William Meredith Center for the Arts

The Meredith Center for the Arts will keep the flame of generosity and artistic camaraderie burning at Riverrun, William's home on the Thames River in Connecticut where he lived and worked for 60 years and which has recently been added to the State Registry of Historic Landmarks.

Residency Program

Limited residencies are available in 2010. We have high hopes of constructing a two-bedroom annex to the William Meredith Center to house visiting artists and provide studio space in which to work. Currently, the facilities are limited to a small studio apartment for visiting artists who must rely on off campus studio space. The fine local architect, Mark Comeau has volunteered his services to help construct this annex. Until the annex is completed, the guest apartment is available at Riverrun and additional housing may be arranged in the area. Artists and writers wishing to visit should contact the Foundation at the following address to discuss what they have in mind and what their needs may be.

Click here to view conceptual drawings and plans for the future annex building.

CONTACT:

The William Meredith Foundation, Inc.
337 Kitemaug Road
Uncasville, Ct. 06382
Email: RiverrunBooks@cs.com
Tel: 860-961-5138

SUMMER RESIDENCIES 2009

This summer the William Meredith Center for the Arts was pleased to welcome five artists for short residencies with additional visits scheduled for the month of August. We wish to thank the Griffis Arts Center and Fran Tripp for their extremely kind reception for several of these artists who have been accommodated at the center.

LUCIEN DIMITROV (www.lusienliko.hit.bg)

I was pleased to greet Lucien at the Boston Airport this July and house him at the Meredith Center's guest apartment. Lucien has generously offered to create a portrait for the sculpture garden at Riverrun and began initial work on the project before continuing on to Chicago. He returns in August with Boiko Dimitrov to continue this work and connect with friends and galleries in the community. William Meredith first introduced Lucien's work to the United States for an exhibition of Bulgarian artists at the Von Schlippe Gallery at the University of Connecticut as well as two exhibitions at the York Square Gallery in New Haven.    

Lucien works in monumental plastic art & wood sculpture, and does colored wood cuts and watercolors. He graduated from the National College of Applied Arts, Sofia, and the National Academy of Fine Arts, Sofia. His works are in the permanent collection of the National Art Gallery in Sofia, as well as galleries and private collections in Georgia, Greece, Yugoslavia, and many countries of Western Europe and the US. Marine motifs appear in his watercolor compositions. His process of form and deformation accents both the immaculately homogeneous and the weird and gaudy. Folk inspiration results in works of great charm such as the following sculpture titled "Balance."

BIJU VISWANATH (www.Bijuviswanath.com)

In July, the Meredith Center welcomed Biju Viswanath for a short visit to investigate the potential for a second film to follow MARATHON (www.MarathonTheMovie.com), a sequel to the E.M Forster novel MAURICE. MARATHON is a tale of courage, endurance, and finally, the triumph of love. Profits from both films will help endow the Center. The press release for MARATHON reads in part:

The power to overcome illness with dignity becomes a lesson in physical and spiritual endurance, hard won knowledge indeed. MARATHON displays the resolve, discipline and courage of two human beings running for their lives, qualities that can sustain us all in life's marathon. In  this moving account, we see how two fellow runners have joined the course, and just how far our dreams can take us before we cross the finish line.

Biju Viswanath: Cinematographer/DP, Director. Biju Viswanath is an award-winning international film maker. The critically acclaimed feature film dejá vj,(2001) with British actors, was his first international feature. His films have been screened at several international film festivals, including: Pusan, Locarno, Greece , New York, New Jersey, and Indian Panorama. Marathon is his fifth feature film. (More about MARATHON).

  
CELIA DE FREINE (www.celiadefreine.com)

During her month long visit, Celia de Freine and Mr. Viswanath were accommodated at the Griffis Arts Center in New London where Sharon Griffis gave them an extraordinary welcome, including them in a number of social activities. Celia and Richard worked extremely well (and hard!) on the first draught for a screenplay titled, LEAVING THE GREENWOOD. Previously, she wrote the screenplay for MARATHON. She and her husband, the novelist Jack Harte, visited in the spring of 2007 often visiting the hospital in the final months of Mr. Meredith's life.

Ms. de Fréine returned to Riverrun in the fall of 2009 to continue work on a new screenplay and to attend the world premiere of MARATHON as part of the New York International Film Festival.

Celia de Freine is a poet and playwright who writes in both Irish and English. She was born in Northern Ireland and now lives in Dublin and Connemara.

Many of her plays have been produced, including most recently ‘Anraith Neantoige' by Aisling Ghear in 2004. She won the Oireachtas Award for best play in 2003, 2004, and 2006.

She has published three volumes of poetry, ‘Faoi Chabaisti is Rionacha' and ‘Fiacha Fola', both in the Irish language, and ‘Scarecrows at Newtownards' in English. Her poetry has won numerous awards, including the Patrick Kavanagh Award (1994), Duais Chomortas Litriochta Dhun Laoghaire (1996), Duais Smurfit / La (2003) and Gradam Litriochta Chlo Iar-Chonnachta (2004), and the Translation Award of the British Comparative Literature Association (1999).

"The stark simplicity of the language heightens the powerful range of emotions … In this incredibly powerful collection, Celia de Freine has given us an absolute page-turner. ‘Fiacha Fola' is the best collection of poetry I have read this year" – Irish Times

NANCY FRANKEL (http://www.nancyfrankel.com)

Nancy Frankel has been William Meredith's friend since the days she first taught him sculpture after his stroke. She serves as the Treasurer for the foundation and several of her works have been donated for the sculpture park at Riverrun. She has created the moquette for "Guardian Angel," an eight-foot sculpture of an angel to be formed in steel for the memorial section of the garden under the "two trees" where William's ashes lie. The two trees are the subject of his poem, "A Couple of Trees."  Nancy says of her work, "I use "organic geometry" to give form to my love of nature and architecture. Space, either encapsulated or activated, and a sense of balance, precarious yet centered, are integral to my work. My sculptures range in size from small maquettes and table-top interior works to large exterior pieces. The sundials and fountains, seamlessly merging form and function, reflect their environmental settings. The outdoor sculptures are made of design-cast (a man-made stone), steel and bronze. These materials can be found in my interior works in addition to plexiglas, fired clay, plaster and wood.

BOIKO DIMITROV

Boiko Dimitrov, though not related to Lucien is a brother in the arts who has visited New London under William's sponsorship on a number of occasions and has participated in the exhibitions arranged for Bulgarian artists over the years. He will be in residence in the month of August upon his return from Bulgaria.

Boiko Dimitrov was born in Blagoevgrad in 1967, and graduated from the College St. Ivan Risky in Dupnitsa. He has had four solo exhibitions, in Sofia and at Alexey von Schlippe Gallery, UCONN at Avery Point, Groton, CT. Boiko's icon paintings depict religious imagery and symbols which hold in balance a division of the principles of the divine and the real, dissecting the architectural view of a field around a focal area, creating an enigmatic transfiguration of time.