A Complicated Marriage by Janice Van Horne

Author:Janice Van Horne
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Counterpoint Press
Published: 2012-03-02T05:00:00+00:00

Now that we had a car, getaways became more frequent. Most often we headed up to Ken’s farmhouse in South Shaftsbury. We had been friends for years, and our bond with Ken had grown even stronger after he had moved to New York and then to Vermont. Though the house was only a short distance from Bennington, Ken never taught at the college. He had chosen the area because his Reichian therapist had deemed it as having the purest air quality in New England. Now, the house, replete with a Reichian orgone box, nestled on the side of a slope at the end of a long dirt driveway. Ken had bought it from the Robert Frost family. It had been Frost who had named it the Gulley, and liked to call it his Gulley Gulch. And, yes, there were groves of birches on the hill out back. Dating from the 1780s, it was very small, one floor and an attic, with slanting wide plank floors, low ceilings, heating that was catch as catch can . . . in other words, rustic and charming. Behind the house was a large barn that Ken had converted into a studio. His “targets” had established him as a major art player. Always a master of color, he was now on a creative roll, painting a river of breathtakingly beautiful pictures. As for the air quality, Ken installed a contraption to measure the ion level on top of the hill, just to be sure he was where he was meant to be. Not that there was really any question.

In the beginning, visitors were mostly close friends, like David Smith, who would drive over from Bolton Landing and Ken’s family, but by 1964 the place was jumping. Ken married Stephanie Gordon, recently graduated from Sarah Lawrence, and it was she who brought decor and creature comforts to the Gulley: a finished attic with two more bedrooms, two more bathrooms, and a swimming pool behind the barn.

That year also brought Jules and Andy Olitski, and daughters Eve and Lauren, to Bennington. Also joining the faculty was Tony Caro, the sculptor we had met in London in 1959, his wife, Sheila, and their two boys, Timothy and Paul. It always felt like there was a crowd at Ken’s place. If Clem was the New York magnet for visitors from abroad, Ken’s place was the go-to destination out of town. As tiny as the Gulley was, there was always room for one more. And Ken was the ringmaster and game player: cards, backgammon, chess, charades . . . one could always find a game in progress. And invariably a new toy: exotic foreign cars, like his Lotus, which hadn’t imported well and sat like decorative sculptures next to the barn; a tractor to roam the fields in; motorbikes; trout for the stream he had dredged, and fishing rods to catch them. Summers by the pool where Sarah, guided by Stephanie, learned to swim and where Clem cavorted like the dolphin he was.

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