BRATTLEBORO — Five new exhibits open at the Brattleboro Museum & Art Center (BMAC) on Thursday, March 18.
They include an exploration of flowers as a way to mark loss; new work by Jennifer Mack-Watkins that, in the artist's words, “[uses] aesthetics as a form of resistance against the erasure and invisibility of African American culture”; a kinetic sculpture installation by Adria Arch; drawings by Kenny Rivero; and the biennial “Glasstastic” exhibit, including a look back at the first 10 years of this popular collaboration between elementary school students and glass artists.
A reception with the artists and curators will take place later in the spring. All five new exhibits will be on view through June 13.
The title of the exhibit, “All Flowers Keep the Light,” is drawn from a line in a Theodore Roethke poem: “Deep in their roots, all flowers keep the light.”
Featured artists are Miles Chapin, Clare Elliott, Anna Schuleit Haber, Amy Jenkins, Colleen Kiely, and Cathy Osman, as well as John Willis, whose multimedia work was created in collaboration with poet Robin Behn and musician Matan Rubinstein.
Curated by Mara Williams, the exhibit was postponed for nearly a year because of the COVID-19 pandemic. Originally focused on artwork that harnesses the symbolic potential of flowers to represent personal loss, the exhibit was expanded to include work commemorating communal and societal ruptures as well.
“Children of the Sun” is Jennifer Mack-Watkins' first solo museum exhibition. It was inspired in part by The Brownies' Book: A Monthly Magazine for the Children of the Sun, a groundbreaking periodical co-created by W.E.B. Du Bois 100 years ago featuring stories, art, poetry, and images celebrating African American identity.
Mack-Watkins' artwork also incorporates images and narratives from Grafton storyteller, poet, and activist Daisy Turner (1883–1988), a child of formerly enslaved people, and research findings included in the book Daisy Turner's Kin: An African American Family Saga by Jane C. Beck.
“Mack-Watkins investigates societal conformities that isolate and confine individuals into pre-defined identities,” writes curator David Rios Ferreira in a statement accompanying the exhibit. “With 'Children of the Sun,' she helps us recognize that a predefined representation of one's self, a community, and a race can be embodied in something as seemingly commonplace as a child's doll.”
Mack-Watkins describes the prints in “Children of the Sun” as part of a larger conversation in her work about “the beauty, importance, and complexity of positive representation of African American children in literature, media, and pop culture.” The exhibit was previewed in The New York Times on March 7.
“Adria Arch: On Reflection” is an immersive installation of undulating sculptural shapes suspended from the ceiling of the museum's Mary Sommer Room, inspired by the movement and reflectivity of the Connecticut River as it flows past Brattleboro. The work is accompanied by a sound piece by composer Ken Field.
Arch is a mixed media artist whose work is in numerous public and private collections, including the Boston Public Library, the Library of Congress, and the deCordova Sculpture Park and Museum. She has taught painting, drawing, and printmaking at Montserrat College of Art and Massachusetts College of Art and Design.
Kenny Rivero's “Palm Oil, Rum, Honey, Yellow Flowers” is a collection of drawings with themes that include masculinity, love, depression, sexuality, Afro-Caribbean faith, Anglo-Caribbean sensibilities, and Afro-Futurism.
“Glasstastic” features works of art that were conceived of and drawn by children from across the country and turned into three-dimensional sculptures by glass artists.
This year's edition of the popular biennial exhibit features 27 glass sculptures presented alongside the drawings and descriptions that inspired them, as well as a digital gallery of the nearly 800 drawings submitted by students in kindergarten through grade 6.
In celebration of its 10th anniversary, the exhibit also features a “Blast From the Past” gallery with images from prior years.
In the coming weeks, BMAC will announce a schedule of online and in-person artist talks, lectures, workshops, and other events accompanying the new exhibits. These events will let audiences meet the artists and curators and delve into the social and aesthetic ideas explored in the art.
BMAC is open Wednesdays through Sundays, from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m., with masks and social distancing required. Walk-ins are always welcome, or visitors can make a reservation at brattleboromuseum.org.