Ledyard — Standing in front of his burned workshop on Shewville Road last Tuesday morning, Dan Potter looked at the metal pieces lying in the snowy grass: an old pushcart in one place, a signpost in another, before reaching down to right a welded sculpture of President Obama's face.

The workshop, which burned on Dec. 26, was where he stored welding tools, power equipment and art, and while he had earlier moved many of the art pieces next door, he still lost tens of thousands of dollars worth of his work and equipment. The vinyl siding on the shed next door had crinkled like paper from the heat of the fire.

"The courtyard can be redone, (but) it's going to be an incredible amount of work," Potter added. "Either I'm going to die, or live 20 more years to work on it."

But Potter and his wife, Marya Ursin, are no strangers to making their vision a reality.

Over the years, their masked theater company Mystic Paper Beasts has become a fixture in the regional theater scene.

More recently, their performance, educational and residency space "The Dragon's Egg," a large two-story building with a dance studio and living quarters, has transformed the farmstead into a destination for dance companies and artists to create and rehearse.

Potter's stamp on the local arts scene began in the 1970s with an invitation to create whale puppets for a show at the Mystic Aquarium. Potter was trained as an architect but had been making puppets since he was a kid and wrote for the theater in college. He then founded the masked theater troupe Mystic Paper Beasts shortly after the trip to Mystic Aquarium in 1976.

"It became a kind of community theater," Potter said.

Mystic Paper Beasts can be seen performing all over the region. A barn on their property stores the more than 300 masks they've created over the years: owls, antelope and other creatures that can only be described as otherworldly.

Marya Ursin joined Potter when she moved to the state years ago.

A teacher with the Merce Cunningham Dance Company in New York for eight years, Ursin said she was really interested when she heard about the masked theater company Potter had formed.

A dance student gave her Potter's number, and she lost it three times — before she gave him a call.

She now teaches teaches mask-making, performance and yoga at the National Theater Institute at the Eugene O'Neill Theater in Waterford, as well as yoga in the dance department at Connecticut College. Potter creates pottery, art and the masks for the Mystic Paper Beasts, where he performs alongside Ursin.

But it was Ursin and a "waking dream" that brought about the creation of The Dragon's Egg, a rehearsal, retreat and performance space on their Ledyard farmstead affectionally called "The Egg."

She had a "vision of a hexagonal, light-filled sacred circus tent," at the foot of the meadow where the barn storing their masks sat, Ursin said.

The building would resolve a problem she often saw where dance companies were put under so much pressure to produce, Ursin said. She wanted to host a space where there wasn't so much pressure and companies could come, develop something new and stay for a few days.

"You create differently if you don't have to create something," Ursin said.

Potter designed the 2,200-square-foot two-story building with a half dozen beds, kitchen and massage room and mirrors covering four of the walls around the space, with windows to take in the light from the meadow outside.

Steel beams were added to support the roof, which created another story higher up with narrow walkway around with seats to observe performances from above.

To put the building in the location where Ursin imagined the Egg, they hired contractors to lift the barn and place it north of the Egg.

The organization is a nonprofit, run by Egg's Board of Directors which accepts proposals for the residency from the membership. They range from three to nine days at a time.

While residents intially came from Ursin and Potter's circle of friends and aquaintances, now the space stands on its own reputation and approximately 50 groups from near and far come to stay and work at the Egg.

The space also hosts an annual "Summer Narrative Assemblage Project" in which a variety of artists come and develop a piece on a chosen myth or story. They also hold two similar programs each year in New London and New York City. As part of their educational aim, a number of yoga classes, taught by Ursin and other instructors, are also held there, as well as a craft bazaar and an annual spring equinox ceremony.

While there have been many memorable moments at The Egg, Ursin remembered a show in the middle of a snowstorm eight years ago when David Dorfman, a member of the Dragon's Egg Board of Directors and chairman of the Dance Department of Connecticut College, performed blindfolded in a 24-hour improvisational dance created to protest the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan.

"It was amazing, heart-rending," she said.

Jason Rabin, a musician who works for Young Audiences of Massachusetts, said he has attended the Narrative Assemblage Project for years after being invited by a friend.

He and other performers work tirelessly to create a performance within the day, and stayed together at the Egg overnight.

"It's kind of like a little paradise for what it is. ... It's definitely a refuge for creative people to relax and escape from the outside," he said.

Rabin, like many at the Egg, credits Potter and Ursin for supporting his career.

"They liked my voice and liked me as part of the show," he said. "They kept giving me the prompt ... (it) certainly improved my self confidence as a performer. I feel I  was able to experiment with things that made me a a better performer."

"They are great champions of the arts ... they are always encouraging me to keep working, even in isolation giving me a place to explore and perform by not only being patrons but modeling artistic and creative processes."

And Ursin in turn travels across the region: to New Haven, Providence and beyond to see alumni of the Dragon's Egg perform shows and grow artistically.

"It's a pretty heady and special place," Ursin said. "I get to stand in, go to these pieces and feel intimately involved in them. I just happened to have been on the periphery on their education."

As Potter looked over his burned workshop, he peered through the charred timbers and pointed the view of the long meadow and the 18th century house where he grew up revealed by the fire.

It was such a nice vista, he said, that he hoped to preserve that view of the meadow while he rebuilds it.

"It's like the poem," he said. "'Barn's burnt down; now I can see the moon.'"

n.lynch@theday.com