"Color is my day-long obsession, joy and torment."
~ Claude Monet

Sunday, April 1, 2012

Brattleboro Museum and Art Center, Vermont

We have this wonderful local art treasure in Southern Vermont (just 20 miles or so from the western Massachusetts border. The Brattleboro Museum and Art Center is a small but very happenin' museum housed in an old railroad depot building, with a few of its antique features still intact inside of it.

In this new series of exhibits under the title Bridging Earth and Sky, chief curator Mara Williams describes the exhibition's genesis and inspiration coming from a 2009 National Geographic devoted to "Super Trees", including the photographic mapping of a giant redwood tree.

"Because they outlive us and tower above us; they are beings of beauty and contemplation. These exhibits reveal the influence trees continue to exert on visual artists."
- Mara Williams


Here are some photos (some exceptions) I took representative of the offerings in most of the six indoor exhibits within Bridging Earth and Sky.


Drawing on the Sky

Family Tree II
Jill Reynolds


Photo by Gina Duarte

Jill Reynolds's Family Tree II offers a sculptural alternative to the graphic mapping of traditional family trees. Instead of branches that name relatives and births and deaths. Instead the tree trunk is surrounded by a helix of Petri dishes, each with a portrait inside. In this work, the interrelatedness of family, community and culture is depicted, regardless of bloodline.

Photo by Gina Duarte

Raizes/Roots

"It is not so much for its beauty that the forest makes a claim upon men's hearts, as for that subtle something, that quality of air that emanates from old trees, that so wonderfully changes and renews a weary spirit."
Robert Louis Stevenson




Photo by Gina Duarte

Photo by Gina Duarte

Photo of original by Gina Duarte
Christine Triebert
Orchard Path
1998


Witness Trees
Dale Broholm and Louis Hutchins

"Witness tress" designated as such by the National Park Service, are venerable specimens on Park Service properties, trees that have "witnessed" key events and people in American history. 

Dale Broholm teaches furniture making at RISD and Louis Hutchins is a historian with the Park Service. Their unique collaboration included work with RISD's Department of History, Philosophy and Social Sciences to create a new course offering. The Park Service donated wood harvested from historic trees and new objects were created with it. 


Photo by Gina Duarte


Photo by Gina Duarte

Photo by Gina Duarte

Photo by Gina Duarte

Photo by Gina Duarte

Photo by Gina Duarte

Photo by Gina Duarte

Photo by Gina Duarte

Photo by Gina Duarte

Photo by Gina Duarte




The Golden Game

"The world of the fairy tale...has gripped me from the time I was very young, and seems a particularly good parallel to what I often explore in my painting. The images, figures and spaces...tend to be somewhere between two poles: 'things that seem to happen by chance' and the 'ultimate feeling that nothing happens by chance, that everything is fated,' to paraphrase Swiss folklorist Max Lüthi . Through color, collage, the interplay of deep and flattened space, pictorial devices associated with a figurative tradition, and more, I attempt to go into..moments between sense and non-sense."
 -Julia Zanes


Photo by Gina Duarte

Photo by Gina Duarte
 Detail




Photo by Gina Duarte




Photo by Gina Duarte

 Detail



Photo by Gina Duarte



Photo by Gina Duarte






6 comments:

Francis Hunt said...

"Once upon a time, long long ago, when we all lived in the forest and nobody lived anywhere else ..."

Thank you, Gina, some really lovely stuff here!

Claude said...

Your photos really conveyed very well the breathing beauty of this exhibition. Thank you.

I wrote once, about wood sculptures, "Some trees are born to be reborn..."

imac said...

Now, most of these are really really great and enjoyable, 1 or 2 are ok and enjoyable lol.

Unknown said...

I'm glad you came by and enjoyed the art, Francis and Claude! Thank you. :-)

Anonymous said...

Your photos are beautiful, almost like being there. You have a wonderful eye, very emotive!

Cruz'photographs are inspiring. I've recently become enthralled with trees and have been photographing them whenever the opportunity arises.

Thanks for this little escape.

Sean Jeating said...

I told you I am lazy.
Did I also tell I do enjoy visiting your museums?
Done herewith.

Thank you.