REVIEW: Elizabeth Nelson and David Smith at Art House in Craftsbury.

By S. Gulick

The show of works by Elizabeth Nelson and David Smith at the Art House in Craftsbury Common combines two groups of work in which many outward contrasts conceal an effort to deal with an aspect common to both works. This show was originally scheduled to run until the 15th of September but has been extended through the 3rd of October.

The Gallery space of the Art House is fairly small to start with, and the Nelson-Smith show occupies only half of the available space. This has imposed an economy of choice on the artists – they each have a small number of works which at once emphasize the internal consistency of the works of each artist and highlight the surface contrasts between the two groups of work. There is a contrast in season and palette. Smith works with the rich blues and greens of summer, and there is a warm tropical feel even to the streams and fields of New England which appear in some of his works; Nelson has chosen the chilly whites and greys of winter with faint touches of color in the snowladen pastel skies and fields. Even her Night Blooming Lilac (at left) appears to be set in a blizzard. There is a contrast in size. Nelson has chosen to show four works, three of which are large format; Smith has 5 smaller works and even the larger ones are smaller panels grouped together. Finally there is a contrast in feel, flavor, spirit, personality – I don't know what to call it. But Smith has carefully selected images which fit on his canvases and which study a repeated geometric or color motif. His lombardy poplars stand nearly identical in a line. His palm fronds are a symphony of repeated arcing blades. His field is framed and ends where the frame begins.

Nelson often starts with a photograph which has an element which interests her and matches her painting to the photograph. But her landscapes strain the boundaries of her canvases. Her skies and fields fight for space. The branches of her trees writhe off the edges of her night sky. The snow swirls dizzying around a viewer and it's obvious it's not just in front of the viewer but above, below and to the sides and it's only because the canvas ends that you don't see it there.

I believe what ties these two artists' work together is their common interest in the tension between the figurative and the abstract that appears in the works. David Smith on his website states that he approaches painting abstractly but works in a representational style because of its limitations. I believe he means that while geometry and color offer infinite possibilities, he allows the real world to impose limits on what he could otherwise do with brush and paint, color and form. The green arcs of the palm fronds against the blue in Big Pine Tree Tryptich, the cool columns of the trees in Poplars, the rippling light on the water in Tributary (below) all could stand alone as studies in color but are pieces of landscape observed and represented by the artist.

Before Photoshop it was generally felt that a photograph was as accurate a representation of visual reality as one could achieve. By anchoring her works to photographs and then working outward and expanding the reality they represent, Liz Nelson is likewise restricting herself to a palette and forms which resonate with an actual physical scene. But her imagination seems to chafe at the imposed boundaries. In Spring Thaw she starts with a horizon in a snowstorm but rapidly develops a snowstorm archetype which distills from the specific image a sort of general snowstorm essence. The trees and white blots--are they blossoms? petals? snowflakes? lights?--in Night Blooming Lilac have a strongly surreal nature to them.

These are clearly two artists with differing approaches toward painting, and the works they have chosen to exhibit emphasize the differences. But the show is held together by their efforts to deal with a common set of goals in reconciling a love for the abstract play of form and color, light and shade, with a desire to represent and reveal the wonders the material world can display for the eye.

I would suggest that a visitor to the gallery should go early on a bright day as the lighting in the gallery is mainly by daylight. A visit will provide a viewer with a wide range of color and texture to satisfy his or her visual appetite, and if one starts from Smith's statement about an abstract approach to the representational there's something for the mind to mull over as well.

ART HOUSE hours are Friday, Saturday, Sunday, and Monday 10:30 - 4:00.
802-586-2545

ART HOP THIS WEEKEND

Art Hop is this weekend -- Friday, September 11 and Saturday, September 12. Check out the schedule online at the SEABA website, or pick up a program guide at many locations in Burlington and central Vermont. This is an event that draws artist-participants from all over the state, and thousands of visitors come out to see art exhibited all over Burlington's South End. Do not miss it!

As always, visiting the art is free, but this year, SEABA is selling Art Hop Hero buttons for $5 each. Click the button (left) for a list of locations where you can buy one. The button gets you discounted admission to the Fashion Show and closing Dance Party on Saturday night, and is a fashion accessory that shows your support for this great community art event.

Janet Van Fleet, one of Vermont Art Zine's editors, will be getting a guided tour from Art Hop Chair Mark Waskow on Saturday morning. Check back here on Sunday for a Walkabout, profiling and looking at some of her favorites! Much of the art is up for the rest of September, so there will be time after this weekend to follow up on some of the information she shares!

REVIEW: Coffee Trees by Cully Renwick at Studio Place Arts (SPA)

By Delia Robinson

Coffee Trees, a collection of fourteen luminous paintings by Cully Renwick, is on exhibit in the 2nd floor gallery at SPA in Barre, Vermont through September 19th. Painted with oil on Yupo paper, the overall effect is one of semitransparent emulsions flowing on a light-filled surface.

This show is a lovely addition to Renwick's dreamily engaging body of work. In addition, it introduced me to the rich potential of Yupo paper. Yupo is synthetic paper, a polymer with a slick, durable, waterproof surface, ideal for interesting aqueous effects.

Inspired by the remains of coffee in the bottom of a cup, Renwick says the dregs resembled “winter trees in a morning sky.” The grounds were “separated by rivulets of water.” She “spent happy days trying to make oil and terp, and stray materials flow in ways that evoked trees, lichens, and winter vegetation.” Though with strong vegetative force, the paintings are not literal images of trees, nor are they purely abstract. Each foray into abstraction is countered by the mind's yearning to classify the images into categories. “This is a landscape,” my mind would say. “This is a grove of trees.” Though I sought to enjoy the pictures as creations without stories, the impulse was too strong; each form demanded that I ascribe “look-alike” attributions.

Each picture is unique though many are reminiscent of rivers from the air, of alluvial fans flowing into deltas. The qualities of coral, or memories of the broccoli-like oak forests of the Marin Headlands, or the curious patterning found in some fungi, or as Renwick says, “winter trees in a morning sky,” occur repeatedly and are more insistent on a second visit. In short, these are strongwilled paintings, taking one on a journey of their own devising.

The techniques Renwick has used are as intriguing as the mysterious selfnaming contents; a bit of frottage, a surface beloved of the surrealists, sits beside flecks and splashes. A sweeping trail of paint suggests a squeegee has been implemented. Seeps of pigment flow over but do not penetrate the surface. The brown pigments are dribbled and pooled, often looking eatable, as if
coffee and chocolate doubled as art materials. In some paintings. mossy green tones allow visionary landscapes to emerge. All offer a sense of enchantment, of glowing space, and an opportunity for reflection.

Images, top to bottom:
Flow Tree, Train, and Companions, all 13 x 13"

PRESS RELEASE: Peace by Piece, an exhibit at the former Camp Meade...

Peace by Piece, an exhibit at the former Camp Meade, now Red Hen Bakery, will open with a reception on Sunday, September 6--3-6 complete with tours of the open studio cabins, the hand built yurt constructed on the property, and readings from the writers collected there. The artists have been working in these studio cabins for the summer without electricity and water, and have been granted the opportunity to showcase their work in the building which used to house the Museum of Camp Meade. It is exciting to have a revival of arts and energy in Middlesex.

For a bit of history--Red Hen Bakery moved onto the scene 2 years ago and brought the aroma of baking bread to the grounds. Jaquelyn of Nutty Steph's Chocolate and Granola crafts her excellent products in the kitchen area and had the brainstorm of leasing the cabins to artists...we call it Jackie's Egg, this idea to bring in artists to create life and energy in the abandoned cabin area behind the bakery.

The exhibit itself is growing piece by piece, ahem, Peace by Piece, as the different artists are bringing their work for display and finding peaceful space for it in this empty spawling commercial building... many rooms have no windows and only some light canisters. Alex Angio has unpacked and spread out his abstract paintings and prints, some he hasn't seen for years, from his move from Argentina. Margaret Blanchard is bringing in her stained glass formed into 3 dimensional sculpture, finding the windows in the entry room to make it glow. We have determined to celebrate the huge wall painting of MacArthur landing in the Philipines, as he and his crowd of followers all proceed into the "portrait gallery". Sowbel will enhance the room with her portraits and Maggie Neale will be showing 3 portraits--2 from her college years and one of her first born. Sarah has claimed the map room and Danny has yet to claim space....his work is still hanging in LACE in Barre for the month. Trish has a wonderful 3D piece called "Homing Device" which I have heard has a whole performance to go with it. And Tom is just back from travels...what will he bring to the mix? Peace By Piece", we are growing and changing our world.

Please come celebrate with us on Sunday, September 6, 3-6pm. Readings will begin at 4:30 in the "gallery" which is located next to Red Hen Cafe (red Umbrellas!) right on Route 2, 6 miles from Montpelier, and just east of exit 9 off 89. The exhibit will be up for at least 6 weeks...hours are being considered. Please call 802-279-0774 or email colormuse@gmail.com for more information.

Press Release: Muffin Ray at Supreme Court

Release: Immediate

Date: August 25, 2009

Contact: Tracy Martin, Assistant State Curator

802 828-0749 508 487-3139

Discarded and Salvage

Works by Muffin Ray at the Vermont Supreme Court

Discarded and Salvage, a show of works by Muffin Ray opening at the Vermont Supreme Court on September 3, is an expressive collection of large-scale mixed media “paintings” that are essentially textile assemblages. Artist Muffin Ray transforms vintage quilt patches, found tapestries and other sumptuous yet cast-off textiles into broad fields of texture and color.

Ray creates deep, mysterious surfaces soaked in resin, encaustic and oil-based media that preserve embroidered textures like primeval insects in amber. Then she juxtaposes areas of painting with the glazed and stained fabrics. “All of the materials used in this work were salvaged from abandoned warehouses, dumpsters and basements,” Ray explains in a curatorial statement. Elise Kaufman, in a review of Ray’s most recent work, writes “words, painted into the full bodied surface, here become slightly ambiguous and suggestive in this new visual context and prompt questions about private states of mind, relationship, and/or physical well being.”

In her surreptitious quest for ingredients Ray discovered a wide range of swatches and bolts; some resemble Victorian tin ceilings, while others are fancy embroidery or strips of lace or aged bedding such as mattress ticking or tattered woolen blankets. The work surprises with elements of time and gentle neglect, challenging society’s penchant for flagrant beauty. The beckoning textures urge the viewer to search deeply through the layers of paint, gesso and varnishes in hopes in finding remnants of once beautiful threads and fabric or vintage utilitarian textiles. Years of wear and tear have only enhanced their original beauty.

Writing for Seven Days, Marc Awodey noted “Ray pushes technical boundaries to invent a hybrid art — part assemblage and part painting — that carries viewers down a meandering sensory stream. Her paint handling echoes the art-historical trends of the last hundred years, while her discarded, readapted textiles seem to bear the ghosts of the former lives they’ve touched.”

Muffin Ray’s work will be on display at the Vermont Supreme Court building in Montpelier through October 29. The Supreme Court building is open to the public Monday through Thursday from 8 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. and Friday from 12:30 p.m. to 4:30 p.m. (Closed Friday, October 2).

For more information, call (802) 828-0749.

REVIEW: The Figure and Beyond at T.W. Wood in Montpelier

By Janet Van Fleet

Unlike actors, musicians, and dancers, who work in ensembles, visual artists are notoriously solitary creatures. So it’s exciting to find an enterprise in which painters work together, from time to time, in the same space. Billy Brauer has been leading a once-a-week life drawing and painting group for forty years in central Vermont, and over the years many, many artists have been drawn to Brauer’s Thursday evening sessions.

Work by 45 of these artists, including Brauer himself, are on exhibit at the T.W. Wood Gallery and Art Center through Sunday, October 25. The exhibit is a riot of bodies and color, very thoughtfully arranged in groupings that feature monochrome drawings, pigmented pastels, and paintings, along with a selection of Brauer’s works and his statement about the class, titled ...every Thursday night forever!

Over the years, a number of long-timers have been helpful in organizing and running the classes, including Charles Woodard and Frank Woods, and their work is among the strongest in the show. Frank Woods shows several pieces that, instead of foregrounding the model (as most of the other work does), place her at a distance and use compositional devices that move the viewer’s eye through and around the overlapping planes of the paintings, caressing the model (so to speak) at every recurring transit. In one piece, the device is a red yarn-like line moving northwest from the bottom of the painting, elevating us to the figure, scooting up along zigzagging blue shadows, and finally dropping us down to the lower right, to begin again. In another untitled piece, a vase of gladiolas on the right and a bright doorway or window on the left seem (very energetically) to be playing tennis over the head of the relaxed model.

An enclosure in the center of the gallery features 19 paintings, most of which employ the saturated colors favored by Brauer himself. Among these are several strong pieces by Ward Joyce, a profile portrait by Barbara Paulson, and a lovely little Seated Figure by Helen Rabin, in which the figure is placed in the right half of a square painting, elbows locked, with light playing on her white breasts and belly.

The exhibit includes work that was done outside the class (in their own studios) by participating artists. Among these, Jeanne Cariati’s Quatre Demoiselles Nu, a sculptural bowl with four reclining nudes sweeping around the rim of the alabaster vessel, is breathtaking. There are alabaster veins inside the bowl, like in flesh and skin, but almost completely translucent. Sande French-Stockwell’s Giragi is a perky human/giraffe model, built on a store mannequin, situated next to a larger-than-lifesize drawing in the back corner of the back room.

Other pieces that caught my eye were Pizza Box Nude by Sophia Belenky and the drawings of Joan Feierabend, which are paired with abstract geometric paintings. But there is so much work in this show that there’s plenty to tickle every fancy. So hurry on down, and discover your own favorites.

Images, top to bottom: Gallery view, Sweet Sistine by Billy Brauer, Untitled by Frank Woods, and Giragy, by Sande French-Stockwell

REVIEW: Nelda S. Haley Retrospective at SPA in Barre

by Cully Renwick

A retrospective of paintings by the late Nelda S. Haley is on view in the Third Floor Gallery at Studio Place Arts (SPA) in Barre from August 11 to September 19, 2009. The show includes 22 oil paintings and two preliminary drawings, spanning the years from 1949 to 2004.

Nelda S. Haley was born Nelda Margaret Smith (Aug. 7, 1929) in Waterbury, Connecticut. The child of a stone mason and a music loving mother, she grew up on her grandfather's produce farm during the Depression and WWII years. An essay outlining her life was published in the Northfield News of August 6, 2009.

This exhibit of paintings offers a rare opportunity to connect with part of the very interesting east coast mid-century explosion of art styles. To see this retrospective is also to see the story of a young woman who herself so connected with the art of her times that she painted though thick and thin, with little money, while raising children in New York, while farming in the mid-west, while being active in the art of her communities. She initially studied in the schools of two great stylists of the field, and found her “voice” within the precepts of her chosen teachers, Louis Schanker and Hans Hoffman. The “language” of these two distinctive practitioners both required a starting place of actual nature, upon which they applied the distorting and expanding effects of a personal philosophy of spatial dynamic possibilities. In the end, an ultimate, expressionistic aspect overlies, but never obliterates its mundane origin. For some expressionists working within these parameters, the possibilities were primarily guttural and emotional. For others, like Nelda, they were wonderful puzzles that contemplated dynamics of balance and imbalance (Figure Resting, c.1957), relationships of motion and stasis (Dish Drainer #2, c.1961 and Old Hayrake #2, 1960), or distributions of color blocks (Mozart Opera, c.1965), for instance.

In Paper Burner, c.1960, the figure is a dervish of black, white and yellow-orange action, centrally placed, with a background separated into two colors that boldly attach to the sides of the painting. In Mozart Opera, c.1965, fast paced light and dark colors broken into squares and rectangles arrange themselves regularly enough to imply light and music dancing on walls, ceiling and audience, while a discernible figure with upraised arms appears to conduct everything. Still Life with Cellist, 1964, has an exciting surface. Beautifully handled strong warm yellows, ochres, and oranges span surfaces as shapes of foreground and background elements, separating warm dark brown shapes in the upper portion and green-tinted very dark blue shapes in the lower foreground. The cello and musician are deeply embedded but never lost. Figure Resting, c.1957, is a tall “classic” piece, a beauty. Perhaps it’s the quality of resting that seats these dark brown curves and angles so solidly and serenely in the midst of fresh whites, off center but not off balance. Blue white. Green white. Orange white… implied motion is resting just now.

Near the Mozart Opera painting two wonderful sketches indicative of other work, woodcuts, linoleum prints, and charcoal and pastel drawings, give a certain bounce by contrast to the larger works. The book-ends to the current exhibit are two smaller paintings, Windy Street, c.1949, and Three Boats on Beach, 1952 that predate and foreshadow the mature work; and a later piece, Morro Bay Harbor, c.2004, begun in blocks of pastel colors, unfinished.


Thanks to the fine curating of this show, the pieces speak for themselves, for the life and times of a particular painter, and for an interesting era in art.

Images, top to bottom: Still Life With Cellist, Paper Burner, Three Boats on Beach.

REVIEW: "Working It Out" at SPA in Barre

by Cully Renwick

"Working it out", an exhibit of thirty-one pieces gives sixteen artists the chance to put a slant on our work-a-day lives that we might not have seen. There are pieces that show a sense of humor or irony, that are like poetry, that have social commentary, or that celebrate pride, experience and toughness, or just existence. From (michael smith)'s great little painting The World Needs Ditch Diggers, Too 2008) to Jeneane Lunn's blistering colors of John Deere in Summer and Helen Rabin's pensive Figures Gardening 1998 (seen below at right), the artist is at work.

Mark Heitzman's Persuader 2004, drawn in graphite on paper, is a representation of a huge wooden wrench, perhaps at full scale. The "persuader" is the tool that takes care of tough jobs. Whether this well crafted wooden item is a relic or still in use, its plain, intellectual, precise rendering only enhances its iconic presence as art. Quite in contrast, the strongly rendered figures in Heidi Broner's colorful canvases are frequently in half silhouette. They're isolated, without sharp boundaries, against an atmospheric, misty background (Utility Pole 2009), usually blue, sometimes highly colored (Burn Site 2008). In the balance, gesture and detail of each hand and body, the people are very specific. Nevertheless, the paintings somehow speak of everyman (Spreading Cement 2006). Along one wall, photographer Jack Rowell captures the essence of work in two fine portraits and a pair of hands, then suddenly there's one of Wendy James' digital photomontage pieces Wire Workers 2008, a refreshing non sequitur to so much gritty realism.

In rendering tools, robots, houses, and machines in clay, John Brickels brings his own brand of non sequitur humor to his sculpture (Tool Box with Jack 2008), while honoring his origins in the industrial rust-belt of Ohio. In Microscope 2008, Lilian Aye opens the boundaries of realism letting unrelated items stand in for each other visually. And M. Angelo Arnold, once again, wrenches familiar furniture into an unfamiliar relationship (Ponder 2009). What might have been a comfortable white-collar work station has been jammed together as by a violent tornado. It's going to take a lot of effort to get anything done now! Perhaps the scope of work was not very clear. Just table that problem for now and consider this: Robert Brunelle Jr. (Skull and Hammers 1993-2009) once wrote, "Behind each of my works lies a strange, humorous and...usually...true story!"

Above left: John Brickles, Tool Box With Jack
Right: Angelo Arnold, Ponder, with Heidi Broner (Burn Site) and Mark Heitzman (Persuader) on the wall behind.

Press Release Island Arts

Arts on the Champlain Islands.

Island Arts celebrates the Quadricentennial of Lake Champlain with programs that span the week of Aug. 16-23 featuring native people's dancing, drumming, singing, storytelling and crafts, a celebration of our Franco American culture, past and present, and an exploration of the night sky as Samuel de Champlain and his native guides might have experienced it.

The paintings of native artists Jack Sabon and Lorraine Manley, among others, will be showcased at the Island Arts Gallery, located on Route 2 just before the town of North Hero Meet the artists at a reception on Friday, Aug. 14 from 4-7 pm. The Gallery is open daily from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. weekdays; 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. weekends.

Jack Sabon's work is as eclectic as his interests. He graduated from the Institute of American Indian Art in Santa Fe, New Mexico, which has produced some of the best Indian artists of our time. He is an Athabascan Indian (Alaska Native), but his subject matter is not strictly native-influenced. Some of his finest abstractions are heavily influenced by Alaskan folklore, but bear the stamp of the 21st century in which they are created. Other pieces are mystical in nature, reflecting the spirituality and power of tribal shamans. His abstract work is based on a strong color sense with what are often disciplined outlines of amorphous shapes and designs. These works are often "seen" as completed works in his mind and literally flow onto the canvas.

Lorraine C. Manley has been fascinated with art since she was a young girl, when she devoted every spare moment to exploring forms of creative expression. The natural beauty of Lorraine's native Vermont has been the greatest influence in her art. She especially enjoys painting the landscapes near her home in colors vivid, lush, and intense. With intuitive and energetic use of a palette knife and brush, Lorraine looks for those spontaneous "accidents" of oils and acrylics to capture nature's seasons in textural paintings both impressionistic and exciting.

For more information: www.islandarts.org

ESSAY: ‘Art is Cheap, Hurrah!’: The Bread and Puppet folk museum in the Age of the White Cube

(The following essay is submitted by Vermonter Kathryn Barush, now studying at University of Oxford in England. Below this article is the press release regarding Bread and Puppet's August events)

by Kathryn Barush

In the early 1960s Peter Schumann founded the Bread and Puppet Theater in New York City, and its "Domestic Resurrection Circus" first appeared during the Vietnam war shortly thereafter. In the 1970’s, the Bread and Puppet relocated to a Vermont - first to Goddard College, and then to Glover in the Northeast Kingdom, where the midsummer "Domestic Resurrection Circus" pageants were held. Bread and Puppet's brand of anti-commercial, anti-academic art was supplemented with baked sourdough rye that could be smeared with garlic aioli, and the Pageants were played out in a natural amphitheater, with barefoot puppeteers clad in white like a great modern Bacchanalia. In recent years the public could hear the tuneless, dented brass-horn ‘Homeland Security Band’ stomp out the Battle Hymn of the Republic. In 1998, due to the death of one of the festival goers, the large scale pageants were somewhat curtailed, but Bread and Puppet performances do continue. What is now known throughout Vermont tourist guides as the ‘Bread and Puppet Museum’ has been open since at least the early 1980s. This paper will provide a brief analysis of the ‘folk museum’, examining the containment of ritual objects and the liminal effects of Wunderkammer-esque display strategies- employing the Bread and Puppet Museum in Glover, Vermont as a case-study.

In the gift shop (in the traditional place, where most museum gift shops are found, upon entering the cavernous and cob webbed barn) are both a donation box, and donations hat, Also an array of posters, prints, woodcut-block postcards on brown paper depicting grass (Rise!) and flowers growing out of combat boots (Courage!). There are no employees, no guards, no pedestals, but this is indeed a museum. The barn unfolds into room after room of preserved puppets, some on their own, eerily suspended against thick storm windows, others in the rafters collected in a great crowd, leaning over the stable doors in numbers like a peaceful papier-mâché army, accompanied by massive set pieces, ephemeral cardboard tableaux, and spiders. There are also the museum-goers, all conditioned by their upbringing to move through the silent puppets with an air of reverie, the museum ritual taking hold even in this cluttered, anti-curatorial, anti-academic, anti-capitalistic barn where nothing is commoditized. In fact, Peter Schumann states in his 1984 ‘WHY CHEAP ART’ manifesto: “People have been thinking too long that art is a privilege of the museums and the rich. Art is not a business. Art is food. You can’t eat it but it feeds you.”

Folk museums may have had their advent with Alexandre du Sommerard’s Musée de Cluny. The museum still functions as a veritable reliquary chest of everyday objects: brooches, pots, tapestries with a Roman Bath thrown in, retrieved column capitals, a narwhale tusk functioning as a unicorn horn, a pantheon of heads with their noses in varying degrees of disrepair, and an illuminated manuscript with Mylar protected pages to leaf through. The Cluny example is cited by Stephen Bann: it falls particularly on the art historian to look at those examples which refer back to a period antedating the functional separation of museum types, and hence to scrutinize varieties of display which promoted distinctive relationships between knowledge and visibility to take one significant case, the Musée de Cluny was before all else a historical museum,

dedicated to the revival of the life of the late Middle Ages and the Renaissance, which were evoked in a series of densely packed rooms. Yet it was also in a real sense a precursor of the ‘folk-museums’ and ‘museums of everyday life’ which are current today, insofar as it admitted numerous objects of everyday use which had never been placed on display before.

Another precursor was Rudolph II’s Prague-Castle collection, the Alchemist’s Alley’ riddled with mystique inclusive in the experience, alongside the Mannerist artworks. The ‘folk museum’, as I am defining it here, separates the utilized object from its articulated stance for purposes of static display, thus promoting a visceral shift from ‘low’ to ‘high’ art.

Another purpose of the folk museum is to serve as a space for the containment of ritual objects, retired from their initial purpose and recast into collections. A festal memory is revived and the viewer is invited to participate: to sit in despair (or awe) over the ‘magnitude of antique fragments’ (to borrow from Fuseli). Bann reminds us that the ancient Greeks ‘had seen the function of art as being inseparable from religious and public functions.’ Grouping the puppets in tableaux and theatrical arrangements, which recall set design thus summons a narrative, and invites the public to participate by the act of viewing. This is not far removed from the ‘religious and public function’ which was a further articulated narrative account with the purpose of entertaining, while providing metaphorical clues, embedded in the iconography (a dove means peace, red is for blood, a black robe is for mourning). To invoke Carol Duncan: aestheticians gave philosophical formulations to the condition of liminality, recognizing it as a state of withdrawal from the day-to-day world, a passage into a time or space in which the normal business of life is suspended. In philosophy, liminality became specified as the aesthetic experience, a moment of moral and rational disengagement that leads to or produces some kind of revelation or transformation. Meanwhile, the appearance of art galleries and museums gave the esthetic cult its own ritual precinct. That in mind, a folk museum is providing a Kantian aesthetic immersion in a twofold manner via the arrangement of

the objects and the memory of the original ritual usage.

Although this discussion of folk museums and the display of the American primitive papier-mâché object is far removed from that famous and heralded ‘Olympiad of the Arts’ /Documenta/, there is still an aspect of staging via both instances. Arnold Bode went through great pains to improve the architecture, aligning it with the content of the exhibition. Meanwhile, traditional museum strategies are impugned in the case of Bread and Puppet, arranging the objects not in separated cases in a clean, white museum, but in an old barn. On a much, much more public and major level, this canonical dispute has already taken place in Paris at the Musée D’Orsay. Svetlana Alpers defines the accepted canon as ‘twentieth century notions of skill, ambition, and the achievement of art in the second half of the nineteenth century in France’, and cites the dispute as ‘the media displayed (furniture and decorative arts, photographs, and sculpture mixed in with painting) and in the choice of artists exhibited’.

Naming the Bread and Puppet space a ‘museum’ (the term ‘museum’ as I have previously defined it) is an unsubtle project acting as a purposeful deconstruction of the bourgeoisie museum-going culture, all the more effective owing to the ‘quotations’ of traditional Hegelian timeline display strategies. The very act of doing so promotes Peter Schumann’s project: that is, the project of ‘Domestic Resurrection’ itself.

Bann, Stephen. ‘Art History and Museums,’ in /The Subjects of Art

History/, eds. M.A. Cheetham, M.A. Holly, and K. Moxey, (1998), p.

239 – 240.

Bann, Stephen. 237.

Duncan, Carol. ‘The Art Museum as Ritual’ (1995), in /The Art of

Art History/, ed. D. Preziosi, (1998), p. 480.

Grasskamp, Walter. ‘For Example, /Documenta/, or How is Art

History Produced?’ in /Thinking about Exhibitions/, ed. R.

Greenberg, B.W. Ferguson and S. Nairne, (1996), p.72.

Alpers, Svetlana. ‘The Museum as a Way of Seeing,’ in Exhibiting

Cultures: The Poetics and Policies of Museum Display, ed. I. Karp

and S.D. Lavine, (1991), p. 29.

Photos by by James Riches

PRESS RELEASE: Bread and Puppet Announces Its Summer Shows, Performing Through August!

Lubberland National Dance Company: Friday Nights at 8pm (through Aug 28)
Circus and Pageant: Sundays at 3pm, Rain or Shine! (through Aug 30)
All Admission is Free, Donations Appreciated!

LUBBERLAND NATIONAL DANCE COMPANY

Every Friday night at 8pm through August, Bread and Puppet Theater is experimenting with its new performance format, the Lubberland National Dance Company.

The Lubberland National Dance Company's 13 Dirt Floor Cathedral Dances are performed inside + outside the newly finished Paper Mache Cathedral. They include a forest admiration dance of a NYC rush hour crowd, the Dance of the Foolish Woman Who Tries To Bring Back To Life the Victims of the Drone Bombardments in Pakistani Villages, a sermon-dance, performed by the deeply superstitious practitioners of the paper mache religion and weekly new dances as the summer progresses. The sounds for the dances range from gravel in wheelbarrow to trombones and baritone horns and are composed and improvised for the occasion.
The Lubberland National Dance Company will run a show at the Bread and Puppet Farm, RT 122, Glover, every Friday night at 8 pm through August 28th. Donations appreciated.

CIRCUS AND PAGEANT (Rain or Shine!)

"The Dirt Cheap Money Circus & Pageant" is performed every Sunday through August at 3pm in the circus field and pine forest of the Bread and Puppet Farm. The circus features the distress of money-deprived billionaires, the logic of the US Healthcare System, the philosophy of Forever, presented by a flock of kids, spectacular stilt dances, interspersed with appearances by Karl Marx, who confronts the 2009 economic situation with his existential thoughts about money and our relationship to it. And much more. As always, this year's circus performs to a live band and excels in giant puppets.

The circus leads directly to the pageant, which involves a parade to the pine forest, a giant wicker woman, a vicious team of headless businessmen, a doomed Ship of Fools.

The traditional bread and aioli will be served and the museum will be open!

It all happens on the Bread and Puppet Farm, Rt. 122 in Glover VT. At 1 pm, there is a tour of the Bread and Puppet Museum, with small shows to follow at 2:30 pm. Circus begins at 3pm with Pageant to follow. Follow signs to parking; in case of rain, follow signs to an indoor performance space.

For information, call 802-525-3031, or go to www.breadandpuppet.org

PRESS RELEASE:Green Mountain College group exhibition

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

"Wild Flowers," Peter Huntoon

GMC Feick Arts Center to
Feature Local Artists

POULTNEY, VT – A group show at the Feick Fine Arts Center August 3 features local artists working in mediums ranging from photography and painting to ceramics and pottery.

An opening reception will be held August 6 from 5-7 p.m. It is free and open to the public. All of the exhibitors are from southern and central Vermont.

Brandon-based artist Warren Kimble, well known for his folk art style, will be featured along with Margaret Stringer, a watercolor artist from Wells, and Middletown Springs-based watercolor artist Peter Huntoon. Huntoon creates “representational works of art inspired by the New England landscape and its people.”

Poultney resident Fred Michel is the show’s lone photographer. His work features landscape images from all over the globe. Husband and wife team Diane Rosenmiller and Nicholas Seidner established Rising Meadow Pottery in Middletown Springs in 1998. Seidner’s work often features “local raw materials” for glaze ingredients, while Rosenmiller’s work is influenced by her love of gardening and by historic medieval Asian pottery. Liza Myers, who has been a Vermont resident for over 20 years, creates ceramic sculptures and paintings that explore “connectivity and distance, and intimate details of the physical realm.”

The group show will be on display through August 28. The Feick Fine Arts Center is open to the public Monday through Friday from 1-5 p.m. There is no admission charge.

PRESS RELEASE: Visual Poetics opening at Fox Hill Gallery

The works of Ruth Hamilton and Marc Awodey.

Opening Reception Friday August 7th, 6pm-8pm

Come join the experience at 145 E. Main Street Poultney,

above: a painting by Ruth Hamilton

Fox Hill Center for the Arts

145 East Main St.

Poultney, VT.

PH: 802.884.4100

PRESS RELEASE: Borough Gallery & Studio "Bright Young Things"

BRIGHT YOUNG THINGS Opening reception: August 9th, 5pm-9pm . August 9th - August 23rd, 2009, Borough Gallery & Studio, 180 Flynn Avenue (through the SEABA entrance), Burlington

Shawna Cross, Emily Wilson, and Borough Gallery & Studio are pleased to present BRIGHT YOUNG THINGS, a group exhibition showcasing the work of 10 emerging, area artists. The exhibition will open August 9th from 5pm to 9pm at 180 Flynn Avenue, through the SEABA entrance, in Burlington Vermont's South End. The exhibition will run until August 23rd with viewing hours between 11am and 3pm. During the opening reception live music from Gregory Alexander and special guest will take place from 6pm to 8pm. In addition Rivulette and Vintage Inspired/Miss Pickles Attic will also open their studio doors and invite people to explore our 180 Flynn Avenue hallways. BRIGHT YOUNG THINGS ventures into the current and uprising movements within the art scene of Vermont and Upstate New York, providing stomping ground for emerging artists to display their talents and a platform for their unique vision to be both seen and heard.

Borough Gallery & Studio is wildly ecstatic to present to Burlington an exhibition featuring such passionate and dedicated artists whose belief in both their vision and their voice is illimitable. This exhibition extends the opportunity for community members to experience the art that their neighbors, local business associates, waitstaff, cashiers, and friends are busy making behind closed doors into the late hours of the night. While the styles and media of participating artists range from abstract to representational; covering photography, painting, drawings, sculptures, and installations, the vividness of each piece is of equal nature. The goal of this exhibition is to shed light on the rising artists in our community and in turn highlight the South End as a place where art, music and culture have a profound influence and impact.

Our BRIGHT YOUNG THINGS, on display in Borough Gallery & Studio's debut group show, include Kate Ashman, John Bildstein, Shawna Cross, Cristin Manner, Leigh Manville, Rachel Moore, Elise Pecor, Jackie Ryan, Emily Wilson, Adam Wimble; Open Studios of Stephanie McKay of Rivulette, Mary Heinrich Aloi and Richard Corbet of Vintage Inspired LLC and Miss Pickles Attic; and live music by Gregory Alexander and guest.

For more information or to schedule a tour please contact Shawna Cross via email at shawnacross@gmail.com, 802-782-1675 or Emily Wilson, ewilson.art@gmail.com, 207-459-4631

image: Emily Wilson "Box Installation"

9 4"x4" boxes suspended by hook and eye hardware.
Site Specific Installation designed for South Wall of Borough Gallery
Image courtesy of the artist

PRESS RELEASE: NEW EXHIBIT EXPLORES THE FORGOTTEN FAMILY STORY

BURLINGTON, VT, JULY 27, 2009: Kate Donnelly will be exhibiting new work at 215 College Gallery in Burlington this month. The exhibit - "Vestiges" - includes a mixed media installation and small sculptures and explores the ideas of family stories and forgotten ancestry. The exhibit runs from August 7-30 with an opening reception on August 7, 5-8pm.

“We do such a poor job of maintaining our family stories. Why?” Donnelly asks. “The adventures, the lessons, the trials and tribulations – these are the histories of your family. How many do you know? How are you passing them along to the next generation? Of what value are they? What do they teach us about ourselves, our time, and our world?” With her installations, Donnelly explores the idea of family stories and histories as so many gifts either undiscovered or all but lost. Donnelly's small, maquette-like sculptures playfully illustrate some of the artists own family stories.

Donnelly is a member of 215 College Gallery and works in a variety of mediums. She also teaches art to children of all ages at her studio in Burlington. Her programs include summer camps and after school classes and incorporate painting, drawing, fashion, sculpture, architecture, and more.

About 215 College Gallery: The mission of 215 College Gallery is to explore visual art in all mediums: to build a network for connecting and communicating with one another, other artists, and the community at large. We promote excellence and diversity in the arts with monthly openings of new work by members, and curated shows of guest artists presented in our professional gallery space. This space provides a venue where artists control both the curatorial process and pricing of their work. Proceeds from sales go directly to the exhibiting artist.

PRESS RELEASE: Open Studio and Glenfiddich single malt scotch

M P Landis

Summer Studio Opening and Complimentary Whisky Tasting

Saturday, August 8, 6-9 pm

32 Merchants Row, Middlebury, VT

www.mplandis.com

Join Brooklyn-based artist M P Landis in his summer studio in downtown Middlebury on Saturday, August 8 from 6-9 pm for a complimentary evening tasting of Glenfiddich single malt scotch, and a preview of his artwork which will soon be traveling to the distillery's gallery in Dufftown, Scotland. Landis is currently Glenfiddich's Artist-in-residence. The tasting will be hosted by Glenfiddich Whisky Master, Heather Greene and will take place at his studio at 32 Merchants Row, Middlebury, VT, in the historic Battell Block Building across from the town green. This summer Landis's artwork has been inspired by the process of making whiskey. He had two sets of cask hoops from the Dufftown distillery sent to him; he has been using these cask hoops to make abstracted works. Landis is paying homage to the distillery and its processes, from the coopering of the casks to the decades of aging of the whisky itself. In addition to his upcoming exhibit in Scotland, there will be a solo exhibition of his Glenfiddich work this fall in NYC. Landis will have work in Middlebury's August Art Walk at the Stone Leaf Teahouse and a solo exhibit in September at the Gallery at 85 North Street in Bristol, VT. Landis was awarded Glenfiddich's prestigious artist residency for 2009, and was to have spent the summer on the grounds of the distillery in Dufftown, Scotland. However, due to changing UK visa requirements for artists (for more info about that, go to http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/article6418997.ece) he was detained at Heathrow and denied entry to the UK. Family connections have brought him to the Middlebury area through August. Landis lives and works in Brooklyn, NY. His current work is a palimpsest of process, materials and experience. He regularly exhibits in the US and abroad. His work is represented in many private and public collections, including the New York Public Library, the Peabody Essex Museum, and the Provincetown Art Association and Museum.

For more information about the artist, visit Landis's website at www.mplandis.com. You can also contact Sarah English at seenglish@gmail.com or 917-755-8760.

PRESS RELEASE: "Purely Pastel" at Artisans' Gallery in Waitsfield

The Artisans' Gallery will host a juried exhibit by members of the Vermont Pastel Society throughout the month of August. The opening reception is Saturday August 8, 4-6PM at the gallery in Waitsfield. The Vermont Pastel Society is an inclusive society of over 100 pastel artists from Vermont and surrounding regions, including Canada.

Image: Rorschach Landscape by Lucy Petrie

PRESS RELEASE: “Pins and Needles” by Mary Admasian at The Lazy Pear Gallery

Contact: Robert Hitzig, 802-223-7680, rob@lazypear.com

The Lazy Pear Gallery

154 Main Street

Montpelier, VT 05602

The Lazy Pear Gallery is proud to present “Pins and Needles,” a solo show of mixed-media work by Vermont artist Mary Admasian, August 5 through September 20. With this new series Mary has created a completely unique series that evokes both the depth and complexity of emotion with simple, minimalist construction. The work is hard to categorize. It is two dimensional while being very textural and multi-layered. By combining white paint, molded cloth, pins, needles and thread, Mary is able to draw the viewer into an imperfect world where plans and intention cannot control the outcome, but where acceptance leads to understanding.

In her statement, Mary clearly states her intention, “Mending and pining the elements of time, space, abstract connection. All is internal, all is illusion, and all can be iconic. Life, love, and fear is veiled by the white folds of simplicity.” Having spent over two years contemplating the work, she has approached these pieces with a clear vision and deft execution. The result is art that leaves room for individual interpretation while providing guidance through the landscape of human emotion.

The Lazy Pear Gallery will host an artist reception on Friday, August 7, from 5 pm to 8 pm, to give the public an opportunity to meet Mary and discuss her work. In celebration of this new work, Peter Lind, the Primal Ice Cream Therapist at Ben and Jerry’s (who happens to be Mary’s husband) will be making a special ice cream flavor for the opening. The Lazy Pear Gallery is located at 154 Main Street, Montpelier, VT. It has off-street parking and is ADA accessible. Additional information about the gallery and Mary Admasian’s work can be found at www.lazypear.com or by calling (802) 223-7680.