Home and How We Make It: An Exhibition
Join River Arts for this collaborative exhibition, defining visually and conceptually what “home” means through miniatures, woodworking, textiles, and paintings. Over 30 artists, organizations, and students have been invited to be a part of this exhibition to create miniature "rooms". From minimalist spaces to rooms packed with all of the comforts, color and design one can imagine. This show will include paintings of home, a collection of artwork from Pamela Wilson, and student artwork from the Vermont Woodworking School. Reception for this exhibition is Thursday, February 23, 530pm-7:30pm and will run until June 1, 2023.
Reception
Thursday, February 23rd, 5:30pm-7:30pm
Exhibition runs until June 1, 2023
Room Narratives
Room#1 Beth Liberman
And you shall love.
On the doorway we bind these words
As a reminder
As an aspiration
Coming
Or going
Love
We teach of generations past
To the generations carrying us into the future
Home holds memory
And comfort
And promise
Around the table
we gather to celebrate
To sing the stories
And light the lights
And taste the sweetness of
Being together
Being one
The smell of matzah ball soup
Is love
And joy
And home
Matzah ball soup tastes like home
Room #2 Patty Orgain
I am a small person and I love small, cozy environments. This little house has many of the comforting features of my actual home. Stove,
wide-board floor, comfy bed, pictures of the people I love.
I invite you to imagine whose home this might be. Who lives here? Would you like to?
In loving memory of my Aunt Marj.
Room #3 Frank Woods
I am trying to imagine and represent an outdoor living space that is important to me. In front of you, in the Gaspésie region of Québec on Lighthouse Bay on the south shore of the St. Lawrence River, is the view from our deck. During the quarantine period in June 2020 and again June 2021, I have drawn this view more than 30 times. The drawings led to a half dozen paintings, bits and pieces of which are presented here. Walnut is the dog.
Room #4 Caroline McKinney
Home is where the hair is.
Room #5 John Sargent
It seems as if our time within the digital world is ever increasing. The distractions of compelling imagery and sounds emanating from our living rooms serve to alienate us from the obvious. Our lives are out there in a world beyond the windows and doors. Home is only as safe as we make it.
Room #6 Selina Cote
Ce n'est pas une maison explores a dream landscape inspired by Rene Magritte. It draws on paradox and play. It speaks to the synergy of our conscious and unconscious mind, and its relationship to the artistic process. My home is my imagination.
Room #7 Lisa Wolfgang
My mother preserves a scent in the corner cupboard
We are not to open it
My grandmother, long passed, still lingers in a fragrance inside
"Sometimes when I need comfort
I open the cabinet and it smells like her
And I am home again"
Room #8 Peter Dreissigacker
My project became something of an "other person's house" rather than any sort of ideal of mine. I think it says more about the nature of a project that takes you for a ride. Starting out with no preconceived idea, I began this by collecting interesting materials and they lead the way to this room that I would describe as "loft modern". Nothing at all like my home.
Room#9 Natalie Carr
It's special people and pets that make places feel like home
Room #10 Jude Prashaw
Dreaming me Home
I’m from far away, perhaps we all are.
My journey is one of returning home to myself.
My dreamtime has helped me steer the boat toward shore, toward Home.
Room #11 Michael Stanley
Home is the safe place where I can find comfort in a good book. Home is where I can let my imagination run wild as I chase dragons.
Room #12 Daniel Zeese
Home is a place that is being built and taken apart.
Rooms #13/#14 Avalon Styles/Clarina Howard Nichols Center
At the Clarina Howard Nichols Center, “home” is in some ways at the heart of all we do. It is clear in our vision, to create a safe, and violence-free community where all individuals are empowered to thrive, and is an integral part of our direct service work to end domestic and sexual violence through advocacy, education, prevention, and social change. Embedded within all we do is the belief that every person has a right to a safe, violence-free home.
At our local shelter and community center, that feeling of “home” has manifested in group spaghetti dinners, late-night talks, sharing a mug of coffee, hugs, and having a safe, cozy bed to sleep in. For our survivors, in their own words, “home” means kindness, patience, light comfort, gentleness, and warmth. Hygge and dogs. Safety and love.
Room #15 Margo (as narrated by her art instructor Jude Prashaw)
When I asked Margo about her piece, there's a well in it and I believe an animal. Home for Margo is the outdoors. She loved the country in Texas, and she says she paints what she feels.
*Margo lives in a residential care home that has recently been sold. All residents must find new homing options.
Room #16 Chiara No
My space holds happy memories of past dwellings—the oddly spaced window from an attic apartment in a Victorian style home in Baltimore, a rugs nailed to the walls instead of wallpaper or pictures from an apartment in Philadelphia I shares with my best friend, and pillowed chairs instead of a sofa because I could not be bothered to buy a sofa because I knew I was just going to move again another apartment and again another city. I live in Vermont in a forever home but I hold close to those dwelt memories because they made me who I am today.
Room #18 Hasso Ewing
My home is the earth
I bring as much of the outside in
as my heart allows
The dark protects me
I may be the only one
that can not see you
Room #17 Renée Mitchell
I went to an estate sale and bought two large bins of fabrics, ribbons, and trims. My room is made entirely of the things that were in those bins. My thought of home–getting a glimpse into someone else’s life and what their home was from their estate sale.
Room #19 Peggy Smith
I decided not to do what “HOME” personally meant to me but the way in which I have been a witness to how other people view their homes. It is a deeply personal response that many people face when they are thinking of selling their home or their kids are pushing them to sell their house.
I have depicted what I see in many older Vermonters who do not want to leave their homes. This depiction is not an economic representation. I have witnessed this situation with both wealthy and low income people.
These people do not see themselves as hoarders, but their home represents “collections” they have acquired during their lifetime. Of course, their are people with mental illness that live like this but in most cases I have found these are everyday people who welcome you into their space, always apologizing for the chaos. In many cases, they don’t have the energy or money to keep up with the cleaning and repairs.
This home represents a safe haven for that person. They have a lifetime of memories surrounding them. They are comfortable with no one dictating how to live. They can have their animals, in this case, cats. They can walk outside in the fresh air and eat what they want. If they are able, they can have a garden and grow plants. They feel independent and have control over their lives and their environment. I am sure you have heard people say, “I am only leaving this house in a box.” This is exactly how they feel…secure in their habitat.
This is my salute to these people who we judge because they do not live as society expects them to live. I salute them for their courage, their tenacity, and their independence.
Room #20 Ellen Urman
“From country to cottage to condo, when I think of home, cozy and comfort come to mind (ok, also cooking and cleaning!)
As our “WHIRLD” whirls through the strange newnesses we are witnessing, that sense of comfort has been replaced by the feelings of “Refuge, retreating from it all - Sanctuary.”
Room #21 Jenn Chittick
For me, home is both a physical place and a feeling. It's familiar. It coincides with our memories of days long gone, our present, and our feathery dreams of the future. It evolves with us and because of us.
When I started this project, I asked my adult children what home meant to them. The answers I received were connected sensory memories and their feelings. The way that the house smells when they walk in and can immediately tell what is for dinner or the faint background noise of my most recent playlist. My son stated, “Not the sound cheesy, and I don’t think that this will help you with this project, but you, mom, are home.”
As a mother, I’ve worked very hard to cultivate a sense of home that will outlive me and the physical structure that I’ve created for my family. It is with the intangible that I’ve attempted to plant seeds into my children that will root and connect mom’s home to the homes that they create for themselves and their families. Using music, the aroma of coffee or food, and consistent traditions I’ve purposefully linked sights, sounds, smells, and feelings to moments in time spent together that have the potential to carry on with or without me.
I chose to create a room that reflects my current
Room #22 Michael Manke
Pepper’s World, inspired from an actual corner of our little red house - a spot where our youngest daughter Pepper loves to draw and paint and imagine worlds that exist from the outside-in.
Room #23 Barbara Backus and Carol Griswold Davis
We love to craft and it’s important to have a well stocked craft room with many supplies available ready to be used when an inspiration arises. Crafting has a positive effect on mind-health and well-being. Crafting keeps us creative-thinking and motivated with every new challenge.
WE HAVE COME A LONG WAY SINCE THE SEARS CATALOG AND PAPER DOLLS.
Room# 24 Amatista “Ami” Keller-Angelo Grade 12, Peoples Academy
My concept of home is coziness and warmth. To me, home feels like warm colors, wood stoves, knit and felted items and lots of books. This diorama is an extension of my AP art concentration which is also based around the idea of home. If you look close enough you’ll find miniature replicas of my previous concentration pieces and placed them throughout my room.
Room #25 Maple Newlin Grade 11, Peoples Academy
My experience of home has always been defined by people and not necessarily the place. My home is with my people. Home for me is the places the people I love inhabit. As I grow older places that feel like home become further from my actual house; the library; the woods behind my house; my school’s art room. So I made a room where I could imagine spending time with the people I love.
Room #26 Laurie Burnham
My most inspiring home is my Canadian cabin on a remote lake, accessible only by canoe. For more than 60 summers I have lived happily without running water, electricity, or roads. Never deprived, I have shared the silence with the sound of my beating heart, sights and calls of loons and any other bird you can dream of; the rustling and utterances of moose, bears and wolves, campers' songs and murmurs at far off neighbors' retreats, soft strokes of canoes paddling at daybreak or divers in for a skinny dip across the lake, sounds of chopping wood, a crackling bonfire, wind on the lake, maybe rain and thunder clouds. Everything I need and desire for my solo stays (except for the unseen stack of books) are portrayed in this diorama titled Windfall.
Room #27 Tricia Follert
Home…my place of solitude and togetherness, the joy of having a space of my own. My room represents my home, artsy, rough around the edges and simplistic.
Room #28 Rick Loya
Our home will always be the place for which we feel the deepest affection, no matter where we
are.
“Home is where the Heart is.”
Room #29 Sarah Lee Terrat
I feel like I’m the modern equivalent of the Old Woman Who Lived in the Shoe…She had so many dogs, she didn’t know what to do. I live in a small house in the woods with a loud, crazy, hairy gang (or pack?) who are great company and keep me laughing
every day. Did you know that dog hair makes great insulation?