There could be no better example of "the creative economy" at work than the way the Brandon Artists Guild and its allies have transformed Brandon. When I grew up there, in the late 1950s and early 1960s, and still when I returned to live in the old family place in 1977, the town of about 4,000 was in a state of post-industrial depression. It had been a manufacturing center for most of the 19th century-there is a still a well-preserved iron-making blast furnace in the outlying village of Forest Dale-but when Howe Scale moved to Rutland in 1870, a period of decline set in. That State's decision to site a school for the "feebleminded" there brought jobs, but not well-paying ones, and until the Brandon Training School closed in the 1990s, it had an unenviable reputation as "the retard town." It was a place where lowlifes could find low rents, and growing up bookish in that blues-collared environment was challenging.
A few years after "the BAG" began, people who had known Brandon in the past were exclaiming after visits that the place had been transformed. More and more creative types moved in, home galleries supplemented the enlivened downtown business district, a local bookstore not only survived but became a dynamic arts venue--to those who had known the town's overburden of doom and gloom, it was scarcely believable.
Though remarriage has relocated me 17 miles to the north, I subscribe to the local newspaper and am a member of the BAG. This gallery is meant to give potential visitors, and art investors, a glimpse of the BAG gallery's always-interesting offerings.