Tucked amidst familiar Vermont subjects and media at this year's Vermont Artists' Week Open studios were some emerging and exciting voices working in adventurous media. In all, up to 50 artists across disciplines spent a week from April 30 to May 6 at the Vermont Studio Center; the open studios exhibition is a culminating opportunity to share new and exploratory work.
The Vermont Studio Center is an unusual beast in Vermont. A sprawling network of 25 buildings, the Center dominates the northern town of Johnson, Vermont. The buildings tend to be spare and gracious, oriented outward from the iconic Red Mill on the Gihon River. The newest renovation, dubbed the historic Church Studios, is a clean and modern mix of offices and studios. While it can be a chore to get a handle on all of the output spread across the VSC network, the tromping though Johnson is worth the effort.
Among the artists with exciting work are:
Skye Livingston, whose shrink-wrapped assemblages evoke architectural forms and bondage that may gently address identity.
Tuyen My Nguyen uses eyehooks and colored line to produce elegant and colorful plays with form, perspective and light to create volumes with her space.
Susan Smereka is a printmaker who uses sewn, treated and manipulated archival paper as a surface for large, iconic and almost caligraphic mark-making.
Luciana Frigerio is a collage artist who has taken what is traditionally a two-dimensional form into relief through the use of antique cases and origami forms.
Nicole Czapinski produces playful caligraphic markings using seemingly mundane objects including pipe cleaners and plastic sewing canvasses.
Daryl Burtnett is a photographer who has begun to transfer his explorations of form and texture into printmaking, experimenting with a range of medium to produce archetypal forms.
Joshua Turk uses fabrics treated with fast-drying plaster to produce shockingly taught relief canvases on which he explores multiple identity frameworks.
Mary Zompetti (not pictured) is a photographer exploring time and place printing from heavily manipulated large-format negatives that have degraded in the elements over many weeks.
Congratulations to this year's cohort of Vermont Studio Center artists. It is a thrill to encounter visual artists working across so many media, all in one place. There is something excellent about the opportunity to explore fresh work, materials and process within a vibrant social atmosphere.
Each spring, Vermont Artists Week supports creative community within our home state through an intensive week of studio work and fellowship with other Vermont-based artists and writers. Vermont Artists Week offers VT artists and writers the opportunity to immerse themselves in their studio practice, share their creative work with others, and establish networks throughout the state to strengthen a sense of creative community and support that extends far beyond the week itself.
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