Housed in an 1830s tavern and hotel that serviced travelers on the Montpelier-to-Canada stage road, the Kent is not a typical contemporary art museum. For one thing, it is open only one month a year. And bringing a wide variety of new work from artists throughout the state into the historic brick-and-clapboard building creates an engaging and dynamic art experience.
This year’s program, “Illuminated Worlds,” runs from Sept. 6 through Oct. 6, with an opening celebration on Saturday, Sept. 7, from 3 to 5 p.m.
“If we have one overarching goal for this and all our shows, it is to have our visitors get inspired to curiosity,” said Cornelia “Nel” Emlen, one of the curators. “The building helps that, because we’re not a white, beautiful box, like a regular museum.”
Indeed, regular museums don’t have some unfinished walls, with art hanging against lath, steep wooden stairs that require special attention, or floors that shake walls when you walk across them. They also don’t have the classic beauty of a large 19th-century building, with Georgian and Greek Revival elements, fireplaces, old woodwork, large windows that offer needed natural light, and a maze of rooms. The building itself, which is at the heart of the Kents’ Corner Historic District and is owned by the Vermont Division of Historic Preservation, is a treasure.
“Illuminated Worlds” explores various facets of both illumination — including lighting, coloring, insight, and realization — and worlds — including the universe, time, weather, climate, and life experiences.
“Each person’s world is what we’re talking about seeing here, and there are 24 artists, actually 25 because there’s a husband-and-wife team,” said curator Allyson Evans. “One of the things Nel and I love to do is pull from as many different mediums as we can — an artist working in glass, an artist working in clay, photography, painting, collage, sewing.”
Emlen and Evans described their process of putting together “this quilt of artists that we show” as “organic,” evolving over a period of months, yet drawing from years past. As they visit galleries around the state and talk with artists, themes develop. Artists don’t apply; Emlen, Evans, or the third curator, David Schutz, invite them. Sometimes they invite artists whom they met years ago because their work fits the current program.
The day I met with them at the museum, the exhibition was just beginning to go up. In one room, paintings and photographs were on walls, while in another, they leaned against the wall, below where they would likely be hung. There were boxes, moving blankets, and packing materials galore, with art in glass, fiber, paper, metal, clay, and stone laying about, as the curators went through their own artistic process deciding how to present the approximately 200 pieces in the show.
Burlington artist Valerie Hird was there, refining details related to exhibiting her luminescent series of gilded paintings, “Yggdrasil,” featuring both Nordic and Persian inspiration.
“‘Yggdrasil’ is a Nordic term for the one-tree,” she noted. “Their folklore has the one-tree that created all life. It connects heaven to earth. In Nordic mythology, that was how life was created, so my one-tree here is made up of the four elements and it birthed the birds, which in my mythology is how life was created.” Although the title is Nordic, the paintings were also inspired by illuminated, 16th-century Persian poetry, she said.
Birds and books run throughout the show, from Hird’s work to the beautiful, finely detailed depictions of the natural world by East Montpelier artist Susan Bull Riley, and to the murmuration of starlings on Charlotte artist Marcia Vogler’s “Flight Jacket,” one of her many items made from reclaimed books.
The works of Burlington artist Rebecca Schwarz include a captivating, provocative piece made from discarded, single-use plastics — which offers various ways to consider the “illuminated” theme — and there are several mesmerizing glass pieces by Bridgewater’s Paedra Bramhall.
Another Burlington artist, Misoo Bang, has several large portraits with detailed, engaging worlds behind the subjects. The Spotlight Gallery focuses on Woodbury folk artist Bessie Drennan’s (1882–1961) paintings of rural Vermont life, a collection on loan from the Kent family.
Outside, there are 10 new works, including “Sundial,” by Bill Gottesman. On Sept. 22, the autumnal equinox, the Kent will team up with the Fairbanks Museum and Planetarium for an 11 a.m. program about “sun activity and measuring time.”
Fifteen events have been scheduled over the next month. Those events, as well as a listing of the artists and other information about the Kent, can be seen at kentscorner.org. Events include Words Out Loud, the annual, Sunday afternoon reading series at the nearby Old West Church. The first of those readings, with poets Leslie Sainz and Rebecca Starks, will be on Sept. 15, at 3 p.m.
A note about museum accessibility: Per the Kent’s website: “The ground-floor galleries are accessible. Galleries and bathrooms on the first floor of the brick building are reachable by elevator. Second-floor galleries are only accessed via stairs.”
Located at Kents’ Corner in Calais, the museum is open from Sept. 6 through Oct. 6, Friday through Sunday, from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.
