ARKVILLE — Randolph "Randy" Leer and Heidi Stonier's Arts Inn Collective, Inc. promotes community, art, theater, and music. It has been in existence for four years. The Arts Inn Bed and Breakfast has been extant for five years. They closed on the magnificent Victorian house where these programs take place, weeks before COVID hit. Perhaps not the best time to begin a project which depends on tourism and hospitality, but certainly a wonderful place to take refuge during the disaster.
They spent the first wave of the COVID shut downs, restoring the building with care and respect for the original beauty. They began undoing some of the changes made by the exigencies of use as a restaurant and other commercial ventures. At last, they were ready for a grand opening during the Christmas season. And then, the second wave of COVID hit.
But we are jumping ahead of the story. The start of the story begins romantically enough with young love in Paris. Heidi was a choreographer and Randy was a Montessori teacher, while setting out to be a writer and eight millimeter film maker. Paris being Paris, they soon were expecting their first child. They came home to the USA to be close to family.
They came back with the intention of creating a community center, focusing on education and the arts. From Heidi's apartment in New York, they began to look upstate for a place to build the Center. They first looked in Columbia County. But with a new baby, bills took on a new meaning. Randy began a business as a painting contractor in New Jersey, Heidi taught and made art. Full disclosure, Heidi and I went to the High School of Music and Art the same years, had all the same friends, but we both are pretty sure we didn't know each other back then. Most graduates from that place make art and music for the rest of their lives. But so saying, the art center had to wait.
Heidi and Randy are used to waiting for their dreams. They have the patience born of, well, giving birth. They decided to build an arts center when they first met, and began to plan. However, they also began a family, so it was their grown children who found the building in Fleischmanns for them to have their turn in life and realize their center.
Randy's roots in Fleischmanns go way back. In 1947, his grandparents and his mother bought an Inn on Wagner Avenue. Until he was about twelve, Randy spent four or five months of the year in the Catskills. Back then it was a bustling community of Eastern European refugees from WWII. There were three supermarkets, cafes, the theater was alive. "The Catskills stays in your blood," Heidi says. Those who spend their formative years return. About fifteen years ago, Randy's sister bought the land on which their Inn, lost years ago to fire, stood. She put a prefab house on the property and Heidi and Randy would come up to visit her.
Now they mentor Artists in the Arts Inn. It really isn't a retirement. We are always working, doing something we will be doing for the rest of our lives. A year before they filed as a not for profit, they held the first yearly "H and R Vaudeville Variety Show." It was a backyard fair of fourteen acts with an African Kora player, spoken word, fire twirlers... It caught Fleischmanns by surprise. They did four more music events in the newly emerging Arts Center. They presented New Age music, Folk, and Rock and Roll. That first year, Barbara Kolb and Justin Kolb became involved, Barbara helping form the 501 C3 not for profit "The Arts Inn Collective.".The Kolbs were involved with the Phoenicia Festival of the Voice. The Festival of the Voice was the most successful arts organization in the area for fifteen years, according to Heidi.
From that point forward the variety shows were funded by grants. The next year they had a successful cover band for the rock group "The Band" come to perform. Each year for five years, the event grew and changed. Last year the theme was "A Woman Rising." They presented Shakespearean works, a comedian choreographer, music, an "offbeat Indie band", a nine piece Flamenco troupe, all women artists. They went over their budget but as they said, "we figured out how to do it."
What is coming in the next season's vaudeville show? They are partnering with Christa McAuliffe, of Stamford's Party Theatre on the game theory idea that "everyone's actions affect the whole. Just that idea, in this time appears to be perfect," Randy says. In these times when so many people feel isolated and frightened "it is the artist's job to lead people back when they are going over the cliff." Heidi says,"We want people to enjoy themselves, we want it to be fun, but we want it to have some meaning - that you have a voice and what you bring does matter."
Christa will be the "devising artist." Five days before the program, there will be a residency with five or six performers. They will gather to create a piece to be performed on the event day. It will be interactive with the audience. This year the event will take place both inside and outside the house. The general theme being, "A Fairground." Together with the actors, the audience will create the final piece.
It is an echo, another interpretation of their project, "The Wall of Peace." This project of theirs is a mosaic where people bring something meaningful to them, break it and add it to the mosaic dedicated to peace. "The idea is that we can make something beautiful out of something that is broken." A hopeful thought in these days.
