BRATTLEBORO — Six new exhibits reflecting a wide range of artistic styles, mediums, and concerns opened at the Brattleboro Museum & Art Center on Saturday, March 17.
From hand-cranked kinetic sculptures made of household objects to elegant black-and-white watercolor landscapes, the new exhibits affirm BMAC's commitment to exhibiting contemporary art in all its forms.
“Best of 'Springs, Sprockets & Pulleys'” marks the return to Brattleboro of artist Steve Gerberich's zany, interactive sculptures. BMAC exhibited “Gerb's Gadgetry” in 2011.
According to Director Danny Lichtenfeld, it was one of the museum's most popular exhibits in recent memory.
For his latest installation, Gerberich has cleverly assembled a hodge-podge of everyday materials - kitchen utensils, furniture scraps, and discarded toys - into elaborate clanking, whirring, buzzing sculptures, which will be installed throughout the museum's Wolf Kahn & Emily Mason Gallery.
Gerberich will lead a guided tour of the exhibit on Sunday, June 17, at 2 p.m.
In the spring of 1978, the prolific painter and filmmaker Alfred Leslie was driving east across the U.S. from California when, as he put it, “a singular pile of colossal stones came into view” near Laguna, New Mexico.
He felt he had no choice but to stop and sketch the stones, which he did, and then he made similar sketching stops all along the route back to his Massachusetts studio. Several years later. Leslie developed those sketches into a series of 100 black-and-white watercolor landscapes called “100 Views Along the Road.”
The complete series was exhibited several times between 1981 and 1983, and then many of the watercolors were sold to private collectors.
For the exhibit at BMAC, Lichtenfeld selected about 30 of the watercolors remaining in Leslie's possession to be shown in the museum's Center Gallery.
Four other solo exhibits will fill BMAC's remaining galleries.
“Hereandafter” is a collection of evocative opaque watercolors by former BMAC Education Curator Susan von Glahn Calabria.
Calabria's detailed still lifes and depictions of imagined assemblages invite prolonged, close observation. Calabria will discuss her work on Sunday, April 22, at 2 p.m.
“3D Color” consists of painted aluminum sculptures by New York-based artist Gloria Garfinkel. Viewers are invited to reconfigure the sculptures by flipping panels and twisting colored discs.
“Bottle in the River” is a collection of sculptures by Richard Klein made from found glass objects.
In addition to maintaining his art practice, Klein is Exhibitions Director at The Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum in Ridgefield, Conn. He has said he uses found glass “because I believe that there is too much 'stuff' in the world and it is better somehow to re-purpose what already exists.”
Klein will discuss his work on Thursday, May 31, at 7 p.m.
“We Walk in Their Shadows” is a mixed-media installation by Gowri Savoor, an artist of British-Indian heritage based in Barre, Vermont.
The exhibit draws upon Savoor's personal experience as a first-generation immigrant and explores questions of cultural dislocation, loss of language, and the quest for home. Savoor will discuss her work on Thursday, May 17, at 7 p.m.
The exhibits and artist talks by Klein and Savoor are part of The Confluence Project, a collaborative experiment in creative placemaking involving BMAC, Vermont Performance Lab, the Windham Regional Commission, and numerous other partners. More information is available at www.vermontperformancelab.org.
All the new exhibits close June 17, with the exception of “Best of 'Springs, Sprockets & Pulleys,'” which remains on view through Oct. 8.
For more information, call 802-257-0124 or visit www.brattleboromuseum.org.