ESSAY: Recent Art Thefts in Vermont

This article by Alice Eckles about a recent rash of art thefts first appeared on her blog. We are reprinting it here, and want to draw your attention to a $100 reward for information leading to recovery of Kerry O. Furlani’s piece, Attachment. If you have information, please call David Clark at the Ilsley Library, 388-4095. You can see more of Kerry O. Furlani’s work on her website . -- Ed.

Detective Alice on the Case of the Stolen Art

By Alice Eckles

A sculpture was reported stolen from the Middlebury's Ilsley Public Library on February 29th, 2012. Alice knew the artist from the farmers market and she had been admiring the exhibit at the library, which she frequents a few times every week. The exhibit was Words to Stone, by stone carver Kerry O. Furlani. As a visual artist turned writer, Alice was very interested in this exhibit. The carved words seemed to find the stones, as if falling there in conversation, naturally finding forms that fit them.

Alice was there when Furlani came to take down her show on February 29. They soon became friends. Alice got into the elevator with Furlani to keep talking and to see if she could be any help unloading the stones, when David Clark, the director of the Ilsley Library, slipped into the elevator too. That's when Alice learned of the theft. David Clark asked Furlani how much the piece was priced at and she said $1,200. He offered to see if the loss could possibly go under the library's insurance, but that seemed doubtful. He was surprised that the piece was worth so much, and sorry that Furlani didn't have her own insurance. Alice continued talking to Furlani outside the library and began to feel that there was a story here that she wanted to tell, and told Furlani so.

Over the email Alice arranged an interview time for Sunday March 25. In the meantime thinking about the situation and what could be done Alice's thoughts went to a time when she lived in Burlington and her windshield was smashed. Broken windshield, Oh well yet another set back…then she thought it might be a good idea to report it to police, who knows maybe this was happening to others and the police should know about it. At the police station Alice saw a poster proclaiming that anyone who has had a windshield smashed should call this number for the Burlington Community Justice Center.

Through this program her windshield was replaced at no cost, and Alice realized that though she hadn't thought about it before: the vandalism did make her feel bad about the community. She was new in town and the smashed windshield was further alienating. Then the fact that someone, a community organization, did something to help her lifted the bad impression the vandalism had made and was an act of healing for Alice in the community. She was very impressed by the subtle power of the good deed done for her, and now she wanted to pass on that healing.

Now the trust of her Middlebury community was hurt by a theft of an artist's work at the Ilsley Public library. When an artist shows work in public, especially at a library, it is a public service. The artist most often does not walk away with profits from such events, and sometimes there is a loss.

While there is no Community Justice Center in Middlebury there is Addison County Court Diversion and Community Justice Projects. Alice hopes to start volunteer work there soon. The program is different than the Burlington one as it focuses more on the offenders who are sent there by a judge. Nonetheless the program seems positive. The volunteers meet with offenders to talk about what happened and see if they can develop a contract that will allow the one who has broken the law to make up for what has happened.

The Ilsley Library has put up a reward for the return of Furlani's piece, Attachment (at right), a bas-relief on slate measuring 17" ½" X 11"1/2" X ½". Alice is planning a benefit to raise money to help compensate artists who have had artwork stolen; there have been several other art thefts shortly after this one. On March 17 two paintings disappeared from the Chaffee Art Center, then late Friday afternoon, March 23, a sculpture was discovered missing. On March 28 these were returned by the person who stole them with a note of apology. Artisan's Gallery was hit twice with art thefts on March 3 and again sometime between March 12 and 15. These pieces including stained glass by Elga Gemst, felted pieces by Neysa Russo and glass sculptures by Melonie Leppla have not been returned.

What follows is an interview of Alice's conversation with Furlani. They talked for about five hours laughing like the guys from Car Talk the whole time; this is what happens when artists commiserate.

Alice Eckles: What so you think of the irony of a piece titled Attachment going missing? Do you muse on the possible meanings of that? We talked about your Buddhist philosophy outside the library that day, and the whole thing of letting go of your losses.

Kerry Furlani: hmm…that's a big one, that's so big. In regards to that particular piece it was the only piece in the Words to Stone exhibit that didn't have any lettering in it. It's an older piece that has been very popular. I put it in as eye candy. People seem to like it so much I made an edition of them. They are all a little different of course because I carve each one, but they are all based on the same drawing. So in that sense I was ready to let go, I was less attached to that piece. You take a risk when you put your art out there and I had decided to take that risk. I want to have my art out in the community.

AE: What does the loss of this sculpture mean to you in terms of the business of art?

KF: Well as I said it was a popular piece and I could have sold it for $1,200, so that's a loss. It took me three days of work to carve it.

AE: …and to get to the point where you can carve a piece like that, I know is also an investment…

KF: Yes, the tools aren't cheap, the chisels and the mallets all cost money, studio rent, the relationships you build up over time with the quarries where you can get the stone, and then there's the years of training, some of it self taught. In Dublin, I spent two years experimenting on my own with primarily wax forms and after moved to England to attend The Frink School of Figurative Sculpture. It was a small school focused on capturing the "spirit of the human figure." The school emphasized "hands on" techniques of sculpture (clay modeling, plaster carving and mold making, stone carving, welding) as well as rigorous training in life drawing and clay portraiture. There was also some critique and feedback from visiting and practicing professional sculptors. Of all the materials I experimented with, it was stone carving that captured my attention most. I love working with clay and the techniques of modeling -- but the process of carving seemed so well suited to my temperament. I love music and rhythm and carving with chisels and mallets is a very beautiful rhythmic act. I love the quality in stone carving of having material in front of you as a starting point. Stone has a kind of embodied spirit about is very attractive to me. I have a special fondness for carving fragments of stones versus perfect cubes. I love responding to the character in fragments and enjoy how they ignite my imagination.

AE: Has anything like this ever happened to you before and is there anything you would do differently in the future to prevent thefts?

KF: Well I looked into insurance just before this exhibit, it costs $600, I don't know. I have had tools stolen at craft fairs. It's hard when it is just you in your booth trying to talk to people, giving a demo and trying to keep an eye on everything. Once I caught someone as they were making off with a bag of my tools, I ran after him and when I caught him just stuck out my hand for the tools, which he handed back. So I've learned that you have to keep a very close eye on things even while trying to talk to people, be pleasant, and represent your art. This won't stop me though, there is a risk you take with placing your art in public. I will keep putting my work out there.

AE: Why did you choose the library for your exhibit? Some galleries, I checked with Edgewater in Middlebury for instance, would have had you covered, unlike the library, and libraries are changing. There is not always a librarian available and watching all that goes on. Fletcher Free Library does not allow small sculptures except under lock and key, because of past thefts.

KF: More and more I notice galleries are asking the artist to be responsible for this, and I wanted to reach everyone in the community not just art lovers and gallery goers. Since my subject was words and letters as images and objects themselves it seemed appropriate for a library, a place where culture and community can come together.

AE: I see from your Works in Stone artist statement that the Vermont Arts Council helped fund your travel to Wales. Showing at a library probably helps fulfill their guidelines for funded art creation to benefit as many people as possible.

KF: Well that's true too.

AE: How can the community come together to mitigate this loss, to show support for artists generally and also specifically artists like you who are victims of a crime?

KF: Well that's what this is, meeting you becoming friends, something good coming out of the bad. I fantasized that the community would come together in some way to help, and if you want to do a benefit I'll show up and do whatever. You mentioned the idea of a sort of green drinks for artists, a monthly gathering for artists to network and problem solve together, and that might be a good idea.

At first Alice thought the theft of Furlani's work was a single unlikely rare event, then after the other art thefts were reported in the Rutland Herald of items stolen from The Chaffee Art Center in Rutland and the Artisan's Gallery in Waitsfield, it started to seem like a rash of thefts.

Both galleries offered some compensation to artists for the stolen work not because it was necessarily covered by insurance but because it seemed like the right thing to do. Some artists refused money though feeling like it was their responsibility.

March 22 in the Addison Independent a headline reads: Antique thefts traced to Ferrisburgh. Art and antiques are often sold together. If not connected even the fact that an art theft happens more than in a blue moon here in Vermont is news to be alert to.

Art is so personal that as artists we just tend to say, "oh well" when something gets stolen. Lori Klien a partner at Artisan's Gallery, and also a jewelry artist with work in the gallery didn't report one of her own pieces missing. Perhaps stolen art should be treated more like other stolen property, sending out emails with pictures of the stolen art to dealers and registering stolen art online, sites like artloss.com or stolenart.com might be a good idea. In Vermont we like to just trust people but it may be wise to take a few precautions, security cameras, more people in the shop watching, bag checks - all these are things to think about, as well as what we can do in the community to help victims of crime and to heal our trust in community through talking, good deeds, and friendship.

Anyone interested in being a part of the benefit at the Ilsley Library, May 11, to raise money for Furlani's stolen art, or in developing a regular gathering of artists in every discipline to problem solve and support each other in healing and activating their community and the larger community, may contact Alice at aeckles@hotmail.com. Thank you.

Update: Police report from The Addison Independent, April 5, states: "Investigated the reported theft of two paintings from Edgewater Gallery on Mill Street on March 20. Store officials said the stolen paintings included a still-life and a landscape at a combined total of $650. Gallery officials suspect the paintings were lifted from the gallery and there were no signs of a break-in."

Images: Never Cut What You Can Untie
Attachment, by Kerry O. Furlani a bas-relief on slate measuring 17” ½” X 11”1/2” X ½” Stolen form the Ilsley Library. $100 reward for information leading to recovery of this artwork. Call David Clark, Ilsley Library, 388-4095.

ESSAY: "Anarchist Art"; Susan Calza at Johnson State College

by Leila Bandar

In 1917, almost 100 years ago, a breakthrough in sculpture occurred; The Russian Revolution gave rise to a group of open-minded, passionate, and socially-aware artists known as the "Russian Constructivists". Prior to 1917 Tsars in Russia (and political elite in other countries, too) commissioned sculptors to create pieces representing political ideals and wartime achievements. Sculpture was often limited to men on horseback, depictions of military stories, and war memorials – or -- depictions of mythology and portraits of the wealthy. After the Russian Revolution, Constructivists as they were defined by Pevsner and Gabo would have a large impact on what we view as sculpture today - not just in Russia.

Using everyday materials - like plywood, cardboard, and plastic - Constructivists' artwork often exhibits an elegant, orderly look. One of piece which comes to mind from 20^th C. Art History is by Alexander Rodchenko oval hanging construction #12 located in the Museum of Modern Art. Although the plywood is flat, the creativity of the sculptor transforms it to a mobile that seems to reference something grand as the Universe. A building material is transformed to make something sublime – a profound statement. It is also a political statement for social change: non-precious materials can allow proletariat hands to access the beauty, joy, and lifein everyday things.

Calza's work is about materials. It is about finding a material, something lost-then-found, learning about the material, and combining the material with other elements to make the piece reflect a memory and produce a feeling. Her drawings give voice to awkward, vulnerable, and uncomfortable emotions. Rather than feed into sculptural stereotypes of the last 100 years, hers quietly rejects authority, power, and control. In this way, Much acquainted...missing is a non-authoritarian body of work. It is everything opposite of coercive control and authority. It is a show that gives power to the non-dominant in the most literal way: she uses her non-dominant hand for all of her drawings. To me, it could be called "Anarchist Art". Instead of speaking of things that are in control and have the ability to control others, Calza calls on wobbly authenticity. Her left hand is allowed to feel, touch, experience what the right hand is generally in charge of! Her non-dominant hand cannot hide behind confidence, knowing, and exactitude. Instead, it is allowed to reveal its own squirm – lack of strength becomes a strength through repetition.

When Calza gives voice to the "non-dominant" she gives voice to the parts of all of us which are humble enough to acknowledge powerlessness rather than assert control. Rather than authority she presents authenticity. Humility allows her to accept ALL of her emotions - from the golden-bird-truth-seeker to hungry-ghost-mouths. Her work is more in-line with Louise Bourgeois, Eva Hesse, Louise Nevelson and Kiki Smith - female heroines who share a sense for wholeness, softness, and bold risk-taking. In Calza’s own words: “For my money…the real revolution in sculpture was Eva Hesse....”. Other artists on Calza’s short list of influences are Richard Tuttle and Ree Morton. Nothing in Much acquainted… missing points to the male peers of her generation who produced monumental steel pieces, such as the work of Mark di Suvero or Richard Serra.

"Anarchist Art" is a term I would like to see used when an artist is does not seek control or express authority. I would like to see it used when a person explores a personal truth with genuineness and audaciousness; when an artist seeks to directly communicate raw, gut feelings; rather than "edit-out". Calza seems to "edit-in" which means: owning-up.

Part of “owning up” is acknowledging Calza's one mis-truth. She claims this body of work is about travel, but what we find are hundreds of deeply personal versions of self-portraiture. What about travel? What we find is not ABOUT travel but HOW to travel. Ultimately, it shows that to travel-with-oneself unmasked yet unafraid is what it means to be a good companion! And to be a good companion to others, one must be a good companion to oneself.

The grouchy, quarrelsome, and fussy inner-voices telling us "the weather isn't great", or "breakfast wasn't tasty enough", or "the plane ride is too long and bumpy" - all get a chance to speak - and by acknowledging those voices (calling them out) they become tame. Much Aquainted...missing has much to offer. And the best lessons are how to fully accept oneself, not to control others, to face the squirms of weaker parts of ourselves, and the demons too – they are ALL along for the ride.

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Susan Calza’s Much Aquainted… missing at Johnson State College will be on exhibit through March 30, 2012.

ESSAY: A paintbrush is a tool. A computer is a tool.

We are delighted to publish this essay by Kim Darling, an artist and art teacher at St. Johnsbury Academy, whose work you can see on her website, This essay deals with the sometimes controversial question of whether computer-generated or -enhanced work is “art,” and brings to us the important perspective and experience of a teacher working with the upcoming generation of visual artists. - Ed.

By Kim Darling

Years ago, when I had recently finished my study of painting at the Art Students League of New York and was working hard in my studio to further develop my skills and voice, I had a conversation with my father that has stuck with me through the years. My father is a physicist who worked for the navy, programming and using computers from the time that they were gargantuan machines, filling large rooms. Those computers were programmed using punched cards of heavy paper, and my first drawings were made on discarded punch cards. I wish I still had some of those drawings. They would be interesting artifacts of the early days of the technology that I use today.

The conversation - or rather, argument - that my father and I engaged in had to do with painting and computers. He said that someday computers would be able to paint. I said that no, they wouldn't - painting is a uniquely HUMAN activity - and while a computer might be able to be programmed to make certain kinds of marks and designs, it could never PAINT in the full sense of the word. It was a heated argument, and remained unresolved. I stuck to my side and he stuck to his. Now, as my own artwork and my work with students becomes increasingly involved with technology, the memory of this argument is never far beneath the surface of my thinking. The fact that, despite my own use of new media, I have never changed my position, informs my work with students every day.

Art-making is a human endeavor, whether using a piece of charcoal, a brush and paint; clay; a camera and darkroom; or computer hardware and software. It is in the interface between human intention, tools and materials that ideas are manipulated, and it is the artifacts of that process that are shared as "art". With some tools, such as a brush, the interface between human brain, hand and artifact is fairly direct, seemingly simple to understand - and innately human. We humans have been making marks with intended meaning for a long time. With complex technologies, the tool itself sometimes influences the form of the artifact to such an extent that its very hard to know how much of the work can be attributed to a specific artist's ideas, and how much of what we are seeing is that which a program was designed by someone else - or by numerous other people - to do. When I first began employing complex programs, like Photoshop, in my work, I would see all those names of the developers of the program come up when the program was opening, and I felt like they were all unknowing collaborators in my work. I've stopped noticing that - this complex arrangement of digital switches has become like a piece of charcoal to me in some sense - and I'm not sure what that means.

If simple mark-making with a stick is innately human, and effectively communicating with more complex technologies involves a complicated learning process, it makes sense to think of the simple media as being in some sense foundational to the more complex media. In my experience with students, it is in the simple encounters between idea and writing stick and paper that important compositional elements and ideas are most effectively explored, and the language of visual communication is worked out. As more complex technologies are employed as a means of expression, these basic elements of composition and expression are adapted and used, so I consider the idea that drawing is a foundation for other forms of visual communication to be valid. However, we can look at the idea of "foundation" in more than one way. Are traditional, hand-driven forms of art-making foundational in the sense that they should come first in the unfolding of an educational progression, and then they will lose their usefulness as a student becomes adept at more complex art-making forms? Or, do they function more the way the foundation of a building functions, or the way that learning to walk is foundational to the understanding of one's place, and knowledge of, the physical world? We don't discard the foundation once the house is built, or stop walking once we become oriented in the world.

The changing admission-portfolio requirements of post-secondary schools over the past ten-or-so years reflect an evolving understanding of the relationship between traditional art media and "new" media. Ten years ago drawings and paintings included in portfolios might be made from observation of life - but work that was copied from a photograph or traced and filled in was just as acceptable to schools, as was an image produced entirely from the imagination. A variety of media - sculpture, collage, pottery, and photography - was acceptable and encouraged, for showing a student's diversity of experience. A few years ago most schools began to require the bulk of a portfolio to be drawings made from direct observation, which seemed to be evidence of a growing understanding of the importance of drawing as a foundation for other visual work, as well as a response to the large number of works schools were receiving that had a technology-derived finished quality to them, making it difficult for evaluators to understand how much of the production of the work was due to the student's own efforts and abilities, and how much was due to technology. Over the past few years, schools have required evidence of highly developed visual problem-solving skills through drawing, and they have discouraged technology-created artwork - even for entry into computer-design related programs. However, from talking to students in these schools, it became obvious that, after entry into the programs, very little emphasis was placed on drawing itself. The attitude seemed to be: you've got that as a foundation, now we'll teach you the real, important stuff.

This year I've noticed a shift in post-secondary education toward an increased focus on work made with the hand, while, at the same time, art and design programs are asking for either a student's "best work", regardless of the medium, in application portfolios, or a combination of drawing from observation and digital work - as well as work in other hand mediums. Artisan programs and craft schools are proliferating, MFA programs in drawing have appeared, and the ideal students entering a computer graphics or game design course of study will both be able to draw, and have computer design skills. Schools are expecting more from their applicants than they used to - and I think that this is because, as animation and game design has become such a huge part of visual culture, the need for strong drawing skills has entered the public consciousness. With animation software so available, to retain a relevant position within the culture, visual art schools need to keep the quality of what they are turning out a step or two above what anybody with a computer and a little knowledge of drawing can do. They are asking for evidence of a high level of combined skill in application portfolios. They ask for these things because they can, they know that students with these skills are out there, and they need to keep ahead of the game.

Here is the way I see these changing cultural positions in relationship to art and technology playing out in my high school students. When planning individual projects and exhibitions, students increasingly want to use sophisticated technologies - particularly video and digital photography. I encourage this, but almost always find that the students know less than they think they know about creating quality work with digital media. Programs like iMovie that are designed for ease of use with minimal involvement with learning about the how and why of the way they work lead students into a false sense of proficiency. They can make a video that their friends think is great and, with a keystroke, upload it to YouTube, but they know almost nothing about video production and editing. They commit themselves to complex projects, then they realize the unbelievable amount of work that is ahead of them. They lose hard-earned video clips because they don't understand what exporting a file is - and they have little sense of how to adequately save and back up their work. They crash their computers because they have no conception of the size files that they are working with - and that in the process of editing they are duplicating those huge files over and over again.

A couple of years ago I was questioning the value of teaching complex technologies within a high school art program. Our place seemed to be more in developing solid foundation skills - and particularly, drawing skills - that would place our students in a strong position for continued work in whatever medium they chose, as well as keep them competitive in the college admissions process. I think that our job has recently become harder. While solid traditional art-making skills are more important than ever, so is a working knowledge of technology. And as popular image manipulation and video editing software increasingly provide easy templates for maneuvers that simulate professional work, we need to be sure that students are gaining a basic understanding of file handling and sharing, and we need to provide real professional software to students to learn and to use, so they aren't confined to the moves that are built into popular software programs.

Again -

A paintbrush is a tool, and so is a computer.

Images:
Mannequins withTV heads, by Yemaya Briggs-Guzman
Projected video, which included a video including interviews with the St. Johnsbury Academy kitchen staff, by Hanley Chu

ESSAY: Studies in Comparison and Contrast at Exhibits Statewide

by Janet Van Fleet

In my work as co-editor of Vermont Art Zine, I get the broad view of what’s happening in exhibitions around the state, and I’ve recently noticed an interesting series of conceptual conversations going on.

For example, at the Bryan Memorial Gallery (see the Press Release below this essay) they’re doing a show called Family Ties, where each exhibitor is related to at least one other exhibitor by either marriage or blood.

Over at Helen Day Art Center in Stowe, two concurrent exhibits (September 23 - October 23, 2011) look at maleness – Manhood: Masculinity, Male Identity and Culture – and femaleness – Wylie Garcia: The Tulle Did Her In. Here’s some of the text from HDAC’s website:

The Male:
This exhibit addresses the lifelong process of choosing how to live, behave, define oneself, interact, and to simultaneously reconcile these choices and actions with our self image and with the expectations of our culture through the lens of male gender. Who are the artists making work about male identity and what does their work have to say about contemporary culture and reality?

The Female
Garcia works in many media, most recently creating wearable art in a project titled “The Dress that Makes the Woman”, a year-long creative and performance piece in which she creates and wears one dress per month, steadily embellishing and modifying it during that time. The product, and the way that she inhabits these dresses accesses her personal family history, a childhood in Houston -complete with debutant balls-, and materials drawn from her personal history and coming of age. Each dress is assembled over time from a garment that figures prominently in Garcia’s past. Her additions relate directly to her daily life and her past, and are often made from materials given to her by her friends and family [emphasis mine] - an extensive group of collaborators.

The T.W. Wood Gallery and Art Center in Montpelier is focusing on women’s art in their exhibit Women’s Work: The Visual Art of Vermont’s Women, up through September 25.

So what’s going on here? Maybe in this war-torn, building-bombed, politically-divisive world there’s a need to assert connection, to affirm commonality even in the face of difference, in the hope that some of the disparate crumbs can be brushed together to make a meal, something like sustenance.

Images: Andrew Mowbray, Parachute, 2009
Wylie Sofia Garcia, Chameleon, mixed textiles (Photo: Rick Levison)

ESSAY: Art Reception at NRG Systems in Hinesburg

by Marc Awodey

We often hear about the importance of art/business relationships, but it’s usually in the context of a non-profit's fundraising efforts. We hear it less often from the business side. So when a robust program of art acquisition by a large company is implemented it’s surely a cause for celebration.

At the Hinesburg home office of NRG Systems, a global leader in wind power technology, CEO Jan Blittersdorf and consultant Sarah-Lee Terrat of YeloDog Design, have been walking the walk - not just talking the talk - since 2004, when NRG’s headquarters was being built. On Sunday July 31 there was a well-attended reception and open house for the 60 artists whose work has been purchased by NRG. Collectors, business professionals, and media were also invited.

The NRG collection includes over 100 pieces, and it’s superb. Blittersdorf and Terrat traveled around Vermont to galleries and shows in search of art. Among the highlights of the collection are lively paintings by folk artist Larry Bissonette and other artists of the G.R.A.C.E. project, and many of Vermont’s best known artists from Warren Kimball to Sabra Field appear, as well as constructions and sculpture by Janet Van Fleet, Delia Robinson, Barr Jozwicki and others. Terrat produced floor murals, tile pieces, and along with Carolyn Shapiro and Anne Lika an exuberant hallway called the Migratory Bird Installation. The NRG collection includes top notch textiles and photography as well.

One of Blittersdorf’s goals has been to “inspire other Vermont business leaders to consider how they too could enhance the beauty of their workspaces.” She also said in a recent press release: “We spend so much of our lives at work that I wanted to make our facilities a comfortable and attractive place for our employees to work… The art has really enhanced our space and helped make it uniquely our own.”

One of the really refreshing things about NRG’s collection is that the CEO was directly involved in amassing the works. Terrat accompanied Blittersdorf in hunting for art, but Blittersdorf developed the confidence to make her own decisions rather than solely relying on the consultant, or an outside curatorial service. Her commitment to creating a playful and uplifting work environment is what really gives the collection a coordinated yet eclectic identity. That sort of discernment is good for business, and certainly good for the visual arts community.

Images: One of the many Floor Tiles (chiclets) inset in hallway floors, created by Sarah-Lee Terrat and Carolyn Shapiro Wall installation by Janet Van Fleet Migratory Bird Installation by Sarah-Lee Terrat, Carolyn Shapiro, and Anne Lika Cow by Cathy McCarthy, Fiber wallhanging by Shirley O'Reilly

ESSAY: Celebrating Alfred J. Comi, Vermont Artist & Memorial Designer

by Steve Restelli

Vermont has been a haven for artists for quite some time now. Many came to Vermont as sculptors, others to paint, draw and illustrate. But there are two standouts who are among the most popular artists in America.

We know very well the works of Norman Rockwell who resided in Arlington, Vermont. The other artist who painted Vermont scenery is Maxfield Parrish. Of Parrish, Mr. Rockwell said, "Maxfield Parrish was certainly one of our most prominent illustrators and hardly a home in America existed that didn’t have a Maxfield Parrish print. I am an illustrator. Maxfield Parrish was a painter-illustrator. He was in the Golden Age of Illustration. When I was in art school I admired him. He was one of my gods."

Maxfield Parrish lived just over the border in Cornish, New Hampshire, where he often painted scenery of both Vermont and New Hampshire. He annually entered many of his best landscape paintings at the Cracker Barrel Art Show in Newbury, Vermont, usually taking first place.

In 1957 Parrish entered two of his finest paintings, White Oak and Sheltering Oaks (seen at left) at the Newbury show. White Oak scored the higher of the two, but had to settle for second place to another painting titled Grandmere.

Grandmere (below right) had been completed only weeks before the show by a new exhibitor named Al Comi of Barre, Vermont.

Alfred Joseph Peter Comi (9/28/1900--5/23/1986) was, born in Barre, Vermont. He graduated from Montpelier High School in 1919, and went to work for Jones Brothers Granite Company in Boston, Massachusetts. While in Boston he furthered his artistic studies by taking life drawing courses at the Copley Studios. He returned to Vermont in the early 1920's and became employed by the Vermont Marble Company in Proctor as a designer. By 1925 he returned to his home town of Barre and became the chief designer for the Marr and Gordon Granite Company.

In 1927 he opened his own design studio at 107 N. Main Street in Barre Vermont, which he operated for several decades. He was very highly regarded and sought after in the granite industry. In fact, Anderson-Friberg's owner, Melvin Friberg noted "the unanimous respect of the manufacturers and dealers for Comi's designs, saying he is tops among professional designers and an elder statesman in the industry". He further stated "that outstanding orders were still received requesting his expertise and artistry...." long after Mr. Comi had retired.

Al Comi learned to paint with oils at the age of 54, studying under Stan Marc Wright, of Stowe, Vermont in 1954. He mastered painting in this medium very, very quickly. By 1957 he and other local artists started an art exhibit at the Park on Main St. which attracted several thousand people. It was this show where he first exhibited his recently completed painting Grandmere. Grandmere was highly acclaimed and took the top honors in Barre and also in Newbury, Vermont. The painting now belongs to the Aldrich Library in Barre and is proudly displayed in the periodical room on the main floor.

In August of 1961 Al Comi took the blue ribbon yet again among the 110 entries at the State Fair at the Champlain Valley Exposition. His entry was Broken Window a painting that shows a barn with a broken window featuring a blaze red blanket which has been hastily stuffed within the jagged panes of broken glass to keep out the weather. Construction materials, a wheel barrow, and a ladder await someone to do the necessary repairs.

Not many people know the name of Al Comi beyond Barre, VT, but they should. The Aldrich Library in Barre did a show featuring Al Comi's art which ran for 6 weeks in 2006. I think it is time for another show to display his remarkable talent.

Images: Sheltering Oaks, Maxfield Parrish, oil on board, 23 x 18½ in, 1956, from Christie’s website. Grandmere, Al Comi, on exhibit at Aldrich Library in Barre

ESSAY: On Bradley Fox's Paintings, Part 2

On Bradley Fox’s paintings:
Part II: RETURN TO LANDSCAPES

By Sam Thurston

I met Bradley a little at a time because he was in the area. He came to a show I had in Newport in 2006. He worked at the Painted Caravan Gallery in Johnson, where he showed my work, which connected him to me as it connected him to a lot of others. I would stop by and talk – there was a nice sunny studio room attached to the gallery. Perhaps that is one reason he stopped doing still lives, when he no longer had a good studio, since that gallery folded after two years. Then he worked at Ebenezer's Bookshop in Johnson where he continued to show art. He also organized painting shows for artists at the Winding Brook Bistro and other places. He was always finding places for people to show. He was very social. I was not his best friend but after he died I felt I owed him something and also I wanted the discipline of writing to see his art more clearly. -- Sam Thurston

40 x 30"

Although I might be making mistakes because I do not have all the paintings to review and the paintings do not all have dates, it seems that around 2007 Bradley stopped doing his story pictures, including the still lives, and returned to landscapes. He took the subjective understanding he had acquired from his story pictures and his more developed color sense and used it on the Vermont landscape. He did a series of large paintings of Johnson - his town - which seems to indicate an integration, that he is no longer the outsider, except that none of the paintings contain people.

12 x 12", Barnyard, 2008

Every week during good weather he would send out an e mail informing the members of the painters group he organized, the East Johnson Plein Air Club, of directions to where and when the Sunday site would be.

Much like Pissarro he enjoyed working alongside other painters and seemed to be (selectively of course) chronicling his environment.

13 x 13", Carley’s Pond, 2009

The Vermont landscape is difficult subject matter because our landscape is as pretty as a calendar and artists produce quite stereotyped works as a result. This painting feels like a release, there is nothing cribbed about it.

4 1/2 x 12", Mini Doublewide, 2009

Bradley did find a corner of Vermont that many others ignore as seen in this trailer on a hill -- the abode of the ordinary, the hardscrabble in a unmanicured field.

13 x 13", Hogback Road Barn, 2009

Here is Bradley’s statement from a press release:

My paintings are telling stories, Stories about people I have met, wanted to meet, places they have left their mark, and sometimes about people we all want to avoid. The Tales are about relationships with each other, with their environments, with people from our pasts, with our culture, and with relationships we hope to have. In telling the tales of others and their surroundings, I explore and tell the story of myself. I create the narrative in my paintings with objects that people leave laying around in their lives. Toys, books, kitsch, trash in the environment, familiar places, and the general baggage of life are all subjects for these stories. Each object or place I choose to depict has a sense of history and time that helps define the person that owns it. It is the relationship that is revealed by the objects’ interactions that I explore in my narratives and paintings.

A NOTE FROM SAM THURSTON: If anyone sees mistakes in this article please tell me by emailing me at mkramer@sover.net. If anyone could take photos of paintings they have of Bradley’s, that would be appreciated. Photos of paintings are usually best done with even natural light, no flash, just try to make the image square. Messy backgrounds are ok because the photo can be cropped. send photos to raloon.bialek@gmail.com (because I have dial up).

NOTE: Works by Bradley Fox are still on view in Johnson at the Vermont Studio Center's Gallery II (across the street from the Red Mill Gallery), through the end of November. There are also some of Fox's pieces indefinitely at Ebeneezer's Bookshop on Main Street. -- Ed.

ESSAY: On Bradley Fox's Paintings, Part 1

On Bradley Fox’s paintings:
Part I: ACADEMIC OR SELF-REVEALING, WHICH DO YOU WISH?

By Sam Thurston

I met Bradley a little at a time because he was in the area. He came to a show I had in Newport in 2006. He worked at the Painted Caravan Gallery in Johnson, where he showed my work, which connected him to me as it connected him to a lot of others. I would stop by and talk – there was a nice sunny studio room attached to the gallery. Perhaps that is one reason he stopped doing still lives, when he no longer had a good studio, since that gallery folded after two years. Then he worked at Ebenezer's Bookshop in Johnson where he continued to show art. He also organized painting shows for artists at the Winding Brook Bistro and other places. He was always finding places for people to show. He was very social. I was not his best friend but after he died I felt I owed him something and also I wanted the discipline of writing to see his art more clearly. -- Sam Thurston

Part I: STORIES AND STILL LIVES

The instant someone dies your perspective on that person changes and with me the instant Bradley died my perspective on his painting also changed and I wanted to understand his paintings better and so compiled the following.

Bradly Fox was born in 1959 in Newport, Vermont and died in 2010 in Johnson. After High School in Newport he lived in Boston and the Boston area for 9 years (attending art school during this time), New Orleans for 6 years and New York City for 8 years. He took residencies at the Vermont Studio Center starting in 2003. He moved to Vermont in 2005 to tend to his ill father. His father, who had been a foreman of the shipping department of Butterfield Tool and Die, died in December 2006. From 2007 on Bradley lived in Johnson.

12 x 16", Sunday in the Park, 2002

The few paintings I have identified known to be before 2000 are landscapes from life. This collage dated 2002, Sunday in the Park, may mark a new direction for him, away from the straight landscape. Although it is still a landscape, it is also his subjective world, one you can walk into.

16 x 69"

This undated and untitled painting was probably done while he was still in NYC. He rejects the idea of painting as something abstract or academic, something that would not be a world you walk through. Newport is a conservative town and you suspect Bradley had trouble coming of age there in the 70’s.

24 x 24" Planning a Vacation, 2005

“My paintings are telling stories,” he wrote. Many of his paintings of this period show a “playful, childlike humor juxtaposed over something darker and more sinister” as a long time friend put it.

25 x 54", no date, untitled

In ‘telling his stories’ we are shown his childhood regressions - his trolls and such - and these can be off-putting, but he is attempting what is so difficult for artists - to paint the world they really live in, not the seen-before stereotype, the gray watered down classical ideal or the handed-down abstract formula.

24 x 72"

In this undated, untitled still life (but most likely done when he had a nice studio to work in while he helped run The Painted Caravan gallery in 2006 and 2007) he changes from saturated color to using tones. He went right back to his strong, expressive color, though. His color with its near discordant harmonies is important to his expression. One might liken it to the music of Stravinsky or Alban Berg.

Part 2 of Sam Thurston's essay, covering Fox's landscape painting, will be posted in the next few days.

NOTE: Works by Bradley Fox are still on view in Johnson at the Vermont Studio Center's Gallery II (across the street from the Red Mill Gallery), through the end of November. There are also some of Fox's pieces indefinitely at Ebeneezer's Bookshop on Main Street. -- Ed.

ESSAY: Some Thoughts on Pastel Painting

By Theodore Hoppe

I am the first to admit I know far too little about pastels. I always viewed pastel as a difficult medium to work in, perhaps without cause, since pastels are one of the most versatile media in the artworld.

Pastels are made of pure pigment that is ground into a paste with a small amount of a gum binder. It is the most permanent of all media when applied and properly framed, since there is no oil to cause darkening or cracking. Many sing the praises of pastels because of their directness, brilliance, and their ability to capture delicate lighting and nuances of color.

Pastels have been around for centuries. Their invention is attributed to the German artist, Johaim Thiele. Reserved mostly for portraits until the 1800's, they were discovered by the Impressionists, such as Vuillard, Manet, Bonnard, Renoir, and most notably Edgar Degas -- who championed them. Degas' protégée, Mary Cassatt, is credited with bringing them over to America.

My recent admiration for pastel paintings (which is the accepted terminology for this type of work) is due in large part to Mallory Rich, a Southern Vermont artist whose work was recently featured at the Skinny Pancake in Montpelier. Mallory Rich studied pastels and oils with artists such as Albert Handell and Gil Perry. Over the years she has had residencies at Great Spruce Head Island (the home of Fairfield Porter in Maine) and she has been in residence four times at the Vermont Studio Center in Johnson, Vermont.

The pastels in her recent exhibit in Montpelier focused on Vermont landscapes. There were scenes for every season in a representational style. Two Trees by the Marsh is a scene of strong summer lighting and shadow on the bows of two leaning trees against a field of tall
dried grass. Storm Coming is a beautiful perceptive rendering of the land and the sky, and dark clouds that act as the agent of change. The River in Winter was the largest work, and perhaps the most pleasing. It captures a meandering stream winding along the roadside, with the reflection of the orange light of a late day sun slipping over the neighboring hills. The scene evokes a strong sense of the Vermont landscape in winter.

"Pastels are where I started about 10 years ago. I've only been working in oils about 2 years, so it's too soon to know which will become my favorite. I am trying to transfer the mood, atmosphere, spirit of a particular place (of being in the moment) to the viewer, and pastels seem to carry mood and emotion within the medium, somehow. Or perhaps it's the fact that with the many layers of pastel you can apply, you can more easily convey that spirit through the depth and layers of color. A very light swipe of a particular stick of Diane Townsend's hand-rolled pastels, for example, can convey that momentary kiss of sunlight on a distant field."

Hay in the Barn looks to some viewers as if it's drawn wrong," says the artist. "I was visiting a farm that had been in the same family for more than 100 years -- a working, active farm. The original barn was still serving well, as a storage place for this year's crop of hay. The window I was seeing had obviously been replaced, but so many years ago that now it was loose, but in an entirely different way from the sagging original window frame. The whole scene said time and hard work and usefulness to me." There are other such earnest scenes observed by the artist; Farm Shed shows a well-used farm tractor parked beside some outer-building, a familiar image that harbors a bit of a nostalgic feel.

Mallory Rich has been honored for her artistic efforts by being included in many juried shows in Southern Vermont and elsewhere, She has participated in the National Fall Exhibit at the Southern Vermont Arts Center (SVAC) in Manchester, Vermont, as well the Vermont Pastel Society Invitational at SVAC. Let's all hope she returns to exhibit in the Central Vermont area again soon.

You can find her work on line at: http://www.malloryrich.com/

Images, top to bottom:
The River in Winter, 24 x 30", pastel on paper
Farm Shed
Hay in the Barn, 24 x 30", pastel on paper

ESSAY: My Art Group

By Riki Moss

This is my art group.

We've been meeting more or less monthly in each others studios for over a year.

This month, at Janet Fredericks, in front of Nancy Taplin's paintings: (left to right) Cami Davis, Sally Linder, Riki Moss, Linda E Jones, Nancy Taplin, Janet Fredericks (seated, center.) Missing: Jane Pincus and Tari Swenson. And last month, at Jane Pincus' studio.

Before starting our critique, we all declared that we wanted more, we wanted to go deeper, we wanted to be braver, less cautious and at the same time, helpful, useful, impersonal and positive. For it's all about the work, not the person, right?

Right. We've been making art all our lives, we know this and still...still...we felt we weren't going deeply enough.

The presenter had to take responsibility for wanting an honest critique, to formulate questions she was trying to answer for herself, to open her work up for discussion without personal vulnerability. The responders needed to dialogue freely and thoughtfully, without bias, personal agenda and with the best of intentions: to help a compatriot welcome the art god gracing her shoulders today.

Cami Davis suggested that we consider using the four steps in Liz Lerman's Critical Process.

So we did.

Here it is:

1. Statements of Meaning: Responders state what was meaningful, evocative, interesting, exciting, striking in the work they have just witnessed.

2. Artist as Questioner: The artist asks questions about the work. After each question, the responders answer. Responders may express opinions if they are in direct response to the question asked and do not contain suggestions for changes.

3. Neutral Questions: Responders ask neutral questions about the work. The artist responds. Questions are neutral when they do not have an opinion couched in them. For example, if you are discussing the colors in a section of a painting,, “Why was it so dark?” is not a neutral question. “What ideas guided your choices about color?”

4. Opinion Time: Responders state opinions, subject to permission from the artist. The usual form is “I have an opinion about ______, would you like to hear it?” The artist has the option to decline opinions for any reason.

That's it! It worked for us.

Nagoya/Vermont

Here's another Vermont project calling for art in action:

An international exhibition, January 27 - February 10, in Nagoya, Japan.

ON THE PLANET: we will live on this planet, curated by the Japanese videographer, Izuru Mizutani. His proposal, conceived of in relation to the 2010 Conference on Biodiversity to be held in Nagoya later in the year, was awarded this curatorial slot at the Yada Gallery of the Nagoya Citizens Museum.

Four Vermont Artists, Sophie Hood, Janet Fredericks, Janet Van Fleet and Riki Moss have been invited to install individual work together in a 1200 square foot space. Their idea is to envision some aspect of biodiversity on this planet, collectively presented in a way that celebrates our rural Vermont environment, its beauty and vulnerability distinct from the urban landscapes inspiring the other eleven artists from Japan and New York, and to spotlight the alarming escalation of species loss, technically a period of "mass extinction", largely caused by the exploding population and actions of a single species - us.

As Andrew C. Revkin recently wrote on his New York Times blog Dot Earth, "It’s clear that the arts, from visual to musical, can have a role in shaping how people perceive the planet and their place on it.”

That's the challenge: how do these four artists intend affecting perception?

Janet Van Fleet exploring the web of life:

Riki Moss reassembles curious bio forms.


Sophie Hood's wearable creature-sculptures from plastic bags.


Janet Fredricks marks the river as she walks it.


Later in the year, Vermont will reciprocate with many more artists exhibiting in Barre at SPA and at the Millstone historic quarries, and at Flynndog during next year's Art Hop. A video
documenting these exhibits and the artists' perspectives will be offered for screening at the
the tenth anniversary of the 191 parties to the United Nations' Convention on Biodiversity, which will be held in Nagoya in October, 2010.

So, can the visual arts affect government? Are the perceptions, the questioning, the mark making, envisioning, crafting, conceptualizations - the tools of the visual artist - capable of urging compassion for our vulnerable planet? Is the depiction of earth's beauty enough to convince a person - a government - that the earth is worthy of care? Can we even comprehend that we are all part of one being? Or are we only interested in saving ourselves?

Or is it up us? Can we conceive of our own species extinction?

Follow along on the blog Nagoya/Vermont.

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