June 1 - July 1, 2007
Opening
reception: Friday, June 1, 5 - 8 PM
Reeve
Gutsell & Co., Scavenger Hunt
Adrasteia Andrews and Stuart Copans
Mary Liz Riddle & Stuart Copans
Dede Cummings & Stuart Copans
Tom Bitters & Matthew Peake
Arlene Distler & Carolyn DiNicola-Fawley
Theresa Edwards & Lori Schreiner
Carol Greenhouse & Collin Leech
Pamela Mandell & Marilyn Allen
Lynn Martin & Cindy Hutcheson
Mary Mathias & Charlene Wakefield
Paula Melton & Leonard Ragouzeos
Rolf Parker-Houghton & Jason Alden
Renata Pienkawa & Carolyn Nelson
Cheryl Wilfong & Heather Taylor
ARTISTS
AND WRITERS FORUM
WITH READINGS AND DISCUSSION ABOUT EXHIBITION
THURSDAY, JUNE 7 AT 7PM
WORDS & IMAGES:
A COLLABORATION BETWEEN WRITERS AND ARTISTS
The Windham Art Gallery is pleased to present Words & Images:
A Collaboration curated by Stuart Copans, a WAG Artist, and
Arlene Distler, a representative of Write Action--who received
a grant from the Crosby Foundation, which will provide support,
in part, for the exhibit. Words & Images represents a collaboration
between writers and artists that will include poems, excerpts
from short stories and a children's book along with paintings,
photographs, a treasure hunt, and a room-sized installation
down the street from the gallery at an artist's studio. This
exhibition represents a four-month process in which artists
and writers met, teamed up, and created unique collaborations.
Several of the participants are member-artists from WAG, with
many of the other artists and all of the writers being guests
invited from the community. The exhibition will be on display
from Friday, June 1 through Sunday, July 1, with an opening
reception on Friday, June 1, from 5-8 PM, during Gallery Walk.
In all, fourteen collaborations will be on view in Words & Images:
A Collaboration and viewers will have a chance to learn more
about the creative process in a Writers & Artists Forum
on Thursday, June 7 at 7 PM.
As soon as poet Lynn Martin heard about this exhibit, she contacted
her friend, photographer Cindy Hutcheson. As former co-workers
at the AIDS Project of Southern Vermont, they asked themselves, "What
do these folks <our former clients at the AIDS Project> have
in common other than their illness?" What they both came
up with is: pets. So Hutcheston photographed individuals holding,
being held by, or otherwise cuddling their parrots, dogs, cats
or horses, and Martin wrote poems, fragments of which will
accompany the photographs in their collaborative piece entitled
Comfort. Auschwitz prisoner #26947, Czeslawa Kwoka, a young
girl photographed before her death at age 14, is the subject
of a collaboration between painter Lori Schreiner and poet
Theresa Edwards, "this collaboration," the artist
and writer said in their exhibition statement, "brings
Czeslawa's image and voice into our lives."
A painting of an ice hut, Writing on the Ice, by Carolyn DiNicola-Fawley,
with words from a poem entitled "Skating on the West River," by
Arlene Distler, represent a collaboration that "was accomplished
by bouncing ideas off one another, and finding solutions that
used available materials and was conceptually exciting" to
both artist and writer. A trip Cheryl Wilfong took with her
teenage nieces inspired a children's story, The Western Adventures
of Tammy Tenderfoot and Tracy Toughfoot, and she called upon
friend and illustrator, Heather Taylor, to create the colorful,
animated pictures for the book, samples of which will be on
display in this exhibit alongside excerpts from the story.
Art of the Riddle, conceived by artist Stuart Copans and choreographed
primarily by writer Reeve Gutsell, will be a treasure hunt,
in which anyone wishing to participate may pick-up a clue sheet
and, by carefully reading and examining both words and images
in this collaborative exhibit, can try to solve the "riddle";
one winner, from all those who have correctly answered, will
be blind-picked to receive a small prize. WAG's walls will
extend beyond 69 Main Street to include a room-sized installation
in the studio of local artist (167 Main Street, 2nd floor),
Jason Alden. Alden, who met poet Rolf Parker-Houghton for the
first time at a meeting for this exhibition, teamed up to create
The Birches. Their project grew so large they decided to use
Alden's 18' x 25' studio space where viewers, who will be directed
down the street from WAG, will walk among an abstracted birch
forest with bits of sky, represented by painted panels and
oblong shapes hanging from the ceiling, as Parker-Houghton's
voice emanates, radio-like, from several areas of the room,
as he reads a terzanelle (a formal poem) about a forest.
The following is a list of the collaborative teams, with writers' names first:
Adrasteia Andrews and Stuart Copans; Tom Bitters and Matthew Peake; Dede Cummings
and Stuart Copans; Arlene Distler and Carolyn DiNicola Fawley; Theresa Edwards
and Lori Schreiner; Pamela Mandell and Marilyn Allen; Lynn Martin and Cindy Hutcheson;
Mary Mathias and Charlene Wakefield; Paula Melton and Leonard Ragouzeos; Rolf
Parker-Houghton and Jason Alden; Renata Pienkawa and Carolyn Nelson; MaryLiz
Riddle and Stuart Copans; Cheryl Wilfong and Heather Taylor; Art of the Riddle:
Reeve Gutsell, with Tom Bitters, Stuart Copans, Collin Leech and Paula Melton.
