News

Join us for ArtsFest on June 6th, 4-9 pm

The Center for Arts and Learning is pleased to be part of ArtsFest, presented by Montpelier Alive, on June 6th from 4-9 pm. See works throughout the building by over 25 local artists and performers.

ArtsFest is an city-wide explosion of arts and creativity taking place throughout Montpelier on June 5th and 6th – for more on the larger event, check out the ArtsFest page.

On June 6th, CAL will host:

• 6:00 pm – Michael Sherman Artist Talk at T.W. Wood Gallery
• 6:45 pm – Informational Tour of Center for Arts and Learning with Executive Director Alice Dodge – meet at the CAL sign out front
• 7:15 pm – DIORAMA: Room to Play – a collaborative performance with Dancer Alana Rancourt Phinney, Flutest Lisa Carlson, and horn soloist Lisa Lowery Busler

Throughout the evening:

• Alex Forbes Mobile Woodworking Studio (in front of building)
• Trajectory of Color, an Exhibition of works from the Helen Day Center (second floor)
• Installation by Chris Jeffrey (third floor)
• Installation by Michael Kuk (third floor)
• Lake Champlain Rock Art Workshop with Susan Aronoff (basement)
• Intuitive Tarot Readings by Sherri Glebus (third floor)
• Works from the River Rock School
• Beverage service by Magic Hat

And artwork on view by:

Conor Isaiah Cleveland • Brian D. Cohen • Karen Cygnarowicz • PJ Desrochers • Alice Dodge • Stephen Frey • Alexis Kyriak • Noam Hessler • Ellis Jacobson • Christina Lesperance • David Lesperance  • Annie Limoge • Liz Le Serviget • Brecca  Loh • Joni McCraw • Sara Moulton • Angus Munro • Ned Richardson • Kate Ruddle • James Secor • Ross Sheehan • Ronilynn Shrout • Missy Storrow • Jim Thompson

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

Ned Richardson’s work explores landscape – envisioning the natural world as it connects and intersects with the digital landscape we now inhabit. Both have a presence in Richardson’s paintings and drawings, as do both traditional and extremely non-traditional art processes.

For his glass micro paintings, Richardson experimented with Generative Adversarial Networks. A GAN is a neural network-based ‘deep learning’ system, with open-source code widely available on the internet; these are systems set up in pairs to learn to identify and generate specific kinds of images through input of a massive data set. The networks work off of each other to ‘learn’ to generate their own versions of the images fed to them – for example, making their own image that looks like a landscape – based on feedback and critique from a second network. Here, Richardson input several of his own images and had the system generate work ‘like’ his to use as source material for the paintings (which are then manipulated not through Photoshop, but painstakingly by hand).

Richardson’s series of mesh-dot drawings explore imaginary datasets, drawn by hand. If you can describe a landscape scientifically through an accumulation of data points, a drawing of that data is, in a sense, a description of the imagined world it measures. These very analog pen-and-ink drawings are abstract, but suggest the emergent mathematical patterns in a flock of birds or the growth of wildflowers.

Ned Richardson lives and works in Moretown, and his work can regularly be seen at the Front gallery in Montpelier. He has been making art since the 1990s, and has explored media ranging from egg tempera painting to digital and video-based work influenced by conceptual art.

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.