Devonshire Estates Residents Display an Abundance of Talent
Irwin Margolies plays the piano every Wednesday. During the summer, he spends his weekends attending concerts at Tanglewood.
When its general manager, Dawn DeCristo, started her position about eight months ago, she immediately focused on providing them the tools and opportunities to reinvent themselves and pursue their passions.
As DeCristo got to know each resident and their stories, she discovered the community is rich with artists — including poets, writers, musicians, painters, colorists, and quilters.
When someone visits the community, DeCristo hopes that it is a reflection of its residents.
"Devonshire is a wonderful community full of highly intellectual people. We have people from all walks of life," she said.
There are teachers, business professionals, academics. "There is such a collective here of wisdom," she said.
Devonshire evolves with every new resident it welcomes, DeCristo said.
"The reflection of Devonshire is really going to be in its community itself. We fall into the background because our people stand out," she said.
After seeing all the talented artists at the facility, it was a natural decision to establish a gallery, currently in the vestibule leading to the back of the building. However, as the art collection grows, the hope is to create a gallery in its community room.
"We just want to be able to create spaces where it's a reflection of who actually lives here. it's a building that I manage, but it's actually their home," DeCristo said.
"We want the home to be representative of the people that live here and so we're working towards that."
During our visit to Devonshire, we interviewed some of the residents that contribute to the artistic coterie in its community.
Every Wednesday, Irwin Margolies, plays the grand piano that sits in the central hall, in front of the gallery and community room.
Margolies comes from a musical family, raised in New Jersey but would come to the Berkshires regularly to visit Tanglewood; now just 10 minutes away from Devonshire.
"We fell in love with the Berkshires. I've been coming up here every year for 70 years. When I decided to move, I thought this was the perfect area for me," he said.
In the summer, Margolies drives himself to Tanglewood every weekend and said he wishes residents without cars had the same ability.
"One of the advantages of this place is that we're like 10 minutes from there, and people come from all over the country to go to Tanglewood," he said.
"I always feel badly that many of the people here can't go right over there because they have no way to get there."
Currently, the weather makes it difficult for the elderly to get out safely because of the snow and ice, DeCristo said.
However, when the weather starts to improve, DeCristo hopes to give its residents opportunities to go out and experience aspects of the Berkshires including Tanglewood, the Clark Art Institute, and the Norman Rockwell Museum.
"We've been working diligently to figure out what the residents really want, and that's one of them…There's so many community events that the Berkshires offer that we want to get them out and back engaged within," DeCristo said.
"So, that's something we're really working hard towards, putting that together now so that we have it in place for when the weather turns."
Christine Jordan discovered her love of painting after retiring 20 years ago while taking a senior art class at the Lenox Community Center.
She uses an abundance of bright colors to create works, often taking inspiration from online images, nature, and her collie.
"I went and got hooked, and it's been going on ever since," she said.
Daniel Pettibone has been an artist since he was 4 years old and has gone on to do commissioned works for people. He enjoys a range of artistic styles including drawing, painting, color pastels, woodcarving, and paper/cardstock crafts.
He said his room is full of his pieces and he enjoys walking the grounds of Devonshire.
Poet Elizabeth Elliott has been writing for nearly her entire life. The more she read poetry, the more inspiration struck, and she was compelled to write. She feels a deep connection to the craft.
She has published eight books, and has enough content for three or four more. She is particularly interested in the rhythm of words.
She described her poems like toddlers — they grow up and you never know what is going to happen.
Elliott said she likes incorporating in her poetry aspects such as humor and politics, such as the situation with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, which breaks her heart to read about.
"I wrote a poem that was three pages in which the world is coming to an end at 10 o'clock in the morning," she said
"Everybody's been told that the world is coming to an end and I thought it would be really interesting to know what were the last things people said before they came to an end."
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