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Second Floor Gallery, Center for Arts and Learning, May 3 – July 6, 2019
Receptions May 3rd, 4-8pm and June 6th, 4-9pm

Noam Hessler’s intricate, beautiful and grotesque creatures provoke empathy and introspection by inviting viewers to engage with a world that may at first seem alien. Eyeballs, teeth, and hair form creations like bezoars, repugnant because they are familiar but monstrous. Hessler asks the viewer instead to expand their view of what is beautiful, and to consciously seek connection and understanding with that which seems off-putting. On closer inspection, these creatures tell complicated stories. The intricate nuance and attention with which they’re rendered show that they are, above all, deeply loved.

Noam Hessler has been drawing for the past fourteen years, since he was one year old. His work has been largely influenced by his fascination with creatures of all sorts, from microorganisms to mythical beasts. He often creates stories or loose narratives with his drawings, and has also been exploring writing and sculpture. He has exhibited his work at Studio Place Arts, VCFA, and the Myles Court Barber Shop.

This year, the New England Foundation for the Arts is holding its Creative Communities Exchange conference in Montpelier – and we want to showcase excellent art from around the region while they’re here. Montpelier Alive is sponsoring an ArtsFest during the conference on Thursday, June 6th – an expanded version of Art Walk.

Thanks to everyone who has let us know they’re interested – we’ll be posting more info, including a full artist list, just as soon as we confirm everyone. See you June 6th!

First Floor Gallery, Center for Arts and Learning, Feb. 1 – Apr. 27, 2019
Reception during Feb. 1st Art Walk, 4-8 pm

Mindy Fisher calls her series of fantastically loud, cataclysmically calligraphic abstract paintings ‘ornaglyphs’. As the name suggests, there is an almost-language of symbolic characters in them – her marks seem like a system of writing lost to the world, and her colors suggest the chaos of a jungle of birds taking off all at once. They are abstract, but funny and full of personality, an all-over pattern that refuses to stay still. They call to mind the garish palette and crazy aliens of late-night cartoons, but when you look at them the colors create unlikely sophisticated harmonies. Mindy describes them as battle scenes, but not from earthly wars: these are how a bubbly six-year old, armed with a golden cape and a pink sword, might imagine her path to glory.

Mindy Fisher grew up in a small town in New Hampshire. In 1998 she moved to Chicago to study set design at Columbia College. She stayed in Chicago and focused on painting, cartooning, and self-taught animation. She taught at Right Brained Studio in Oak Park, Il. She now lives and works in Vermont. She has shown work all over the country, including Chicago, Cincinnati, Portland (Oregon), and Rutland, Vermont. Last year she participated in Vermont Studio Center’s Vermont Artists Week residency program.

Second Floor Gallery, Center for Arts and Learning, Feb. 1 – Apr. 27, 2019
Reception during Feb. 1st Art Walk, 4-8pm.

Medieval people made pilgrimages, walking across entire countries to visit specific religious sites that held relics – parts of the bodies of saints. Though the reliquaries holding these objects were highly decorated, the important part was inside – you could often open a tiny door to reach in and hold the relic while praying. People believed they had to have this physical connection in order truly commune with the spiritual.

Alexis Kyriak’s work shares this sensibility. Her forms are never whole; they are not bodies carrying identities, but instead embody a perception of the elements, the seasons, the divine, the mythic. The spirit and body are almost one and the same, but there is a tension between weight and emptiness, light and darkness. Kyriak sees them as representing a concept of the feminine, but they are not women. She never gives them heads.

Alexis Kyriak lives and works in Northfield, Vermont. She has studied at the Fashion Institute of Technology in New York, the Art Students’ League, the National Academy of Fine Art & Design, the Brooklyn Museum School, and elsewhere. She has shown work locally at various venues including the Helen Day Center in Stowe, Studio Place Arts in Barre, and Artful Things in Lebanon, New Hampshire, among others.