BRATTLEBORO — On Friday and Saturday, July 29 and 30, five artists of color from across the country will meet in southern Vermont for a series of events organized by the nonprofit art space Epsilon Spires.
The gathering “Multidisciplinary Artist Salon: Transcendence” will feature an evening of music, poetry, and visual art in the sanctuary, followed the next day by creative workshops and artist talks in and around the idyllic Green River Bridge Inn in Guilford.
All events are open to the public with tickets available on a sliding scale to promote equity and inclusion.
“I'm really looking forward to interacting with the gorgeous nature surrounding the venue,” says Nailah Hunter, a musician whose soundscapes for harp, voice, and electronics derive inspiration from tarot cards and Arthurian legend. Hunter, who is based in Los Angeles, began playing the harp while a student at CalArts. Her debut EP, Spells, was described by Rolling Stone as “one of the best recent releases of its kind.”
The other musician featured in the Multidisciplinary Artist Salon is Brooklyn-based Holland Andrews, whose atmospheric compositions combine instrumentation with operatic vocal techniques and electronic distortion to create a uniquely dynamic listening experience.
Andrews describes their 2021 album, Worldless, as the sound of “walking blindly into the unknown and finding infinite bliss in the moment as it arrives.”
“I'm most excited to connect authentically with new people and to learn,” says Andrews, who will host a vocal workshop in the gardens at the inn on the second day of the Salon. They add that since the world began opening up after the isolation of the pandemic, they have been “taking in all the most beautiful connections with those choosing to live luminously, and those who are inspiring others to build a beautiful pathway to their own expression.”
Zimbabwean-American poet U-Meleni Mhlaba-Adebo, who will read her work on Friday night at Epsilon Spires, describes her participation in the Salon as “an opportunity to collide, expand, be inspired, and share process, passion, and practice.” Her first collection of poems, Soul Psalms, was lauded by the author David Updike as “a fearless female voice tempered with optimism and healing possibilities of love.”
The idea for the Multidisciplinary Artist Salon grew from the Celebration of Black Girlhood and Womanhood at Epsilon Spires in July 2021, which was a three-day event featuring film screenings, poetry readings, specialty crafted foods by culinary artists of color, an artist dinner, and community discussions.
The series was co-curated by the director of Epsilon Spires, Jamie Mohr, and the artist and author Shanta Lee, who will be sharing her poetry and visual art on Friday in addition to her curatorial contributions to the Salon.
Another co-curator of the event is Jasmin Agosto, whose production company SageSeeker creates experiences that center BIPOC women and queer communities. Agosto will give a curator's talk on the second day of the series at the Green River Bridge Church, directly across from the Inn, followed by a harp concert by Nailah Hunter.
“As I move towards becoming a full-time artist/curator/producer, I am looking for ways to connect, build relationships, and be inspired,” they say, adding that the Multidisciplinary Artist Salon gives them “the opportunity to exist, dream, and build with artists in this way, and in intimate space.”
For more information and to buy tickets, visit bit.ly/668-salon.