Day Four, Wednesday

Pace House Residency

It occurred to me that while I have been speaking of Stephen in a familiar voice, many people might not know who he is or why I happen to be staying in his house for the next couple weeks.

I’ll begin with a brief biography of sorts, put together from the various show catalogs, books, and other documents found around the house, and then include some information I have interpreted or discovered through actually inhabiting the house.

Stephen Pace was an American painter born in Charleston, Missouri in 1918. He came of age as an abstract expressionist in the late 40’s and 50’s and was widely regarded as an integral part of the New York School. He and his wife Palmina were married in 1949 and, in the early 70’s, bought the house in Stonington where we are now staying. They spent a lot of time at their Stonington house, and much of Stephen’s later work was made in the barn studio.

In 2007, the Paces retired back to the Midwest and they left their home in Stonington to the Maine College of Art (where I did my undergrad work) to be used as an artist residency. The residency program, as stipulated by Stephen, gives first priority to painters, and any alumni or faculty of the school may apply. Part of the residency program is to open the barn studio and the front gallery rooms of the house to the public every Wednesday evening. The hope of the residency program is to keep the house as an artistic haven and retreat for artists as well as to share with the community of Stonington the life and work of Stephen Pace.

Palmina was of Italian descent and first found a love for mushrooms when, as a young girl, she was taken mushroom hunting with her mother in Springfield, Massachusetts. This became a lifelong interest; upstairs in one of the bedrooms of the house are nearly a dozen books on mushrooms, and according to an island newspaper article I found on her mushroom activities, she prepared mushrooms as a meal at least twice a day, ate around 40-50 different varieties a year, and most frequently prepared them with white wine and fresh herbs.

In addition to mushroom hunting, Pam was also a potter. Many of the plates and bowls and cups in the kitchen have her name inscribed in the bottom, although I am not sure how late in life she practiced pottery, as a couple pieces are dated in the early 1960’s and there doesn’t seem to be any trace of a pottery studio around the house.

I sense that both the Paces were avid vegetable gardeners, but I feel like Pam was the driving force behind the garden out back. There is a stack of maps and notes for the garden for every year they lived here, and everywhere I look I find boxes of instructions for canning, preserving, and cold cellaring food. There are also a ton of mason jars and other canning supplies at hand.

I feel like Pam had an interest and belief in homeopathic remedies. There is an encyclopedia of herbal medicine in the kitchen and several pages of the notes about the garden indicate that there were items like Echinacea planted there.

The Paces had a love for cooking; a dozen or so cookbooks can be found in the kitchen, more upstairs, and the kitchen and back utility room is filled with pots and pans of different shapes and sizes and uses as well as stacks of pie tins and baking sheets and other items generally used for baking breads and pastries.

Stephen’s heritage can be traced back to some of the first European settlers, the first Pace having settled near Jamestown, Virginia in 1610. His father and mother met on a farm; his father John was a hired farm hand and his mother Ora Katherine was the daughter of the owner of the farm, Stephen’s grandfather David Reeves. Stephen’s self-reliant farm boy upbringing was presumably a huge influence in his life and art practice. Figuring prominently in the studio are various devices and contraptions made out of random items most likely scavenged from some other project or use. All of his easels and painting stations (of which there are about four or five) seem to have been built by hand, there is the hoist to bring fire wood upstairs, tons of small boards on hinges for swinging work lamps all over the space for proper lighting, as well as a custom built jig that I believe was built to hold wood blocks in place for carving.

Based on the amount of photographs I’ve seen in which Stephen is wearing a hat, along with the sheer collection of them laying around the property, it’s safe to say he wore hats regularly; there are at least a dozen floating around the house and studio.

One would also be led to believe that Stephen enjoyed the occasional cigar, as there are a bazillion cigar boxes out in the barn and studio, although these could have been obtained for the purely functional use as a storage device. I think every box out there has a handwritten label on the side, and 9 time out of ten the contents of the box correspond correctly to the label.

The labeled boxes are just one of many aspects that show Stephen’s meticulous and organized ways.  There are tons of boards and pieces of scrap lumber tucked away all over the barn rafters, the edge of each board having the dimensions clearly written on the side. Along with the cigar boxes there are tons of old coffee cans, some also having labels either handwritten on the side or written on a piece of masking tape. Some cans are even wood screwed into place as a permanent part of an easel or workstation.

Although much of Stephen’s artistic output is seen in books and catalogs as oil paintings and the occasional ink drawing, you can tell he had a broad and enthusiastic practice. The kitchen has a nice collection of sculptures crafted out of scraps of wood and tin, and there is evidence of similar works in progress left around the barn.

The studio also holds boxes of charcoal as well as oil pastels and there are also his wood block prints, which can be found around the barn, as well as in some catalogs of his work.

I’ve been spending a fair amount of time in the barn, largely working, making photographs or reading or writing, but often times I just sit and absorb another individual’s life. While it’s been at least a good few years sine the Paces lived here in Stonington, and in the years that have sine passed the house has gone through what I presume were certain renovations to make it more suitable for the residency program, it’s hard not to imagine walking up into the studio and seeing Stephen bent over a painting, furiously at work, or Pam in the garden picking fresh blueberries or harvesting the rhubarb.