an early and ongoing vital part of the ARA.

The ARA in its early days was more selective about who could join; becoming a member meant more than just paying the two dollar yearly dues. Prospective members had to submit résumés, slides of their artwork, and a biography, indicating a serious commitment to art.

A key part of those early days of the ARA was running weeklong and weekend workshops. Both local artists and visiting artists ran a variety of workshops. In addition to drawing and painting classes, sessions were held on glass blowing, printmaking, blacksmithing, casting in bronze, mural painting, working in clay, and batik. Among the visiting artists were Krishna Reddy, Claire Van Vliet, and Nieves Billmyer.

The ARA made certain to pay instructors. “We tried to keep principled,” says Pat. “We made it a rule that you can’t have artists working for nothing.” Thanks to the NEA funding, the ARA was able to pay instructors ten dollars an hour and assistants five dollars an hour—a respectable income in the mid-to-late 1970s. Community members who attended the workshops were charged twenty-five dollars for materials; artist members paid twenty dollars.

Another benefit of the ARA was bulk-ordering art supplies for members. For a time, as part of the ARA membership, artists could be part of a cooperative, ordering and buying art supplies from New York City at wholesale prices.

Starting in 1977, the ARA, funded by a VCA grant, put out a quarterly newsletter, Vizart, mailed free to members. These were the days before computers and layout software. First, information of potential interest to members was gathered, such as exhibition opportunities, grant deadlines, and upcoming workshops. Most issues had an article or two of interest to artists, usually written by a staff member (Jean, Ruth, or Pat). Everything was then laboriously typed up, the typed sheets cut to fit a sketched-out layout and glued to larger layout sheets, along with photographs and drawings. When the VCA grant money ran out in 1980, Vizart continued for a few more years, but members were asked to pay a five dollar yearly subscription. (Copies of Vizart are on display.)

Along with grants from the VCA and NEA, the ARA raised money during the late 1970s and early ’80s by holding a yearly Art and Zucchini Auction in August. The redoubtable Dick Hathaway, history professor at Goddard College, served as the auctioneer. Dick was well known and loved for his clever and entertaining repartee, and the auctions did well, usually raising $800 to $900 from artwork donated by members. 

For a time the ARA’s address was that of Pat and Jim’s house in South Woodbury. Some classes and workshops were held at their place, affectionately called “Crazy Acres,” but often lectures and workshops had to be held elsewhere, such as the sculpture building at Goddard College or at artists’ studios. Work was exhibited wherever the ARA could find space or an organization willing to host the work. The Wood Art Gallery, originally located on the third floor of the Kellogg-Hubbard Library in Montpelier, later moving to College Hall, Vermont College, was a favored spot. Other sites were Mad River Barn, Goddard College Library, the Conservatory of the Arts, and the Pyralisk Gallery.

Members dreamed of a building of their own, where the ARA could hold workshops, classes, and exhibitions in one central location. In 1978, the dream seemed about to come true with the potential purchase of an old schoolhouse in Maple Corner. It was around this time that NEA grants were becoming more competitive, and the ARA was in danger of being too small and too rural to attract funding. The association was advised to get bigger and have a bigger footprint.

It was a big disappointment when the schoolhouse purchase fell through. But it turned out to be a blessing in disguise. Pat notes today that the ARA would likely have not survived had it been saddled with the debt and overhead of a bricks-and-mortar location. Its very transience was the secret to its longevity.

Powered by Volunteer Labor

By 1982, Pat was ready to step away from her role as president, which she had held for seven years. “I was making art, teaching, and raising two kids. It had become too much for me,” she says.

By this time, the organization was run by volunteers, no more paid staff. That year, Carol Philips became the president with Anci Slovak as vice president. The following year, Alice Merrill took over as VP. She later became president in 1984 and enticed Joy Spontak to become not only a member of the ARA but the new vice president. One year later, Alice left and Joy became president, with Kate Mueller, who had just moved to the area, as vice president.

During Joy’s tenure, Joy and Kate organized a four-part art talk series, held at the TW Wood Gallery and funded by a VCA grant. In the first lecture, four Barre granite sculptors spoke about their art. Other artists in the series were Bill Brauer, Lorna Ritz, Ayn Baldwin, and Leslie Ferst.

After two years, both Joy and Kate moved on and were followed by Donna Romero as president, and then Eva Shechtman took the reins in 1997. By then the newsletter had devolved to two sheets of paper stapled together with only essential information. Eva resurrected the earlier incarnation of the newsletter, with a better design and more and better content, including reproducing members’ artwork.

By 2000, Eva’s attention had turned to Studio Place Arts in Barre, which was in its early stages. Wanting to devote her energies to SPA, Eva left the ARA, and Jane Pincus, who had been vice president, became president. The newsletter was left helmless and unpublished for nearly a year, until Kate, after a long hiatus, rejoined the ARA board and became the newsletter’s editor in 2001.

On the masthead of the 2001 newsletter, Jane is identified as “acting president.” But as no one else stepped forward after Eva left, Jane became the de facto president and remained in that position for the next ten years.

During Jane’s long tenure, the board conceived of and produced a membership guide: a directory of all the members was published, updated and reissued yearly. With names arranged alphabetically, each member listed their contact information, the media they worked in, and what they were interested in, such as get-togethers, bulk buying, or classes. The notion was to familiarize members with one another and enable them to connect more easily for projects.

In 2002, the ARA got a new logo designed by Armand Poulin, which the association uses to this day. Notable about the logo is that the second A is reversed—a feat that Armand, a calligrapher as well as a painter, achieved by hand. The entire logo is hand drawn.

That same year, Phil Osgatharp, beloved longtime member of the ARA, sadly passed away. A year later, the board established the Phil Osgatharp Fellowship in conjunction with the Vermont Studio Center (VSC). In 2004 the first $200 fellowship was awarded to an artist in financial need to attend Vermont week at the VSC. The Phil Osgatharp Fellowship was awarded yearly until 2023, when the VSC was able to offer free fellowships to all Vermont artists accepted into Vermont week at the VSC.

During Jane’s presidency, the ARA often exhibited at City Center. The center—liked by artists because of its spaciousness, ample wall space, and central location—was used for both group and solo shows. The management welcomed the ARA and liked having artwork on the walls, but the ARA occasionally came cross-wise with the building manager. In spring 2002, Sam Kerson hung a political show called Slaughter of the Prisoners, condemning the murder of prisoners in Mazar-e-Sharif, Afghanistan. The exhibition was up for less than an hour before management swooped in and took down the art. Kate Mueller had one show of nudes, which was generally well received but did create some unease—someone came through one day and put Post-it notes on the artwork, covering breasts and crotches. ARA board members decided that, to maintain access to the center, they would need to limit political and figurative artwork.

In an interview, Jane says of her time at the ARA that she “participated with all my heart and soul.” It was a “wonderful blessing,” she says, for the ARA to have access to the Wood Art Gallery, during its days at College Hall. Jane and fellow ARA member and friend Barbara Scotch organized several shows at the Wood, not specifically aligned with the ARA but often engaging artists from the association. Among those exhibits was a three-person show of ARA members Ray Brown, Frank Woods, and David Smith.

In 2011, Jane’s husband, filmmaker Ed Pincus, became gravely ill, and Jane left her post as president. It was also around this time, that the TW Wood Gallery left College Hall and moved into the Center for Arts and Learning building.

The Last Ten Years

Linda Maney became president of the ARA and headed the organization until 2015, when Linda Hogan took over. Linda H. and Missy

Storrow—who started as secretary-treasurer of the ARA in 2002 and had continued in that post—became a dynamic duo.

Linda—an early member of the ARA, well-known local artist, and a resident of Montpelier for many years—was able to leverage her connections to arrange a number of exhibits over the years at a variety of venues, including Kellogg-Hubbard Library, La Brioche, Capitol Grounds, Bethany Church, Lost Nation Theater, and the Vermont State House. Linda started the annual Voice and Vision exhibit as part of Montpelier’s PoemCity celebration, with the blessing of Rachel Senechal, Kellogg-Hubbard Library’s former events coordinator, who created PoemCity in 2010. Every April, ARA members collaborate with Vermont poets to produce artwork paired with poems. Voice and Vision exhibits have been shown at various locations around Montpelier and are now exhibited every year at the Center for Arts and Learning (CAL).

In 2021, Missy approached CAL, suggesting that the ARA and CAL collaborate, and offered to curate shows on the first floor. The ARA and CAL signed an agreement in early 2022, and since then, the first floor gallery, now called the ARA Gallery, has provided an ongoing exhibition space for the ARA for group, two-person, and solo shows. 

During their joint tenure, Linda and Missy organized a number of free, grant-funded workshops for both children and adults, among them collage making, mono printing, gelli printing, and sun-print photography for kids on the lawn of the Kellogg-Hubbard Library.

When Missy moved to New Mexico in early 2024, it took three board members to assume her ARA duties: Mollie Hoerres as treasurer, Em Sloan as secretary, and Kate Mueller as organizer and curator of the CAL shows. Linda continues as the ARA’s latest longtime president.

Over the years, the ARA has become more egalitarian, no longer asking prospective members to submit slides and a biography. The ARA mission has evolved to encourage everyone to engage in art-making and to offer new and inexperienced artists opportunities to exhibit alongside more developed, professional artists. There is still the occasional juried show, but most ARA group shows are not juried.

Through the years, scores of local artists have been members of the ARA at one time or another, many of them respected artists well known to the community. Among them are (in addition to the artists already mentioned and in no particular order): Robert Fisher, Delia Robinson, Bill Brauer, Linda Dean Paradee, Eddie Epstein, Helen Rabin, Mary

Admasian, Sam Thurston, Pria Cambio, Fred Varney, Marie La-Pre

Grabon, David Zahn, Jill Waxman, Lois Eby, Ed Levin, Jean Cannon, Michelle Lesnak, Ben Morreale, Marilyn Ruseckas, Jim Sardonis, Janet Macleod, Bill Steinhurst, Harriet Wood, Nicholas Hecht  . . . and the list goes on.

This lean and flexible organization with no fixed physical address is much valued and loved by the central Vermont arts community and has continued to this day thanks to the devoted efforts of its artist members.

This brief history covers only the highlights. The ARA was unable to connect with several past presidents and likely key moments have been missed and some dates may not be exact. We regret any omissions or errors. if you have additional information about the ARA or corrections, please email kmuellerarts@aol.com