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Arts & Entertainment

Ragdale Is More Competitive, Diverse As Artists' Retreat

Upcoming 'A Novel Affair' helps raise friends, funds.

Between bites of mouth-melting pot roast and crunchy spinach slaw, poet Karen Duffy wants to talk about smoke inhalation.

She’s been thinking a lot about “fires and how they kill you,” as she puts it, during her two-week residence at , a historic Lake Forest summer retreat turned artists’ retreat now in its 36th year.

The sumptuous evening meal, created by chef Linda Williams, is the nightly common ground for a disparate collection of poets and novelists, musicians and visual artists who have the luxury of spending their days thinking about whatever moves them.

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Duffy’s family narrowly escaped an arson fire in their New Jersey home, recently purchased from someone they now think was “connected” with the mafia. Now Duffy is living and breathing the technical aspects of combustion as she crafts a book of poems around her award-winning personal essay When Gangsters Burn Down Your House With You In It.

She is one of eight artists-in-residence who arrived July 14, their numbers pared back from the normal 12 Having fewer slots has meant more competition and an ever-escalating talent level, said Regin Igloria, director of artists-in-residence.

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To be sure, (notably the Time Traveller’s Wife by Audrey Niffenger), but usually by authors who still are unknown. Now, more well-established artists in all mediums are applying.

Many longtime board members credit the rise in ’s reputation to Susan Page Tillett, who was hired as executive director in 2000.

“Susan has transformed the place over the past 10 years,” said Phoebe Turner, who is in her fifth year on the Ragdale Foundation board.

When Tillett took over, there was $7,500 in the bank and owed bills equal to that amount. Today, the foundation has a $2.5 million endowment, and it has raised $1.7 million of the $3 million for the main house renovation. Another $1 million already has been spent on property upgrades.

At a garden party for major donors and volunteers last week, she was able to raise a champagne toast to 11 people who had each given $100,000 to the renovation effort.

Expanding Its Reach

In addition to growing its bank account, Tillett has tried actively to expand its reach.

Through Igloria, has been reaching out to minority artists who are less likely to apply to residencies for a variety of reasons, and has succeeded in diversifying its residents.

African-American playwright Marsha Estell of Chicago said she’s never been able to take two weeks away from her day job to focus on her creative writing, and she wasn’t sure how to react at first.

“The first few days I didn’t even know what to do; I’ve never felt anything like it,” Estell said.

It was strange to realize she could wake up at dawn or wake up at noon and no one would say a word either way.

The other residents helped her to realize that she wasn’t at Ragdale “just to pump out pages,” she said, but to have to luxury of looking at her project from a new perspective.

She’s been exercising regularly at a nearby gym residents can use, , and in general giving herself time to breathe.

The play she’s working on is about a racially motivated murder and about what happens over time when people hold onto dark secrets. Ragdale’s natural beauty is a soothing counterpoint, Estell said.

Figurative collage artist Jason Watson said coming to is to be transported to a golden era when many “artists’ colonies” were founded; when artists and their creative processes were respected and nurtured.

It’s a welcome change from how society treats art and artists today, he said, with public schools dropping arts and music programs and grants and other forms of financial support dwindling.

“It seems a little otherworldly,” Watson said. “I’m working in this gorgeous studio, someone’s cooking me dinner and there’s a garden outside.”

Increasingly Exposed to the Public

The general public has begun gaining a look at and a feel for as well, through programs Tillett has initiated to bring in people who wouldn’t qualify for a regular residency.

A selected group of local high school students just finished a weeklong intensive creative writing workshop day camp, now in its third year. Ragdale also now offers public tours and a series of workshops and seminars.

This week, began accepting reservations to “A Novel Affair,” its popular weekend fundraiser that brings readers together with the authors they love for cocktails, dinner and passionate literary discussion. This year’s dates are Sept. 30 and Oct. 1.

“Susan does a great job of striking the right balance,” said Turner, a board member. “She brings in the public so they understand what Ragdale does and why it is important, while at the same time preserving it as a protected sanctuary that artists need to do their work.”

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