We had been coming to Brier Island since 1998. One day a friend mentioned that the church was being sold. The rest is history…

Who are we:

Jane Zdansky: Artist, painter, sculptor, writer, creative force, rassembleur of artists and art projects.

John Schwinghamer: Investor, published author, handy guy.

In addition to being an artist, Jane has produced many art events. When we came to the island, she approached the town and offered to convert the vacant Westport School building into an artist residency. The Westport Schoolhouse Artist Residency worked well from its inception in 2018, but when COVID hit we had to close the residency and then the village sold the schoolhouse. At that point, we decided that we could create an artist residency around our restored 1850 heritage church.

In 2019, we added the Buckman house to the residency, we restored it carefully and welcomed our first artist in the summer of 2022. In 2023, we added 2 private studios to the residency. In 2024, we built one more artist studio and we acquired a fisherman’s shed on the water that we are converting into a fiber arts studio.