Tribute to the Waltham Mill Artists in words and pictures from a founder

By Megan McKee, Town Correspondent

It’s been 34 years since Sam Laundon and three other artists started rehabilitating space on the fourth floor of Building 4 in the Waltham mill building that Francis Cabot Lowell used to produce thousands of bolts of cloth before he headed to the Merrimack River to expand his operations.

And it was just this year that Laundon left his apartment and studio there. He was the last of the original group—painter Andy Haley, photographer Jim Kelly, and photographer Jay Penni preceded him with their departures—that tirelessly scrubbed decades of grime off the maple floors, built walls, and installed electrician wiring and plumbing lines at the place that would eventually hold one of the first Open Studios events in the area.

“It was really neat. That was different time. When we started this, I was just 30. We weren’t really hippies but it was of that era--it was the 70s,” said Laundon in an interview.

Since then, the Waltham Mill Artists have grown to occupy more floors and another building. The Waltham Mill Artists' Association has its Open Studios Nov. 6 and Nov. 7.

“It kind of grew organically, space by space, floor by floor. We weren't really an organization. We didn't have a name,” said Launson. “Each floor was basically its own association. “

Laundon moved to Sarasota, Fla., earlier this year, and as a way to say “good-bye” to the place where he lived, worked, and got married, he wrote a history and made a slideshow that includes his personal photographs—Laundon is a photographer—from those heady days that gave way to the Waltham Mill Artists' Association in its present incarnation.

“When I was first there, I was divorced and had a 3-year-old daughter who would come visit,” said Laundon. “The history and the video was my way of having closure. So many of my phases of my life happened there.”

The growth of the Waltham Mill Artists hasn’t been without its trials. Laundon said the artists almost lost their space in the 1990s when tensions arose between the landlord and renters. The city stepped in and made a proclamation that it wasn’t illegal for artists to live there, and with that move, the artists were able to stay.

“We wanted a place where creative people could be themselves without infringing on other people,” said Laundon. But at the core, he said, is the sense of community that comes with living and working close together. “We had some wonderful parties,” he said.

Laundon said Sarasota has its own thriving arts community and he'll continue to pursue his art there.

Megan McKee can be reached at megan.mckee@gmail.com.