Andy Van Assche and Marilyn Andrews built a home, raised fruits and vegetables, made music, worked with clay and traveled to art shows, among many other pursuits.
The couple met when Van Assche was in his late teens and Andrews was in her late 20s, and spent nearly 50 years in creative and personal collaboration. Andrews died at age 76 in January 2019, 16 months after learning she had glioblastoma, an incurable brain cancer.
The Plainfield home the couple built in 1988 remains filled with their artwork. Sculptures dot the landscape around their property.
Members of the public can view dozens of Andrews’ pieces at the Salmon Falls Gallery in Shelburne Falls. A retrospective exhibit, “Marilyn Andrews: A Life’s Work in Clay,” is open every day from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. through Oct. 31, with a reception Saturday, Oct. 2, from 2 to 4 p.m.
The couple met in 1971 at the Cooperative Free School in Dundee, Illinois, an hour’s drive from Chicago.
Andrews helped start the school in the basement of a Unitarian church so her two young children would have positive alternatives to mainstream education.
Twelve years later, eager to leave behind the politically conservative area, the couple discovered western Massachusetts and moved here in 1983, settling at first into communal housing in Greenfield with the hopes of finding rural land where the two of them could build a home, work and live. They found that in Plainfield.
“We bought our 14-acre parcel in 1986, figuring that the chances Plainfield would become lined with strip malls were slim,” Van Assche said.
They cleared 2 acres and designed and built a super-insulated, passive solar home. The ground floor contains an art studio. Second-floor living space includes two modest bedrooms, a small bathroom with a clawfoot tub, and an open area with a living room, dining room and kitchen.
“The house is wood-heated,” Van Assche said, “but uses less than one cord per year because the walls are 12 inches thick and the ceilings have 16 inches of insulation. That, and the passive solar, makes the house easy to heat.”
The lush garden represents a great deal of work.
“When we got here in the late 1980s, the soil was dead — terribly acidic, with no worms. We added loads of compost and mulch, and it paid off,” he said.
The garden produces winter and summer squash, tomatoes, melons, beans, asparagus, carrots, kale, broccoli, onions, garlic, leeks, strawberries, peppers and peas.
“No potatoes, though,” Van Assche noted. “The voles just eat them all, leaving skins behind.”
Fruit trees and bushes include apples, pears, blueberries and raspberries.
Andrews and Van Assche canned tomatoes, peaches and pears, and stored onions, garlic and squash. He continues the practice: a garden cart loaded with onions drying in his “car house” bears testimony to his ongoing efforts.
“We did art with the kids at the school in Illinois, and we had a friend who owned a kiln,” Van Assche recounted. “We gradually taught ourselves the medium of working with clay.”
The couple gravitated to hand-built stoneware, working without a potter’s wheel.
“We found the wheel limited us to symmetrical work,” Van Assche said. “We each developed unique styles, learning from books and from friends.”
The two artists had very different styles.
“Marilyn could draw figuratively, something I never got into,” he said. “I enjoy lines, balance and geometric shapes. We admired each other’s work, and enjoyed doing shows together.”
The couple traveled to distinguished craft shows and exhibitions throughout the country.
“We’d drive through the night, taking shifts sleeping,” he said. “We loved prepping for shows, seeing longtime customers and meeting new people.”
In their home studio, the pair shared a 20-foot table, “each making our own clay recipes and going about our work,” he said.
“We always had part-time jobs,” Van Assche said, “because we didn’t want to be isolated in the studio, and didn’t want to allow market pressures to overly influence our artwork. Our finances were tight, but we loved the freedom.”
Andrews worked part time as a certified nursing assistant at a Northampton nursing home. She later worked with Quabbin Mediation teaching nonviolent communication, drawing on theories and practices pioneered by the psychologist and author Marshall Rosenberg.
Van Assche delivered interlibrary loans for the Western Massachusetts Regional Library System two days a week for 24 years.
After losing his library job, Van Assche received unemployment assistance for a year.
“Then I heard that Real Pickles was hiring,” he said. “Soon after I started working there, they transitioned to a worker-owned cooperative, which is right up my alley philosophically.”
Making lacto-fermented foods on a large scale at the Greenfield business is hard work, but Van Assche loves it.
“At 68, I’m the oldest one there, by far, so I get a lot of ‘old guy’ questions about relationships and life. That pleases me.”
Andrews served in leadership positions, including being the board president of the Franklin Community Co-op, yet questioned standard leadership roles.
“She was devoted to participatory democracy, something that’s talked about in progressive circles, but not always practiced,” Van Assche noted.
He added, “Marilyn was a lot of things, but above all she was earnest. She was empathic and introverted, but with a wilder, fanciful side. She was curious, passionate, filled with integrity and reserved, but also very funny.”
In September 2017, Andrews and Van Assche traveled to Kansas City for an art show. “Marilyn drove while I slept,” he recounted. “I awoke with a start after she slammed on the brakes. She had a grand mal seizure; she was semi-conscious and couldn’t speak.”
Tests at a Columbus, Ohio hospital revealed a sizable brain tumor.
“Marilyn was in the ICU for a couple of days,” he said, “on meds to control seizures. When we got back to Massachusetts, she had surgery. They were able to get about half of the tumor, and then she was put on a trial medication.”
The couple learned that Andrews’ life expectancy was one to two years.
“That was hard to accept,” Van Assche said. “But we hung in there together and got another 16 months. I’d never faced anything so difficult. Thank goodness I had support groups, which I still attend.”
They drew on a wide range of healing approaches.
“We took daily walks and shared nutritious food,” he said. “We went to Mass General in Boston once a week, and she had radiation at Cooley Dickinson (Hospital in Northampton).”
Speech therapy helped Andrews regain some linguistic capabilities, and she remained active, even continuing to cut firewood.
Andrews’ last art fair was in August 2018 in Great Barrington. “Marilyn couldn’t speak, but she was very excited to be there, especially when she saw some of her steady customers from New York City,” Van Assche said.
Van Assche reflected on their final year.
“I’m so glad we had that time,” he said. “Losing one’s life partner to sudden death must be much harder.”
Andrews died at the Fisher Home, a freestanding hospice program in Amherst.
“Marilyn never got into the imagery of battling cancer,” he said. “She wanted to live with enjoyment until the end.”
Van Assche played guitar and sang for her at the hospice home.
Now that he lives alone, Van Assche said, “It’s great to have her work around me … her big sculptures and birdbaths, as well as the functional things in the kitchen. Her art is all over the house.”
“She wanted me to be happy. She taught me that if you don’t have joy in your life, find out what you need to do to feel more joyful. I told her that, after she was gone, I’d play music with other people. And I do.
“Since she died, I’m much less afraid of death,” he said. “Life on this Earth is really just like a drop. It’s a mystery.”
Andrews donated her body to medical research, so Van Assche did not receive her ashes until months later.
“As I carried her ashes up our driveway, I realized we’re part of a much bigger whole. This has always been done — people carrying the remains of their loved ones — and it will always be done.”
Eveline MacDougall is the author of “Fiery Hope,” and an artist, musician and mom.