Gabrielle Schutz, the Upper Jay Art Center’s second artistic director, is pictured in the Recovery Lounge stage area on Friday, June 20. (News photo — Grace McIntyre)

UPPER JAY — Scott Renderer had no intention of starting a performing arts center when he moved to the Adirondacks in 1996. He was retiring from a theater career, mainly in the New York City scene, and preferred to keep that part of his life under wraps.

Then he and his brother Bryon bought a quirky building in Upper Jay that had originally been a Ford Model-T factory and show room. In the beginning, he started hosting concerts and shows because he was interested in the space.

“There would be no Recovery Lounge without this building,” Renderer said. “You couldn’t take what we did and put it anywhere else, and have it be remotely as exciting. The building is everything.”

This year, the Upper Jay Art Center and Recovery lounge is celebrating the 20th anniversary of the performance space — and the art that has been made there.

The space is an eclectic, ever-evolving mix of furniture and decor, some of which were built for past theater productions and kept around. The performance space has rows of mismatched couches and chairs for the audience, a few deer heads and a chicken wire sculpture in the shape of a pig. It presents both limitations and opportunities.

Scott Renderer, the founding artistic director of the Upper Jay Art Center and Recovery Lounge, is pictured outside the building on Tuesday, June 24. (News photo — Grace McIntyre)

“It’s never going to be a neutral black box,” said Gabrielle Schutz, the current artistic director who took over for Renderer in 2022. “And we would never want to be, like, we’re never going to take the pig down.”

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A place to be discovered

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The car factory building was constructed in the 1920s. Some hints to the building’s original purpose remain — like the large, manual elevator that would have transported engines and large parts of cars between floors. After that factory closed, the building housed a seed factory, then an antique store.

An archive photo shoes the Keith and Branch Ford factory and showroom, which has been home to numerous businesses and now, the Upper Jay Art Center. (Provided photo)

The Renderer brothers initially bought the building to run an upholstery business. They started hosting informal concerts there, for themselves and friends. This effort became a bit more formalized around 2005, with an increasingly diverse range of offerings. In 2008, they formed a nonprofit organization, which Renderer said was mainly for financial reasons.

Becoming a nonprofit (and having more requirements to meet) was a double-edged sword. It gave the organization some more stability, but Renderer said some artistic independence and spontaneity was inevitably sacrificed. He had always wanted the place to have an underground kind of feel.

“We were trying to work under the radar all the time. You know — non commercial, no advertising,” he said. “So the place would feel like people were constantly discovering the place, and that’s an exciting feeling.”

When Renderer moved up from New York City, he was coming off a decade of working with an experimental theater group called the Wooster Group, which he describes as one of the pioneers of this kind of theater. Although he hasn’t directed any experimental theater — the plays Renderer directed at the Recovery Lounge came from a notebook of his favorite narrative plays — he learned a lot from this experience about how to act and direct.

In his first production at the Recovery Lounge, Renderer put his audiences to the test. He directed “American Buffalo,” by David Mamet, a play he wasn’t sure the local audience would like. Turns out, they did, and they kept showing up. This confirmed a key piece of advice Renderer got early in his time running the Recovery Lounge, to do what he wanted as an artist and trust the audience to follow.

Susie Tarnowicz, the UPAC visual artist in residence this spring, at work.(Provided photo)

“An art center should have an edge to it. It should be a teacher. It should elevate people, expand their visions,” he said, ” or even disappoint them, or make them scared or angry or whatever, but make them feel something.”

An important element Renderer looks for in a good story is danger and conflict. In “American Buffalo,” there was a moment where one of the actors took up a golf club and shattered a window on the stage.

“It was terrifying, because it seemed like a mistake,” he said. “Little things like that keep people on their toes.”

Most of the actors in Renderer’s productions came in with no previous acting experience. The key to working with these people was a combination of dispelling fears or perceived barriers — a typical one being someone who doesn’t think they can cry on command — and giving them a solid script. In all his years, Renderer thinks every play was a success.

Just as gratifying as the performances was the response from the community. Especially in the early days, when the underground, “hippie” vibe of the place attracted folks like Renderer looking to party like they did growing up, the Recovery Lounge had an uncanny ability to bring people together across culture and social strata.

Casey Galligan has been involved in numerous productions and play readings at the Recovery Lounge, and eventually served on UPAC board starting in 2018. She was the board chair through the pandemic years until about a month ago. She didn’t have any previous acting experience, but found Renderer’s directorial style helpful.

“As an actor I felt pushed, but also really safe with him the whole time,” she said.

The Recovery Lounge is in some ways an unexpected gem in a remote, rural area. For Galligan, having access to a unique arts center with “edgy” programing — literally down the road from her — was part of what has kept her in the area. She said although many people live or move to the Adirondacks to be in remote, natural spaces, it can also be isolating, both socially and artistically.

“To live rurally, and to have a provocative arts center in town — there’s an expansiveness to it where we get the best of both worlds,” she said. “To be able to have a larger experience of humanity … we get to gather as community members in that space and open our minds to something new.”

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A new era

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Renderer retired shortly after the coronavirus pandemic, which was in itself a bit of a forced retirement because of the limitations on performances. His successor, Schutz, is finishing her third year as artistic director.

Originally from Palisade, Colorado, Schutz came to New York state in 2013 to attend earn a Master of Fine Arts in Theater from Sarah Lawrence College in Westchester County. She moved to New York City and lived there for about seven years, teaching in higher education, working in arts administration and creating her own work.

Although she appreciated the community of artists that surrounded her, the pandemic — and resulting full-city shut-down — took away many of the things they loved about the city. She started looking for something else, and found the listing for an artistic director at the arts center.

“I was like, ‘What is this? This looks magical,'” Schutz said.

With the mountains and rivers, it felt just enough like rural Colorado to feel like home. In moving here, Schutz also became passionate about “decentralizing” the arts. She said someone shouldn’t have to live in New York City, or a handful of other cultural destinations, to have access to exciting art.

The mix of offerings at the Recovery Lounge are intentionally eclectic, with a variety of visiting artists and productions. A highlight of each year is January Jams, which draws dozens of performers and audience members from around the Adirondacks for a weekly open mic. In an example of hospitality that has always characterized the art center, Schutz bakes ham and they have sandwiches and kegs of beer.

Like Renderer, Schutz is grateful for the enthusiasm and openness that she sees in the art center audience, even when the art is challenging. This audience surprised and delighted Schutz with their eagerness and opennes to challenging art.

“People know that they will potentially be challenged when they come to something here, which is empowering as an artist,” Schutz said. “I don’t feel like I’m walking on eggshells thinking about presenting something that may be challenging or deals with difficult subjects.”

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Future growth

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In a time where grant funding is more uncertain than ever, the support of the community is especially vital to the UJAC. Funding for the center comes from a combination of grants, individual donors and ticket sales. The Trump administration has cancelled funding for numerous National Endowment for the Arts grants, and has also floated eliminating the agency.

The UJAC hasn’t been impacted by these cuts — they have only received state arts grants from the New York Council on the Arts. Some state funding, however, does include trickle-down federal funds. Schutz said that there has been a general increase in reliance on grant funding as financial hardship and other factors have dampened other sources of support. And because other arts organizations in the state have lost grants, there is likely to be a higher demand for state resources.

Coming up in July, the Recovery Lounge will be producing a performance of “BOOM,” a comedy by San Franciso-based playwright Peter Sinn Nachtrieb. It will be directed by Schutz and performed by Jameson Batt, Laura Farrell and Abby Swint. Eight performances will take place July 12 through July 27.

On Aug. 16, there will be a formal celebration of the center’s 20th anniversary at the annual benefit party. There will be live performances, refreshments and historical installations, including a video about the making of “K2”, a play by Patrick Meyers that Renderer produced in the late 2000s that involved transforming the elevator shaft into a mountainside.

For more information about upcoming events and show times, visit the events page at upperjayartcenter.org.

As she looks to the future, Schutz hopes to continue to grow the organization while also working towards sustainability. Schutz currently manages the work with the help of generous volunteers and hiring some contractors, so she would like to hire some additional staff members someday.

She also hopes to expand their collaborations to include more communities and even more diverse artists. She hopes the audience will come along with them, staying open to evolution while still staying true to the center’s “scrappy heart.”

In preparation for “BOOM,” this week the crew was in the process of constructing a museum-like diorama on the stage. Both Renderer and Schutz said one of the goals of the space is to change things up and surprise people.

“(The space) speaks for itself as sort of a cumulative art project,” Schutz said.