BRATTLEBORO — A major new exhibit, “Open Call: NNE (North Northeast),” opens Saturday, Jan. 10 at the Brattleboro Museum & Art Center (BMAC).
An opening reception, with many of the exhibiting artists in attendance, will take place at 11 a.m. It is free and open to the public.
According to BMAC director Danny Lichtenfeld, “Open Call: NNE (North Northeast)” is the result of a call for entries put out by BMAC last fall. Nearly 500 artists from New York and New England responded to the call, submitting a total of 2,000 works of art.
From among those, juror Richard Klein, exhibitions director of The Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum in Ridgefield, Conn., selected 80 works to be included in the exhibit.
“I approached my task as juror with an open mind and no expectations of assembling an exhibition based on any specific themes, other than one: quality,” said Klein. “In my judgment, the 38 artists in 'Open Call NNE' all possess remarkable foresight and imagination, and all have fully used the tools and materials at their disposal to realize their visions.”
Although the selected works cover a wide range of artistic media, from oil painting and watercolor to site-specific sculpture and drawings made with gunpowder, Klein writes in an essay accompanying the exhibit that certain threads connect the works to each other and to the outside world.
These include distinctly “northeastern” cultural references, such as needlepoint samplers and iconic Vermont landmarks, and a tendency toward black-and-white imagery.
Speculating on the latter, Klein writes, “Why so much monochrome? Perhaps it's a reflection of the seriousness of our times. Nothing makes it clearer than black and white.”
A complete list of the 38 artists featured in “Open Call: NNE (North Northeast)” is available at www.brattleboromuseum.org.
“Open Call: NNE (North Northeast)” will remain on view through Feb. 7.