Heart of Childhood

"Only faith, poetry, love, romance, can push aside that curtain
and view and picture the supernal beauty and glory beyond."
"Is There a Santa Claus? [Yes, Virginia...]" - NY Sun 1897
Young dancer, impromptu on Smokestack's stage, 2017

Fifteen years ago, while driving back to Brooklyn after a long weekend in the country, I was sure Scott's and my relationship was over and I was glad. Our rental van was chock-full of stuff, two adults, one of our two preteen children, and unbelievable tension. We stopped for dinner, the two of us barely speaking except to snipe at one another on the way to the table. As we all began eating in uncomfortable silence, the insightful man with us - we met him that weekend and have never seen him again - asked the two of us one question and so saved our relationship, "How did the two of you meet?" By the time we were done telling him and the table of our chance meeting in 1997 with all its twists and turns, the meal was over and we were laughing and smiling, committed to one another again and committed to the task at hand of getting us all home safely. We may have seemed on different paths for a time, but we had one true end and would get there together, something that has happened again and again in our experience these last four years in Dubuque, with saving these buildings from the wrecking ball, with letting wonderful people into our lives, with creating Smokestack. Despite "the skepticism of a skeptical age," everything does fall away and we again see what truly matters.

Smokestack's pocket park and tower entrance 

And so the last of Dominic Velando's questions from his unpublished 2016 interview with us for Grain, the magazine of the Dubuque Area Arts Collective.



Dominic
Are you any less in love with the building and/or your business than when you started?


Scott & Susan
No, but what’s most important is that we are still in love with one another, perhaps more than ever. Our life together has been one of things coming together seemingly guided by some other hand, beginning with our chance first meeting in Fort Greene Park in Brooklyn while sledding with our respective children twenty years ago. That hand, that small and true voice which speaks to all of us and wants to be heard, was shouting at both of us on our first chance visit to Dubuque, six weeks later when we first saw this property, through our move to Dubuque from NYC five months later, through every stage of our work on this project, and then it brings critical people into this project and our life in ways we could not imagine and we are stunned when we see them, but we recognize them and think “Where have you been all my life? I am so glad you are here now.”

Smokestack, aerial view, both buildings,
with rooftops and pocket park 

This entire project is our only child together and we have to let it grow and affect others in positive ways. We joke that we are starving artists in the midst of an enormous performance art piece called Smokestack, but this truly is our work of art, filled with incredible and memorable moments that we celebrate, yet we also recognize the difficult experiences are moments of learning that are needed as we fulfill our vision for this forgotten corner in Dubuque. We are artists ourselves, but our time for other art is limited because of this project: Scott is a professional musician, carpenter, periodic visual artist, and was a rescue paramedic who is among FDNY’s 9/11 survivors while Susan was last working in educational non-profit fundraising for a Brooklyn private school as a historian and director of alumni, but also writing and dancing even if just around the house.

We had plenty of extreme challenges in our lives in NYC, but this project in Dubuque is worth our present struggle - it is the struggle of our life - because we do love Smokestack, this building, revealing this property and its history, Dubuque, and Iowa, and we love the people who truly make it all possible. All is still not fully revealed, but we continue in faith that “all shall be well” and that we have been led to share this project and our love with the people who come into our life.

Related posts: Smokestack Q&A 1, Smokestack Q&A 2, Smokestack Q&A 3, Smokestack Q&A 4, Smokestack Q&A 5, Smokestack Q&A 6