Friday, October 15, 2021
Tags: Zach Pollakoff , Bauschaus VT , Elori Saxl , Photay , Tin and Ed , Vanishworks , Rory Pots , Wylie Garcia , Jemila MacEwan , Will Gebhard , Carl Bausch , Maize Bausch , Zero Gravity , Ambient Music , Web Only , Image
Monday, August 2, 2021
Her death, at North Country Hospital in Newport, was confirmed by Michael Romanyshyn, a family friend and longtime puppeteer. Elka was "everything" to Bread and Puppet, Romanyshyn said. "She was the heart and soul."
Elka was born in Russia in August 1935 to a Russian mother and an American father. Her family left that country, bound for the United States, when she was a young girl.
Elka met Peter, an artist and puppeteer, in his native Germany while she was a college student studying abroad. The Schumanns were married in 1959 and lived in New York City, where Peter founded Bread and Puppet on the Lower East side of Manhattan in 1963. The couple moved with their five children to Plainfield in 1970, before settling at the Bread and Puppet farm in Glover in 1974.
She was the "bedrock" for both the family and the theater, said her son, Max Schumann.
This summer, Bread and Puppet is celebrating the 50th anniversary of its Domestic Resurrection Circus. Elka, dressed in white, walked arm in arm with Peter across the natural amphitheater on July 11 at an opening performance of the season to take her seat on the grassy stage. She played recorder during the show. She also participated in last Saturday’s performance, Romanyshyn said.
In recent years, Elka became interested in gatherings to remember and mourn the dead in the pine woods at Bread and Puppet, where a memorial village of sculptures, paintings and installations pay tribute to deceased puppeteers, artists, friends and family. One little house honors Elka's parents, John and Masha Dikareva Scott.
Walking through the memorial village two summers ago, Elka stopped at a site in the grove of trees and listened to Peter as he talked about people dear to them whose names he had carved on a board to mark their deaths.
When he got to the last name, where space had run out on the carving, Elka said: "Peter, you really should make another board."
Tags: Bread and Puppet Theater , Elka Schumann , Peter Schumann , Glover , puppet , artist , Vermont , Web Only , Image
Friday, July 2, 2021
The Free Little Art Gallery is housed in a glass case at the entrance to the Sheldon’s lovely flower garden. Its contents change as people contribute a piece of art they make or select one to take. Drawings on paper, paintings on canvas and a ceramic vessel were among the pieces on display early this week. A clutch of yellow flowers set below an abstract painting echoed a hue on the canvas.
Sheldon Museum associate director Mary Manley read about a similar gallery in Seattle and thought it would be neat to make one in Middlebury, she said. Then, last spring, a free little gallery opened in Essex Junction.
Manley said she’s hopeful similar galleries will pop up around the state. A June 5 article in the Washington Post describes a national trend of Free Little Art Galleries, or FLAGs.
The Sheldon's gallery is designed on a scale of 1:12, in which one inch is a foot in a standard gallery. It’s intended for works of art, as opposed to miniatures like doll house furniture or trinkets. Size-appropriate canvases lean against a wall for the taking — an offering of en- couragement for would-be artists. Mounting material is provided to hang art.
“People who are established artists have participated, as well as young kids,” Manley said. “It’s been really fun. We encourage the community to take part."
The tiny museum in front of the big one — the latter a repository of regional art, objects and history that opened in 1884 — can be appreciated in a matter of moments. But let it welcome you to the grounds of the Sheldon with its beautiful plantings, sculptures, and stone benches — a peaceful oasis in the center of Middlebury.
These days, the garden also presents a preview of sculptor Kate Pond’s forthcoming exhibit at the Sheldon, “From the Heart: A Sculptor’s Process." Three sculptures by the Burlington-based artist are in the garden, including a maquette of "Kiss #2," her piece in front of the Fletcher Free Library in Burlington.
How wonderful that a renowned artist's metal sculpture shares space on the grass with a child’s drawing of a rainbow.
"Come by and come often," Manley said of the people's gallery. "Because it changes."
251 is a series of on-the-road stories, coming soon to a town near you.
Tags: Middlebury , 251 , art , Free Little Art Gallery , FLAG , Kate Pond , sculpture , community , Henry Sheldon Museum of Vermont History , Web Only , Image
Friday, May 14, 2021
Vermont potter Jeremy Ayers recently learned from an observant Instagram follower that a corporate behemoth appeared to have copied one of his designs. Clothing and home goods retailer Anthropologie was offering a mug that looked suspiciously like one Ayers has been making for the past decade.
It's a distinctive design — striped glaze, "accordion" shape. But Anthropologie's version had a crucial difference: "The handle sucks," Ayers wrote on his Facebook page. Indeed, any experienced potter — or frequent holder of mugs — could see that the semi-circular handle of the Anthropologie mug is not hand-friendly.
And, of course, there was another key difference: price. Anthropologie's mug was priced at $14.99, Ayers said. His mugs, thrown one at a time in the artisan's Waterbury studio, sell for $40 apiece.
Tags: Jeremy Ayers Pottery , pottery , artisans , Anthropologie , Web Only , Image
Wednesday, March 17, 2021
VLS is free to install acoustic panels on a frame in front of the mural, which the school says will not touch or damage the painting in any way. Kerson, who filed suit in December in U.S. District Court, wanted to halt that construction for the duration of the trial.
Tags: Sam Kerson , Vermont Law School , Underground Railroad , mural , public art , Visual Artists Rights Act , VARA , Web Only , Image
Thursday, February 11, 2021
Twilight, believed to be both the first African American college graduate and first African American legislator in the U.S., was a Brownington-based educator and minister who lived from 1795 to 1857. He was elected as a Vermont State Representative in 1836. Last year, state lawmakers established September 23, 2020, as Alexander Twilight Day.
The portrait was commissioned jointly by the Friends of the Vermont State House and the office of the Vermont State Curator and is being funded by the National Life Group of Vermont.
Tags: Alexander Twilight , Katie Runde , portrait , realism , Black History Month , Vermont Statehouse , Vermont State Curator , Brownington , Vermont history , Web Only , Image
Friday, December 11, 2020
The auction is closed-bid, meaning bids are submitted without knowledge of other bids, so you won’t know if you’ve won the piece until bidding closes on December 21. The fundraiser will split proceeds evenly between the artists and the museum.
The museum is open for in-person viewing Fridays through Mondays, 10 a.m. to 4. p.m. But for those who can't get there, or prefer to avoid human contact altogether, simply browsing the exhibition online is a pleasure.
Tags: Bennington Museum , art auction , Kathleen Kolb , Will Kasso Condry , LMNOPI , W. David Powell , Michael Oatman , Vermont Curators Group , Web Only , Image
Tuesday, December 8, 2020
The sculpture, dubbed "Mutant Otters Destroy Town Hall Theater," is by Daniel Houghton, the director of the Middlebury College Animation Studio. Houghton dreamed up the project in September, designed it using a computer program and produced it on a 3D printer, documenting his progress weekly in a series of videos posted to YouTube.
Tags: Daniel Houghton , Middlebury , Middlebury Animation Studio , 3D modeling , Town Hall Theater , Otter Creek , Web Only , Image
Tuesday, October 13, 2020
CEC ArtsLink, an international arts organization with an office in St. Petersburg, Russia, hosts Art Prospect, its seventh annual public art festival, from October 15 to 18. Normally an on-site event with physical and augmented-reality installations, the event has perforce gone online because, well — what isn't virtual in 2020?
Tags: CEC ArtsLink , Art Prospect , art festival , public art , architecture , Web Only , Image
Friday, September 25, 2020
The colorful, Afrofuturist mural was originally intended for another South End wall, but was rejected by the business owner. Soon after, the mural's commissioners, tenants of the Soda Plant on Pine Street, started a crowdfunding campaign and issued a citywide “Call for a Wall.”
Tags: public art , mural , Will Kasso Condry , Jennifer Herrera Condry , Champlain Elementary , Web Only , Image