Lee Barron
FOUNDER
RIP
1941-2024
“Cloud Club is an idea, not a place.
It’s a home, not a house.”
The Place
The current iteration of this “idea” is but one in a long continuum created by and for those anomalous characters that historically operate outside the standard paradigms of their time.
The Physical Space
The Cloud Club physical space is comprised of twin 1850 brick townhouses, and the largest private garden in metro Boston.
Both the interior and exterior design of the space have been a continual process of re-creation since the Cloud Club’s inception in 1973.
Acting partially as a physical model of the intuitive relationship between humanity and the space we co-inhabit, the on-going transformation of the Cloud Club has primarily relied on discarded, abandoned and overlooked supplies found in streets and dumpsters throughout Boston and beyond.
This exercise – finding daily application for possibilities discovered through the conscious use of the artist’s eye – acts as a living model for finding possibility within ourselves and the larger world we are creating.
There are 7 live-in studios and a dedicated space for live performances and webcasts of curated Cloud Club Events.
The Conceptual Space
Envisioned by outsider artist Lee Barron over 40 years ago as an informal club of shared spirit, The Cloud Club today partially subsidizes a consortium of oft collaborating independent artists. The common ground between these artists is a shared dedication to creating their own personal realities outside the parameters of the conventional commercial, governmental, cultural and educational establishments.
It is The Cloud Club’s belief that these gifted individuals by their natures, in personal quest of holistic and fully-realized lives, will create models of broader relevance and art of transcendent substance and utility.
Press
The Atlantic: “Life in the Outside” by Harvey Blume
A profile of an artist whose idea of housework is to create art that blurs the line between indoors and out
The Dig: “Phantasma: Lee Barron’s Cloud Club” by Hannah Martin
“A foot inside The Cloud Club is like stepping through the looking glass.”
Ftrain: “Another Bathtub, Another House” By Paul Ford
Somewhere – I couldn’t tell you….
