North_end_5 


The Endicott Studio for Mythic Arts was named after the street on which it first came into being in 1987: Endicott Street in Boston's historic North End. (The name was a deliberate nod to Tom Canty's Newbury Studio, over on Boston's Newbury Street.)

In those early days, the Endicott Studio was a physical place: a large work and exhibition space in an old warehouse close to Boston harbor. We held art shows there, discussion groups for women artists, and "salon" gatherings co-hosted with Ellen Kushner (who was then best known in Boston for her late night show on WGBH Radio).


    Endicott_studio_boston


Eventually the Endicott Studio left Boston, but carried on as a nonprofit arts organization supporting collaborative projects of a mythic nature in the U.S. and U.K. -- including anthologies and other publications, art exhibitions, and reading series. In 1997, the Endicott website was launched, evolving into our online Journal of Mythic Arts. The journal ran for eleven years, and was honored with a World Fantasy Award during its final year of publication, 2008.  Endicott West, an arts retreat in Arizona, was established in 2001.

Painting_by_rick_berryThe photograph at the top of this page shows the Boston neighborhood where Endicott began (very close to the white spire of Old North Church, of Revolutionary War fame).

The next pair of photographs shows the Castignetti Building on Endicott Street, circa 1989 (left), and the view of the Boston skyline one of the studio's windows (right). The ground floor of the Castignetti Building housed a tuxedo shop, with five floors of studio space above rented by artists (including Candy Nartonis, Lois Fiore, Rick & Sheila Berry, Phil Hale), writers (including James Carroll, Delia Sherman), graphic designers, and filmmakers. The Endicott Studio was on the top floor.

Rick Berry's painting (above, right) was created during this time, depicting Terri Windling, Sheila Berry, and another artist on the building's roof.  (It eventually appeared on the cover of Michael Bishop's story collection At the City Limits of Fate. )

The photographs below are of Endicott's present U.S. home (Endicott West) in Tucson, Arizona, nestled into the desert foothills below the Rincon Mountains. A second office, Endicott Devon, is located in south-west England.


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     Endicott_studio_2


We've come a long way from Endicott Street, but keeping the Endicott name is our way of honoring the studio's beginnings....

And in an odd bit of serendipity, it transpires that Endicott Street in Boston was named in honor of John Endicott (also spelled "Endecott"), the first governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony -- who came from the same small English village where Terri now lives. For many years her home there was Weaver's Cottage (pictured below), a 16th century thatch-roofed dwelling originally built for master weavers in the local woolens trade. The cottage had once belonged to members of the Endecott family, which is still a prominant family name in the area today.


      Terri_windling_at_weavers_cottage_2



Photo credits: North End photograph from Wikipedia; the Castignetti Building on Endicott Street photographed by Sheila Berry, 1989; Endicott West, Tucson photographed by Helen Mason, 2004; Weaver's Cottage (and Terri Windling) photographed by Alan Lee, 2006.

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    "Do people choose the art that inspires them — do they think it over, decide they might prefer the fabulous to the real? For me, it was those early readings of fairy tales that made me who I was as a reader and, later on, as a storyteller."
    - Alice Hoffman

    "Current cant equates fantasy with escapism, and current fashion would have it that fantasy is both easy to read and to write. It isn't. When it is done honestly, by a skillful writer, fantasy takes us far enough beyond our daily perceptions to open us to the essential realities beneath it. This is the true goal of all art."
    - Ellen Kushner

    "Our lives are stories, and the stories we have to give to each other are the most important. No one has a story too small and all are of equal stature. We each tell them in different ways, through different mediums—and if we care about each other, we'll take the time to listen."
    - Charles de Lint

    "As our storytellers continue to draw upon past knowledge, including looking to the animal world and to tribal storytellers for guidance, we grow in strength. We reshape our ancestors' stories for our children, so that these tales will, like our people, our spirits, endure."
    - Carolyn Dunn

    "When we change the shape of the Land, we alter the contents and contexts of our collective, familial, and personal memories. Yet, stories can preserve both mythic and familiar elements of geography even when the physical features are forgotten, buried, or obliterated. And more than this: the stories can bring these elements back. If the Land can be preserved long enough for its stories to be told, and retold, perhaps we all—as custodians of both place and memory—stand a chance at real preservation."
    - Ari Berk

    "Vision is one of the five senses, a gift that's easy to take for granted. It comes to us so easily. We simply open our eyes and 'see.' And yet there are levels of seeing. As fairy tales tell us, when we constrict or confuse our vision we are primed for betrayal and destruction; we are in the hold of the witch. To free ourselves we must both try to see clearly and allow ourselves to be seen. These are acts of courage and of power. If we can go beyond that and see compassionately, we may even partake in acts of grace."
    - Ellen Steiber

    "I grew up in a milieu of Carribean writers and writing. I bring that sensibility to my own work, but I write within a particularly northern tradition of speculative and fantastical fiction. There, plot and content are equally important, and the speculative or fantastical elements of the story must be 'real': Duppies and jumbies [elements of folklore] must exist outside the imaginations of the characters; any scientific extrapolation should seem convincingly based in the possible. It's an approach designed to ease or force the suspension of disbelief, to block flight back into the familiar world, to shake up the reader into thinking in new tracks."
    - Nalo Hopkinson

    "Folklore is the perfect second skin. From under its hide, we can see all the shimmering, shadowy uncertainties of the world."
    - Jane Yolen

    "At its best, fantasy rewards the reader with a sense of wonder about what lies within the heart of the commonplace world. The greatest tales are told over and over, in many ways, through centuries. Fantasy changes with the changing times, and yet it is still the oldest kind of tale in the world, for it began once upon a time, and we haven't heard the end of it yet."
    - Patricia A. McKillip

    "Stories. I've been telling stories for years, with paint, with words, with film and video cameras and pixels on computer screens. Yet what do I know? Nothing, really. I can't explain storytelling the way teachers explain math or history. When I draw, or write, or envision a film, I try to switch off and not think too much. To explain what I'm doing when I create would be like waking up while still dreaming. Dreams. We are all storytellers night after night, for even the most inartistic of us can still dream like masters."
    - Iain McCaig

    "As artists, Brian and I are merely part of a long mythic tradition—giving old faery tales new life and passing them on to the generations to come."
    - Wendy Froud

    "Painting, to me, is soul work, healing work."
    - Marja Lee Kruÿt

    "I believe that art is sacred and inseparable from life."
    - Mark Wagner