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Our History

In 1976, Ric Campman and Barbara Merfeld Campman founded the River Gallery School with after-school classes for children in the Ingenuity Shops on Putney Road in Brattleboro, Vermont. Their desire was to have a space where people could connect to their innate creativity and express themselves through art making. Classes for adults and teens followed, and as the school grew, we moved to our present light filled studios on Main Street. In recent years, the school has expanded both its curriculum and its space.  Each year has brought a deepening of the school’s vision and of its commitment to the community through collaborations and outreach programming. Throughout all the changes and growth, our commitment to helping people express themselves and find joy through art has remained constant.

Barbara,Child Studio at 127 Main Street
Ric Campman with Millie Torres (Photo:Bob George)

Barbara Merfeld Campman

Barbara Merfeld Campman

Barbara has trained and exhibited widely as an artist, both in the US and abroad. She co-founded RGS, and before her retirement was the head of the children’s art program and started our art and meditation program. 

“Children are drawn to abstraction, be it in painting or construction, following an inspiration – ‘the concreteness of the moment’. They naturally place their trust in the process of creativity, and it is through this trust that creativity can flow and take one by surprise. Working with children, I am struck by how they often create without the hesitation that comes with worrying about what they are making. Asking one student about what he was making, he answered, ‘I’m not sure what I’m doing but I’m pretty sure it’s cool.’ “

Ric Campman

Ric Campman photo by Chris Triebert

Visual artist, teacher and author, Ric encouraged the creativity of both children and adults at River Gallery School in Brattleboro from 1976 until his death in 2006, where he worked with great joy in his painting studio overlooking the Connecticut River.

“A simple way of understanding art-making is to consider a 3-part system, with one part being science or objective reality, another part being religion or spirit of our subjective reality, and the third part being the process of art-making, standing between the other two. This middle way is the core of what we address as artists – the meeting of our inner and outer worlds. Art is the embodied projection of our subjectivity as we respond to objectivity. Art making is an activity that enriches our world and is a tool in our recognition that reality is fluid and changeable.

Creativity emerges out of the fullness of the present moment. We need to witness our present as completely as possible and so must acknowledge that there is much we do not know. Not knowing is an important part of what we all are.” 

-From Making is Knowing by Ric Campman