This commentary is by Eve O. Schaub of Pawlet. She and her husband Stephen create artworks under the name EveNSteve. Their Hayfield Art Gallery is free and open to the public every day, dawn to dusk.
My husband and I are artists, and for the last five years we’ve been putting up a free outdoor art exhibit in the hayfield across the street from our house in Pawlet, as a way to express gratitude to our community.
This spring, like other years, we were formulating a plan for a new show, but as the news of 2025 kept rolling in, we felt an urgency to address the rapidly shifting landscape in the world of the arts. We wanted to create a space to pose and contemplate what is happening.
Consequently, this year, instead of a mixed media display of photographs with hand painted text, we have a 32-foot artwork in the hayfield that simply reads “WHAT HAPPENS WHEN YOU DEFUND THE ARTS?” The other four scaffoldings that normally exhibit artworks are all painted black.
The arts help us make sense of the world. In fact, during the pandemic, this is why we felt so strongly — as art venues and public spaces were closing, and shows and events were all being cancelled one after another — that we needed to find alternative venues for people to experience art. This is how the Hayfield Art Gallery was born.
At first, we literally had no idea what we were doing. Would the artwork last? Would the frameworks hold up over time? Would people just hate it? What if, after investing all the time and expense, we ourselves deemed it a failure, which of course happens in art all the time?
We built one artwork, a black and white photograph of a woman in an orchard, 12 feet long and painted into it words prompted by our Covid-19 experience: “My heart is very big. Sometimes I wonder if it is big enough.”
Thankfully not only did we like it, but our neighbors did too. Horns honked and hands waved as cars drove down our road. People learned about our project and came from far and wide to see it, some getting out of their cars and walking the field. During a very dark time, we had found a way to create some light.
We kept going, adding additional scaffoldings, becoming more ambitious. We had a conversation with our town zoning administrator to explain why this free outdoor art display did not violate Vermont’s billboard ban. The town ultimately agreed with our argument and the artworks remained, ultimately becoming a revolving annual exhibition open to all.
The days of the pandemic are now, thankfully, behind us. During that time, we all found reason to turn to the creative arts to help make sense of the world, to find hope, distraction, solace. Movies, songs, podcasts, books, poetry, art of all kinds took on a renewed significance.
The recent efforts to defund the arts represent a different kind of dark time. The current administration is proposing to eliminate the National Endowment for the Arts. Drastic NEA cuts have already affected Vermont institutions as varied as the Vermont Symphony Orchestra, the Flynn Theater and the Governor’s Institutes of Vermont.
It’s important to note that the NEA is one of the largest arts funders in the U.S., yet it is also one of the smallest federal agencies. It does a tremendous amount of good with very little.
Last year each taxpayer paid less than one dollar to support the NEA, and its entire budget represented about 0.003% of the federal budget. The NEA brings concerts, readings, performances and arts education to the entire country, including underserved, impoverished and rural communities, all for less than the cost of a cup of coffee.
Our show for 2025 sincerely asks the question: What happens when we defund the arts? But it also asks it rhetorically, because the surrounding blank canvases represent one answer: when you defund the arts you are left with darkness.
