As I write this I feel an awful freedom: the one person who could and would challenge, contradict, and correct what I say is gone. One fact though is indisputable, and that is the Fine Arts Work Center and the many Fellows who have passed through there since 1969 owe Judith Shahn a great debt. She was known to the Fellows primarily as an artist, and a member of the Visual Committee. The wider community also knew of her role on the Board of Trustees, in the Executive Committee, and for her work on sundry other committees over the years who made use of her enormous expertise in many areas. These public roles, time-consuming and necessary, were only a small part of her contribution to the Work Center. Her "billable hours" would be astronomical! They would start in 1969 when she and Dugan instead of returning to New York in the fall stayed on in Truro, curious to see what this promising but untested experiment might become. There were no models, the existing artists' colonies only dealt with older, established artists, and then only for brief visits.

The early Center was no participatory democracy, but as most of the original Board and artists went elsewhere in the winter, much of what the Work Center would become had to be invented on the spot, or arise out of a living dialectic. The Fellows and the resident staff keenly felt the precariousness of the Center, and that its future depended upon them, not just for the sum of their accumulated individual successes, but that the whole endeavor would be judged by their seriousness as a group.

Judy, as an artist, brilliant, literate, married to a poet, bridged both visual and literary worlds. Word of her death will be felt equally in both communities. Today's Work Center is successful because the early Center was successful, and that was because those involved were moved to make it so. Judy and Dugan gave of themselves in a way that I still think of as awe-inspiring. Who else would make the trip, not once, but twice or even three times in one day, in all conditions, from South Truro, to attend a meeting, and then an opening or reading? They were indefatigable and their presence was inspirational.

Those early Fellows now graying, will reflect on that presence. Someone teaching in Montana will remember Judy not only for bringing the only really edible dish to a communal dinner, but for the most informed, astute thinking on the rapidly changing political scene in those Nixonian times. Another will recall her working with precision and control amid the seeming disarray of her studio. I see her wreathed in the steam of some indescribably delicious concoction rising from a tureen as it combines with the aromas of Gaulois, Pall Malls, and Martinson's coffee. And blue everywhere! A memorable, potent mix. I see her in her Russian hat in the driver's seat of a four-wheel vehicle, or at a table laughing with the Fellows, in one of those places that survive only in Roger's stories.

A perfectionist's work is never done, and Judy was a perfectionist. But she didn't do everything we would have wished: she never wrote down all those stories: irreverent, horrifying, hilarious, or simply memorable first hand accounts of local, literary, or artistic history.

This summer I went to Dugan's grave in the Old North Cemetery in Truro, where Judy will be buried beside him on Saturday, and was struck by the irony that it is right across from a bank, and the police station! Perhaps there is consolation in knowing that place has been called since the nineteenth century the "Hill of Storms."

Keith Althaus FAWC Writing Fellow 1969-70, 1970-71.