Standing in the main room of the Vermont Supreme Court Gallery, the first morning a new exhibit was up, I had the two rooms and two dozen paintings to myself. Looking through the large entryway into the second room, directly in front of me, a four-foot-square painting of an artist’s studio caught my eye. The window at the center of the painting pulled me in, and as I walked closer, I became absorbed in the juxtaposition of interior and exterior worlds, and then in the contrasting visions of the three artists whose works surrounded me.
Curated by David Schutz, the Vermont state curator, and Mary Admasian, a multidisciplinary artist, curator, and marketing consultant for arts organizations, “Spaces & Places” features the work of James “Jaime” Rauchman of Morristown, Anne Davis of Barre, and James Secor of Montpelier. The unifying theme is the exploration of private and public spaces.
The painting described above is Rauchman’s “A Room Somewhere,” which he created for this show at Admasian’s suggestion that he paint an additional studio scene.
“The suggestion afforded me the opportunity to refocus my energy on the immediacy of my surroundings and communicate the great expanse of vision available when one simply looks out the window,” Rauchman said.
Until now, the gallery has presented one artist at a time, so only four artists could be shown each year. Admasian said that the gallery exhibition committee wanted to give more artists the opportunity to show their work — and, inspired by the annual Art at the Kent exhibition in Calais — they wanted to create “dynamic exhibitions that do not just focus on individual artists but are more actively curated to mix different artistic disciplines and responses to some universal themes.”
Admasian and Schutz met with each artist in their individual studios to select potential paintings for this show; then the two curators spent a day deciding how to arrange the exhibit by mixing the works of all three — a decision that makes for a far more interesting result than if each artist had their own corner.
While multiple conversations were about how the works are positioned, Secor used the word “juxtaposition,” which aptly describes both the composition of many of the paintings, and their arrangement in the show.
Secor said his painting titled “Cochran’s” started as a small sketch made in the lodge at Cochran’s Ski Area. It was a very cold day, and while his partner stayed outside with their son, who was taking a lesson, he went inside with their infant. The painting is done from inside the lodge, but large windows expose the slopes outside.
“The sketch is about only 3-by-4 inches, which is good because I made it while sitting in the lodge with the baby in a front pack,” he said. “As for the painting, I’ve been drawn to working with windows a couple of times now. It’s interesting to show the two worlds in juxtaposition, two differently lit spaces.”
Among the variety of subjects in her paintings, Davis’s “Fish Dinner,” portrays a dining room where bears, a cat, and a dog join a woman around the table, with a large painting of a fish on the wall and an adult bear bringing a strawberry pie.
“Painting for me is about entering a private world and making something happen in a new, undiscovered place,” she said.
Schutz, who, like Admasian, is involved in Art at the Kent, is excited about the transition to multi-artist exhibits, and about these three artists, in particular.
“Jamie, Anne, and James barely knew one another before we selected them,” he said, “but seeing their works together here suggests that as Vermonters, they evoke a common spiritual bond that ties their disparate spaces and places together. It is stunning to see.”
“Spaces & Places,” is open to the public in the Vermont Supreme Court Gallery at 111 State Street in Montpelier, weekdays from 8:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. (except for lunch hour), through Sept. 30. The opening reception will be July 11, from 4:30 to 7 p.m., with artist remarks at 6 p.m. There will be a second reception during ArtWalk, during the same hours, on Aug. 1.
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