ESSAY: Art Reception at NRG Systems in Hinesburg

by Marc Awodey

We often hear about the importance of art/business relationships, but it’s usually in the context of a non-profit's fundraising efforts. We hear it less often from the business side. So when a robust program of art acquisition by a large company is implemented it’s surely a cause for celebration.

At the Hinesburg home office of NRG Systems, a global leader in wind power technology, CEO Jan Blittersdorf and consultant Sarah-Lee Terrat of YeloDog Design, have been walking the walk - not just talking the talk - since 2004, when NRG’s headquarters was being built. On Sunday July 31 there was a well-attended reception and open house for the 60 artists whose work has been purchased by NRG. Collectors, business professionals, and media were also invited.

The NRG collection includes over 100 pieces, and it’s superb. Blittersdorf and Terrat traveled around Vermont to galleries and shows in search of art. Among the highlights of the collection are lively paintings by folk artist Larry Bissonette and other artists of the G.R.A.C.E. project, and many of Vermont’s best known artists from Warren Kimball to Sabra Field appear, as well as constructions and sculpture by Janet Van Fleet, Delia Robinson, Barr Jozwicki and others. Terrat produced floor murals, tile pieces, and along with Carolyn Shapiro and Anne Lika an exuberant hallway called the Migratory Bird Installation. The NRG collection includes top notch textiles and photography as well.

One of Blittersdorf’s goals has been to “inspire other Vermont business leaders to consider how they too could enhance the beauty of their workspaces.” She also said in a recent press release: “We spend so much of our lives at work that I wanted to make our facilities a comfortable and attractive place for our employees to work… The art has really enhanced our space and helped make it uniquely our own.”

One of the really refreshing things about NRG’s collection is that the CEO was directly involved in amassing the works. Terrat accompanied Blittersdorf in hunting for art, but Blittersdorf developed the confidence to make her own decisions rather than solely relying on the consultant, or an outside curatorial service. Her commitment to creating a playful and uplifting work environment is what really gives the collection a coordinated yet eclectic identity. That sort of discernment is good for business, and certainly good for the visual arts community.

Images: One of the many Floor Tiles (chiclets) inset in hallway floors, created by Sarah-Lee Terrat and Carolyn Shapiro Wall installation by Janet Van Fleet Migratory Bird Installation by Sarah-Lee Terrat, Carolyn Shapiro, and Anne Lika Cow by Cathy McCarthy, Fiber wallhanging by Shirley O'Reilly

ESSAY: Celebrating Alfred J. Comi, Vermont Artist & Memorial Designer

by Steve Restelli

Vermont has been a haven for artists for quite some time now. Many came to Vermont as sculptors, others to paint, draw and illustrate. But there are two standouts who are among the most popular artists in America.

We know very well the works of Norman Rockwell who resided in Arlington, Vermont. The other artist who painted Vermont scenery is Maxfield Parrish. Of Parrish, Mr. Rockwell said, "Maxfield Parrish was certainly one of our most prominent illustrators and hardly a home in America existed that didn’t have a Maxfield Parrish print. I am an illustrator. Maxfield Parrish was a painter-illustrator. He was in the Golden Age of Illustration. When I was in art school I admired him. He was one of my gods."

Maxfield Parrish lived just over the border in Cornish, New Hampshire, where he often painted scenery of both Vermont and New Hampshire. He annually entered many of his best landscape paintings at the Cracker Barrel Art Show in Newbury, Vermont, usually taking first place.

In 1957 Parrish entered two of his finest paintings, White Oak and Sheltering Oaks (seen at left) at the Newbury show. White Oak scored the higher of the two, but had to settle for second place to another painting titled Grandmere.

Grandmere (below right) had been completed only weeks before the show by a new exhibitor named Al Comi of Barre, Vermont.

Alfred Joseph Peter Comi (9/28/1900--5/23/1986) was, born in Barre, Vermont. He graduated from Montpelier High School in 1919, and went to work for Jones Brothers Granite Company in Boston, Massachusetts. While in Boston he furthered his artistic studies by taking life drawing courses at the Copley Studios. He returned to Vermont in the early 1920's and became employed by the Vermont Marble Company in Proctor as a designer. By 1925 he returned to his home town of Barre and became the chief designer for the Marr and Gordon Granite Company.

In 1927 he opened his own design studio at 107 N. Main Street in Barre Vermont, which he operated for several decades. He was very highly regarded and sought after in the granite industry. In fact, Anderson-Friberg's owner, Melvin Friberg noted "the unanimous respect of the manufacturers and dealers for Comi's designs, saying he is tops among professional designers and an elder statesman in the industry". He further stated "that outstanding orders were still received requesting his expertise and artistry...." long after Mr. Comi had retired.

Al Comi learned to paint with oils at the age of 54, studying under Stan Marc Wright, of Stowe, Vermont in 1954. He mastered painting in this medium very, very quickly. By 1957 he and other local artists started an art exhibit at the Park on Main St. which attracted several thousand people. It was this show where he first exhibited his recently completed painting Grandmere. Grandmere was highly acclaimed and took the top honors in Barre and also in Newbury, Vermont. The painting now belongs to the Aldrich Library in Barre and is proudly displayed in the periodical room on the main floor.

In August of 1961 Al Comi took the blue ribbon yet again among the 110 entries at the State Fair at the Champlain Valley Exposition. His entry was Broken Window a painting that shows a barn with a broken window featuring a blaze red blanket which has been hastily stuffed within the jagged panes of broken glass to keep out the weather. Construction materials, a wheel barrow, and a ladder await someone to do the necessary repairs.

Not many people know the name of Al Comi beyond Barre, VT, but they should. The Aldrich Library in Barre did a show featuring Al Comi's art which ran for 6 weeks in 2006. I think it is time for another show to display his remarkable talent.

Images: Sheltering Oaks, Maxfield Parrish, oil on board, 23 x 18½ in, 1956, from Christie’s website. Grandmere, Al Comi, on exhibit at Aldrich Library in Barre

ESSAY: Thoughts Occasioned by a Lecture by Jeffrey Stuker at Marlboro College

By Stephen Orloske

On November 30th Marlboro College hosted an artist talk with Jeffrey Stuker, whose art produces fictional advertisements. Even the brand is a prop and has some oblique, satyrical reference to history. And the sharp product advertised is a complete fabrication. A diamond is actually a drawing, the marble it's displayed upon is painted pine board. Every atom of an eye liner only exists in his computer.

I won't get into the details of Stuker's art here, but he did raise a few interesting ideas about the relation between art and commodity.

1. The gallery and the boutique store mimic one another. As the sale of luxury goods continues to appropriate the minimal aesthetic of a gallery space, so too are galleries starting to appropriate the commodity aspect of luxury stores. Stores ask themselves, how can we be more exclusive? Galleries ask, what will make more sales? Perhaps there will come a point where they meet and become indiscernible. When Stuker hung his Constant: Depuis 1858 show the gallery was mistaken for a watch store. People who knew the gallery were afraid the boutique stores descending on the block had done it in. Others attempted to buy the fictional watches.

2. There is ruthless thing-a-ma-cation and commodification. As our communal relations become ventures for commodity – galleries show product, hospitals treat patients like clients, impromptu dancing for advertisement… – so too do our personal relations. Stuker's diamond, for example, was partially inspired by an ad for "memorial diamonds" made from a beloved's corpse. A body, an urn or a tombstone is not a sufficient end. Whether the grief is for the lost or our own mortality, it seems a diamond, a commodity worthy of advertisement, is more fitting. It is, like art, a way to make the person undead. But where art attempts to capture a bit of soul, a diamond captures, keeps alive, our market value.

3. Luxury items promise an absurd connection with eternity. Whereas humanity once aspired to immortality through song, now luxury products claim to be the cosmos's purveyors. One might even claim there is a competition between art and product. And that that competition is not a light affair. The universe connected to through art is not the same universe connected through product, and for advertisements to claim otherwise is absurd.

If I am to add my two cents I'd say the absurdity Stuker highlights isn't absurd enough. His watches needlessly synch with satellites, yet our cell phones (the most common timepiece these days) are constantly communicating with dozens of satellites, even GPS takes relativity into account because nanoseconds really matter for its function. His beauty products contain poisonous ingredients, yet we all have taken a smoke and chow down fast food and stick radiating electronics in our ears. We are more than willing to take poison with our pleasures. Our daily lives really do depend on the function of man made celestial objects. Even contemporary advertisements are critically self aware. They sell with a cheeky irony that says, "of course you know the promises we make are ridiculous and we're in on the joke too, but isn't it fun anyway?"

Highlighting the underbelly of our relations with capital isn't enough these days. We must not think our art and dreams can embrace just the benevolent parts of capital. We must stop waiting for the miracle that will excise ills from pleasures.

Images are details from Jeffrey Stuker's current project: Winder Detached from Conquest Automatic (1958-2008)

ESSAY: On Bradley Fox's Paintings, Part 2

On Bradley Fox’s paintings:
Part II: RETURN TO LANDSCAPES

By Sam Thurston

I met Bradley a little at a time because he was in the area. He came to a show I had in Newport in 2006. He worked at the Painted Caravan Gallery in Johnson, where he showed my work, which connected him to me as it connected him to a lot of others. I would stop by and talk – there was a nice sunny studio room attached to the gallery. Perhaps that is one reason he stopped doing still lives, when he no longer had a good studio, since that gallery folded after two years. Then he worked at Ebenezer's Bookshop in Johnson where he continued to show art. He also organized painting shows for artists at the Winding Brook Bistro and other places. He was always finding places for people to show. He was very social. I was not his best friend but after he died I felt I owed him something and also I wanted the discipline of writing to see his art more clearly. -- Sam Thurston

40 x 30"

Although I might be making mistakes because I do not have all the paintings to review and the paintings do not all have dates, it seems that around 2007 Bradley stopped doing his story pictures, including the still lives, and returned to landscapes. He took the subjective understanding he had acquired from his story pictures and his more developed color sense and used it on the Vermont landscape. He did a series of large paintings of Johnson - his town - which seems to indicate an integration, that he is no longer the outsider, except that none of the paintings contain people.

12 x 12", Barnyard, 2008

Every week during good weather he would send out an e mail informing the members of the painters group he organized, the East Johnson Plein Air Club, of directions to where and when the Sunday site would be.

Much like Pissarro he enjoyed working alongside other painters and seemed to be (selectively of course) chronicling his environment.

13 x 13", Carley’s Pond, 2009

The Vermont landscape is difficult subject matter because our landscape is as pretty as a calendar and artists produce quite stereotyped works as a result. This painting feels like a release, there is nothing cribbed about it.

4 1/2 x 12", Mini Doublewide, 2009

Bradley did find a corner of Vermont that many others ignore as seen in this trailer on a hill -- the abode of the ordinary, the hardscrabble in a unmanicured field.

13 x 13", Hogback Road Barn, 2009

Here is Bradley’s statement from a press release:

My paintings are telling stories, Stories about people I have met, wanted to meet, places they have left their mark, and sometimes about people we all want to avoid. The Tales are about relationships with each other, with their environments, with people from our pasts, with our culture, and with relationships we hope to have. In telling the tales of others and their surroundings, I explore and tell the story of myself. I create the narrative in my paintings with objects that people leave laying around in their lives. Toys, books, kitsch, trash in the environment, familiar places, and the general baggage of life are all subjects for these stories. Each object or place I choose to depict has a sense of history and time that helps define the person that owns it. It is the relationship that is revealed by the objects’ interactions that I explore in my narratives and paintings.

A NOTE FROM SAM THURSTON: If anyone sees mistakes in this article please tell me by emailing me at mkramer@sover.net. If anyone could take photos of paintings they have of Bradley’s, that would be appreciated. Photos of paintings are usually best done with even natural light, no flash, just try to make the image square. Messy backgrounds are ok because the photo can be cropped. send photos to raloon.bialek@gmail.com (because I have dial up).

NOTE: Works by Bradley Fox are still on view in Johnson at the Vermont Studio Center's Gallery II (across the street from the Red Mill Gallery), through the end of November. There are also some of Fox's pieces indefinitely at Ebeneezer's Bookshop on Main Street. -- Ed.

ESSAY: On Bradley Fox's Paintings, Part 1

On Bradley Fox’s paintings:
Part I: ACADEMIC OR SELF-REVEALING, WHICH DO YOU WISH?

By Sam Thurston

I met Bradley a little at a time because he was in the area. He came to a show I had in Newport in 2006. He worked at the Painted Caravan Gallery in Johnson, where he showed my work, which connected him to me as it connected him to a lot of others. I would stop by and talk – there was a nice sunny studio room attached to the gallery. Perhaps that is one reason he stopped doing still lives, when he no longer had a good studio, since that gallery folded after two years. Then he worked at Ebenezer's Bookshop in Johnson where he continued to show art. He also organized painting shows for artists at the Winding Brook Bistro and other places. He was always finding places for people to show. He was very social. I was not his best friend but after he died I felt I owed him something and also I wanted the discipline of writing to see his art more clearly. -- Sam Thurston

Part I: STORIES AND STILL LIVES

The instant someone dies your perspective on that person changes and with me the instant Bradley died my perspective on his painting also changed and I wanted to understand his paintings better and so compiled the following.

Bradly Fox was born in 1959 in Newport, Vermont and died in 2010 in Johnson. After High School in Newport he lived in Boston and the Boston area for 9 years (attending art school during this time), New Orleans for 6 years and New York City for 8 years. He took residencies at the Vermont Studio Center starting in 2003. He moved to Vermont in 2005 to tend to his ill father. His father, who had been a foreman of the shipping department of Butterfield Tool and Die, died in December 2006. From 2007 on Bradley lived in Johnson.

12 x 16", Sunday in the Park, 2002

The few paintings I have identified known to be before 2000 are landscapes from life. This collage dated 2002, Sunday in the Park, may mark a new direction for him, away from the straight landscape. Although it is still a landscape, it is also his subjective world, one you can walk into.

16 x 69"

This undated and untitled painting was probably done while he was still in NYC. He rejects the idea of painting as something abstract or academic, something that would not be a world you walk through. Newport is a conservative town and you suspect Bradley had trouble coming of age there in the 70’s.

24 x 24" Planning a Vacation, 2005

“My paintings are telling stories,” he wrote. Many of his paintings of this period show a “playful, childlike humor juxtaposed over something darker and more sinister” as a long time friend put it.

25 x 54", no date, untitled

In ‘telling his stories’ we are shown his childhood regressions - his trolls and such - and these can be off-putting, but he is attempting what is so difficult for artists - to paint the world they really live in, not the seen-before stereotype, the gray watered down classical ideal or the handed-down abstract formula.

24 x 72"

In this undated, untitled still life (but most likely done when he had a nice studio to work in while he helped run The Painted Caravan gallery in 2006 and 2007) he changes from saturated color to using tones. He went right back to his strong, expressive color, though. His color with its near discordant harmonies is important to his expression. One might liken it to the music of Stravinsky or Alban Berg.

Part 2 of Sam Thurston's essay, covering Fox's landscape painting, will be posted in the next few days.

NOTE: Works by Bradley Fox are still on view in Johnson at the Vermont Studio Center's Gallery II (across the street from the Red Mill Gallery), through the end of November. There are also some of Fox's pieces indefinitely at Ebeneezer's Bookshop on Main Street. -- Ed.

ESSAY: Some Thoughts on Pastel Painting

By Theodore Hoppe

I am the first to admit I know far too little about pastels. I always viewed pastel as a difficult medium to work in, perhaps without cause, since pastels are one of the most versatile media in the artworld.

Pastels are made of pure pigment that is ground into a paste with a small amount of a gum binder. It is the most permanent of all media when applied and properly framed, since there is no oil to cause darkening or cracking. Many sing the praises of pastels because of their directness, brilliance, and their ability to capture delicate lighting and nuances of color.

Pastels have been around for centuries. Their invention is attributed to the German artist, Johaim Thiele. Reserved mostly for portraits until the 1800's, they were discovered by the Impressionists, such as Vuillard, Manet, Bonnard, Renoir, and most notably Edgar Degas -- who championed them. Degas' protégée, Mary Cassatt, is credited with bringing them over to America.

My recent admiration for pastel paintings (which is the accepted terminology for this type of work) is due in large part to Mallory Rich, a Southern Vermont artist whose work was recently featured at the Skinny Pancake in Montpelier. Mallory Rich studied pastels and oils with artists such as Albert Handell and Gil Perry. Over the years she has had residencies at Great Spruce Head Island (the home of Fairfield Porter in Maine) and she has been in residence four times at the Vermont Studio Center in Johnson, Vermont.

The pastels in her recent exhibit in Montpelier focused on Vermont landscapes. There were scenes for every season in a representational style. Two Trees by the Marsh is a scene of strong summer lighting and shadow on the bows of two leaning trees against a field of tall
dried grass. Storm Coming is a beautiful perceptive rendering of the land and the sky, and dark clouds that act as the agent of change. The River in Winter was the largest work, and perhaps the most pleasing. It captures a meandering stream winding along the roadside, with the reflection of the orange light of a late day sun slipping over the neighboring hills. The scene evokes a strong sense of the Vermont landscape in winter.

"Pastels are where I started about 10 years ago. I've only been working in oils about 2 years, so it's too soon to know which will become my favorite. I am trying to transfer the mood, atmosphere, spirit of a particular place (of being in the moment) to the viewer, and pastels seem to carry mood and emotion within the medium, somehow. Or perhaps it's the fact that with the many layers of pastel you can apply, you can more easily convey that spirit through the depth and layers of color. A very light swipe of a particular stick of Diane Townsend's hand-rolled pastels, for example, can convey that momentary kiss of sunlight on a distant field."

Hay in the Barn looks to some viewers as if it's drawn wrong," says the artist. "I was visiting a farm that had been in the same family for more than 100 years -- a working, active farm. The original barn was still serving well, as a storage place for this year's crop of hay. The window I was seeing had obviously been replaced, but so many years ago that now it was loose, but in an entirely different way from the sagging original window frame. The whole scene said time and hard work and usefulness to me." There are other such earnest scenes observed by the artist; Farm Shed shows a well-used farm tractor parked beside some outer-building, a familiar image that harbors a bit of a nostalgic feel.

Mallory Rich has been honored for her artistic efforts by being included in many juried shows in Southern Vermont and elsewhere, She has participated in the National Fall Exhibit at the Southern Vermont Arts Center (SVAC) in Manchester, Vermont, as well the Vermont Pastel Society Invitational at SVAC. Let's all hope she returns to exhibit in the Central Vermont area again soon.

You can find her work on line at: http://www.malloryrich.com/

Images, top to bottom:
The River in Winter, 24 x 30", pastel on paper
Farm Shed
Hay in the Barn, 24 x 30", pastel on paper