HOMEWARD BOUND
Foreword to the Artemis Journal 2025
by Joanne Cassullo
As I reflect on the meaning of “homeward bound,” I return to one of the places in my heart that I think of as home… the Roanoke Valley. I arrived as a freshman in the early 1970s to attend Roanoke College and was amazed to see the Blue Ridge Mountains rising in the distance from every classroom window. I watched as they turned from green to violet, then to flame red and orange, and finally faded to grayish-brown as each season passed, marking my first year in Southwest Virginia. Half a century later, I continue to spend a great deal of time there both as a trustee of Roanoke College and the Taubman Museum of Art. To this day, my heart still swells with the pleasure of sentimental memories when I fly between those mountains to return to the place in which I joyously came of age.
The splendor of my natural surroundings at college vividly reminded me of my childhood summers spent in the Berkshires of western Massachusetts, at my Grandmother’s summer home outside the town of Becket, one that was perched on the edge of a large mountain pond, and is now a site populated (happily) by the ghosts of past generations of my family. This is another place I closely associate with the intimate sensation of home.
The photographer, Gregory Crewdson, shared similar summer experiences in Becket at his parents’ country home, just down the mountain from mine. Although our summers overlapped, I did not meet Gregory until decades later in New York City, as he was beginning to receive critical acclaim for his photography. I couldn’t believe I met someone who shared the same reverence and nostalgia for a geographical place that most visitors to the Berkshires overlook and never visit.
Over the decades and in various series of photographs such as Twilight (1998-2002), Beneath the Roses (2003-2008), Cathedral of the Pines (2013-2014) An Eclipse of Moths (2018-1019) and Eveningside (2021-2022), Gregory Crewdson revisits a select group of Berkshires towns (Becket, Lee, Pittsfield and North Adams) as the backdrop for his photographic fantasies. Themes of loneliness, rapture, abandonment, and self-discovery all play out in the cinematic quality inherent in his work. For Gregory, the landscape is as important as the characters who populate it. He returns home for inspiration time and again.
Two summers ago, as Trustee Liaison of the Leadership Travel Group at the Taubman Museum of Art, I felt it was only natural to explore the Berkshires on our inaugural art adventure. I love knitting together the separate pieces of my life, my childhood with my life right now; I love bringing my new friends together to meet my old ones; and I love celebrating the backdrop of my childhood summers through the vision and work of artists who live there now. Our travel group visited the studios of Cynthia Wick (whose painting graced the cover of the 2024 Artemis), and we also visited Gregory Crewdson. Jeri Rogers, the Founder and Editor of Artemis, is a member of the group. What a joy it is to see her collaborate with these gifted friends of mine, of ours.
Gregory welcomed our travel group into his studio and showed us his latest body of work called Eveningside. The series is shot in black and white, a symphony of shadow and light that is seeped in ambiguity. In particular, one image, Morningside Home for Women, captured our group’s imagination:
A young woman pauses in the middle of an empty street as her taxi rolls away; a singular, hard-shell suitcase sits behind her. Evening begins to settle in. She is wearing a hospital bracelet, loose-fitting clothing, and slippers. She faces a row of multi-family houses adorned with numerous electric meters, all connected by a tangle of telephone wires overhead – yet no one seems to be home. There are no lights inside any of the houses, save for a single ray spilling out onto a front porch. It appears to bathe the pale skin of the lone woman, momentarily elevating it to alabaster. And it barely illuminates a sign: “Morningside Home for Women.”
I ask myself as I study this photograph now:
Is the woman arriving at a new destination – or is she returning home?
Is she world-weary, or is she a warrior?
Is she searching for safety while weathering a personal storm?
Is she, like so many of us right now, searching for the familiar in a world that is shifting and changing around us?
Or….
Is hers a restorative passage, one that is just now beginning?
Will it lead her to new perspectives, a new beginning, a new way of life?
Are we on a journey, pushing forward? Or should we pause, like the woman in Gregory’s photograph, to turn inward and search for the space that can revive us instead?
This is Gregory Crewdson’s gift to us, his viewers – a singular, transcendent moment: what happens before and after in the photograph is ours alone to
ponder or embellish. He gives us the moment—and we let it lead us home.
– Joanne Leonhardt Cassullo, Guest column
About Joanne Cassullo, Born in Oyster Bay, New York, Joanne Leonhardt Cassullo is a philanthropist and an ardent patron of contemporary art. She has served as a trustee and an officer at multiple arts organizations, including the Whitney Museum of American Art, Taubman Museum of Art, Creative Time, RxArt and the Brooklyn Academy of Music. She is also a member of the Board of Trustees of Roanoke College, her Alma Mater, located in Salem, VA
Cassullo is also a freelance writer and her articles have been featured in periodicals such as the Harvard Business Review, Artspace, Countryside, Next, Decorating/Remodeling, American Homestyle, Victorian Homes and Gardens, Flair, and Miami Home. She frequently writes essays for contemporary art exhibition catalogues.
She currently resides in Austin, TX.
About Gregory Crewdson:
Gregory Crewdson’s photographs have entered the American visual lexicon, taking their place alongside the paintings of Edward Hopper and the films of Alfred Hitchcock and David Lynch as indelible evocations of a silent psychological interzone between the everyday and the uncanny.
Often working with a large team, Crewdson typically plans each image with meticulous attention to detail, orchestrating light, color, and production design to conjure dreamlike scenes infused with mystery and suspense.
While the small-town settings of many of Crewdson’s images are broadly familiar, he is careful to avoid signifiers of identifiable sites and moments, establishing a world outside time.
Born in Brooklyn, New York, Crewdson is a graduate of SUNY Purchase and the Yale University School of Art, where he is now director of graduate studies in photography. He lives and works in New York and Massachusetts.
“Joanne Leonhardt Cassullo and I met many decades ago through our mutual friend, author A. M. Homes, one snowy night in New York. We then crossed paths for some years before we realized we had a mutual Becket, MA connection, which greatly deepened our friendship. I was telling her about the place I love to cross-country ski, and my favorite trail, Cathedral of the Pines, when she revealed that the winding dirt road deep in the Becket woods that leads there, Leonhardt Road, is named after her family.” -Gregory Crewdson
About Artemis Journal:
Now in its 49th year of showcasing artists and writers of the Blue Ridge Mountains and beyond, Artemis Journal highlights the creative voices who uphold the values of the Greek lunar goddess for which the journal was named. As the archetype of the mother goddess, Artemis was the protector of wild animals, the wilderness, young women, and childbirth. She was known as a carrier of light.
The Artemis mission has remained unchanged since its inception. Born out of writing workshops held for victims of domestic violence in Southwest Virginia, Artemis Journal has advocated for social justice since 1977. Artemis Journal is published yearly, supporting fair trade policies, artists, and women-based businesses. Ten percent of earnings are donated to a women’s shelter for victims of domestic violence and their families in Southwest Virginia.
Artemis Journal Launch 2025 Our Launch at the Taubman Museum of Art was a celebration of art and poetry, releasing our Artemis Journal to a full house of supporters. We honored and dedicated our journal to the acclaimed poet, Nikki Giovanni and our guest speaker, Gregory Crewdson engaged in conversation with Hollins Emeritas, photographer Robert Sulkin.
We are grateful to the Taubman Museum of Art, The Roanoke Arts Commission, The Roanoke Library Foundation and the Dorthea L. Leonhardt Foundation for making this event possible.
Artemis Journal cover art: Morningside Home for Women by Gregory Crewdson
Brief Encounters: Film Screening + Discussion with Artist Gregory Crewdson
An acclaimed photographer with the eye of a filmmaker, Gregory Crewdson has created some of the most gorgeously haunting pictures in the history of the medium.
His meticulously composed, large-scale images are stunning narratives of small-town American life—moviescapes crystallized into a single frame. While the photographs are staged with crews that rival many feature film productions, Crewdson takes inspiration as much from his own dreams and fantasies as the worlds of Alfred Hitchcock, David Lynch, Edward Hopper and Diane Arbus.
Shot over a decade with unprecedented access, Gregory Crewdson: Brief Encounters beautifully bares the artist’s process—and it’s as mesmerizing and riveting as the images themselves.
