EveNSteve announce the opening of the sixth year of the Hayfield Art Gallery in Pawlet, Vermont with What Happens When You Defund the Arts?

“This is not the exhibition we were planning,” explains Eve Schaub of the show which she and her creative partner Stephen Schaub are calling an “art protest.”

The show’s centerpiece is a thirty-two-foot artwork with spray-painted letters reading “WHAT HAPPENS WHEN YOU DEFUND THE ARTS?”

“As the news of 2025 kept rolling in, we felt an urgency to address the rapidly shifting landscape in the world of the arts,” Schaub explains. “We wanted to create a space to pose important questions and contemplate what is happening.”

“Last year each taxpayer paid less than one dollar to support the NEA,” Stephen Schaub adds. “It is one of the largest arts funders in the U.S., yet it is also one of the smallest federal agencies. It does a tremendous amount of good with very little, yet the current administration is proposing to eliminate it entirely.”

The Schaubs cite drastic NEA cuts that have already affected Vermont institutions as varied as the Vermont Symphony Orchestra, the Flynn Theater and the Governor’s Institutes of Vermont.

“Creativity and the arts helped us through the time of the pandemic,” Stephen continues. “In fact, the outdoor Hayfield Art Gallery was born of our feeling of urgency to share art with our community in new, safe ways.”

“Art helped us then and it helps us now,” Eve explains. “Art helps us make sense of the world. We hope people will come from all over to engage in this deeply important question about support for creativity.”

EveNSteve, are the husband-and-wife team of author Eve O. Schaub and artist Stephen Schaub. They created the Hayfield Art Gallery in 2020 as a way to safely share art during the pandemic. Five monumental artworks compose the annual outdoor exhibition, including one that reaches thirteen feet in height and another that is over thirty feet long.

The Hayfield Art Gallery has been the subject of news stories on NBC Boston News 10, New England Cable News, WTEN Albany ABC, and WCAX Burlington CBS, as well as articles in Seven Days, the Rutland Herald, and the Times Argus.

Free and open to the public, the Hayfield Art Gallery may be viewed by driving by or by parking in the gallery lot and walking the mown trail through the field. Open dawn till dusk year-round, it is located at 671 River Road in Pawlet Vermont. What Happens When You Defund the Arts will be on display until Spring of 2026.

For more information visit their website at www.evensteve.com