Old Stone Mill rocks opening night Students share their creative uses of the facility

Author: Jaime Fuller

At the close of Old Stone Mill's first year as a part of Middlebury College, 27 students have taken advantage of the open studio and gallery space to pursue independent artistic endeavors.

The College purchased Old Stone Mill in January 2008 for $2.1 million through funds from an anonymous donor. President of the College Ronald D. Liebowitz noted in a 2008 press release that the purchase of Old Stone Mill "is a wonderful opportunity for the College and town to integrate our strong support of the arts." Tenants were chosen by the Old Stone Mill Review Board, a group of six students who perused proposals to cull the most innovative and creative projects which were then called artistic homes for the course of the academic year or semester.

The introductory year of the Old Stone Mill space housed diverse projects ranging from TerraWatt Geothermal, a trio of seniors' burgeoning geothermal energy consultancy firm, to Nich Tkach's '11 piano service for children in Middlebury. Students whose extracurricular projects were housed at Old Stone Mill greatly appreciated the opportunities offered by this new space and had wonderful anecdotes to tell about their experience with the College's recent acquisition.

John Glouchevitch '10 started "Dinner with Strangers," a program which brought together a potpourri of students, faculty, staff and occasionally townspeople to spend an evening together away from the frenetic rush on campus. He felt it was necessary to start this program because of the social distance that seems to ferment at Middlebury.

"I hate this about our school," said Glouchevitch about students' apparent inability to look at one another. "I feel as if we're staring straight through one another, perhaps to seem cool, above the rest of the faceless masses that also happen to exist in our community. Or maybe it's because we're scared and insecure. Or maybe it's the Northeast, and people are generally less outgoing. I don't know. I don't like it."

Glouchevitch hopes that "Dinner with Strangers" will act as a corrective to social avoidance at Middlebury, even if it can only affect the College community on a small scale. And after his three dinners, he thinks he's succeeded.

"We speak the same language, we have the same organs, we feel the same feelings, we're even in the same general space, and yet we feel as if we have nothing in common," said Glouchevitch. "I'm no different than anybody else. I'm not better than anyone else. I just have this thought in my head that I'm trying to share with people. And I hope the people that have come to 'Dinner with Strangers' feel the same."

Morgan Peach '09, who used his time at Old Stone Mill to work on a creative woodworking project, highlighted the tension between the possibilities offered by a space that did not cater exclusively to academics and the challenge of finding time to pursue an extracurricular project.

"Simply put, without this space, the project would be impossible," said Peach. "There are no other existing venues on campus for a non-academic project of this genre