While all animals are special to their owners, some tug on your heartstrings just a little harder than others.
That was case for Sheryl Trainor and her dog Alfred, a rescue hound who charmed staff and visitors alike at AVA Gallery and Art Center in Lebanon.
“He was a very special dog in that when he met somebody he would immediately lock eyes on them, which most dogs don’t normally do, and it was like he was seeing into your soul when he did that,” said Trainor, of White River Junction. “He was one of the most special dogs I’ve ever known, and it wasn’t anything special about him except for his ability to connect with humans.”
Alfred died in June 2019 after being diagnosed with lymphoma, and beginning Saturday “Shadowing Alfred: An AVA Dog Show” will honor his memory and those of other good dogs who meant the world to their owners.
“There’s a lot of lovely stories that are going to be in this exhibition,” Trainor said.
During the 14 months Trainor and Alfred had together, they went everywhere as a pair. Alfred had separation anxiety.
“I changed my entire life for this dog,” Trainor said. “My social life became him.”
Alfred was a constant presence at AVA, where Trainor works.
“The whole office almost became involved in taking care of him,” she said. “It was an experience being greeted by him and he was good with every human being he met, whether it was a toddler who was coming in for Toddler Chaos or it was a developmentally disabled adult coming to Art Lab or people in Senior Art.
“They just fell in love with him. Everybody fell in love with him who met him.”
During his lifetime, Trainor kept up an Instagram page for Alfred. Her friend, Barbara Carr, asked if she could use a photograph as inspiration for a reduction woodcut print.
“All I asked was that she show it to me after she was done with it,” Trainor said. It is this piece, “Shadowing Alfred” that gave the exhibit its title.
After Alfred died, Derek Bell did an oil painting of Alfred as a tribute.
“It’s of Alfred giving me the stink eye because I’ve just taken one more damn picture of him,” Trainor said. “He was very photogenic, and I was always taking photos of him.”
A tribute wall of photographs and other works of art depicting Alfred began to grow, giving rise to the idea of the exhibit to honor Alfred and all the dogs that people have loved throughout their lifetime.
“I guess I just started thinking so many people in the Upper Valley love dogs, so many artists I know have dogs,” Trainor said. “They also have a rich history in art. The response to this show for the call for artists has been amazing.”
The exhibit will be up through Oct. 23. People can come by when the gallery is open or call to schedule personal viewings. It will also be available online at avagallery.org.
“They ask for food and shelter and some exercise, and they give us so much back,” Trainor said. “People love dogs. People connect with dogs.”
Here’s a look at what other Upper Valley art institutions have going on:
The museum was gearing up to open its “Contemporary Native Ceramics” exhibit when Dartmouth’s Hood Museum of Art closed to the public due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
But one part of the exhibit is still visible to the public through the vitrine window: “Every One (#MMIWQT Bead Project)” by Cannupa Hanska Luger which features more than 4,000 handmade beads representing cases of missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls in Canada, which form a face when grouped together.
“We felt as those we could contribute a little bit to campus even during a quiet time by having it in the window and having it lit,” said Nils Nadeau, associate director, strategy and external relations at the Hood.
The museum is exploring software that will allow visitors to tour the museum from afar and hope to have something in place this fall.
“We are developing some capacity to host virtual exhibitions,” Nadeau said.
They’ve also kept busy with virtual events including gallery and artist talks, children’s story times and meditation. The museum now has its own YouTube channel where staff speak about works of art. Upcoming programs can be found at hoodmuseum.dartmouth.edu.
“That’s been a nice way to both sustain some engagement with our audiences and build a digital archive,” Nadeau said.
The annual Dr. Allen W. Root Distinguished Contemporary Art Lectureship will take place virtually from 4:45-5:45 p.m. on Friday, Oct. 2. It will feature Jasmine Wahi, Holly Block Social Justice Curator at the Bronx Museum, and Yesomi Umolu, director and curator of Logan Center Exhibitions at the Reva and David Logan Center for the Arts at the University of Chicago. The event and will be moderated by Jessica Hong, associate curator of global contemporary art at the Hood.
“The root lecture is going to be a very exciting event,” Nadeau said. “It talks about bringing social justice to museum practice.”
During the pandemic, more staff have started working on creating digital programming and community engagement.
“It’s presented an opportunity, and we are building resources and capacity that we will continue to develop and enjoy even as we return to the spaces and reopen it again,” Nadeau said of the pandemic.
Long River Gallery, located in downtown White River Junction, has reopened after being recently renovated.
On display now is “Alicia Kravitz: Metamorphosis.” Kravitz is a photographer who grew up in Hartford and works in New York City.
“I conceived of this project to express the disparate impulses I, and I’m sure many others, are experiencing during the pandemic,” Kravitz wrote in an artist statement. “Darkness and destruction mixed with hope and light. … The images are a meditation on this kaleidoscopic range of emotion during a global emergency.”
It will be up through Nov. 30 and a small, in-person reception is planned for October.
“She came up here for the pandemic to live with her parents,” said Kathy Detzer, co-owner of the gallery. Kravitz reached out to Long River about holding a show. “She sent us her work, and we just thought it was so unique. We love her work.”
Since the pandemic, they’ve worked on painting and changing up the gallery space.
“It has been so fun because when we were back here painting and sawing, people were poking their noses in,” Detzer said, which she described as “so inspiring.”
The gallery is open Wednesday-Saturday. Like other spaces, masks are required. More information can be found at longrivergallery.com.
“Having the gallery open up again, having people on the streets, makes me feel we’re getting back to the new normal,” Detzer said.
Visitors can now stop by the South Pomfret-based nonprofit organization to view “Into the Woods, Into the Deep (from the park through the pandemic),” an exhibit featuring works of art that Margaret Dwyer painted during her artist-in-residence stints at Marsh-Billings-Rockefeller National Park in 2019 and 2020. It will be through Sept. 26. They held an in-person opening in August.
“We had nice weather so we had a tent outside where people could mingle outside while certain amounts of people went through the exhibit,” said Marie Cross, director of marketing and communications at ArtisTree. “It seemed to work really well, and people were excited to get out and go to a gallery opening.”
Visitors can stop by during open hours to view the exhibit or schedule an appointment in addition to viewing it online. Dwyer also participated in a video tour of the exhibit where she discussed her works.
“The artwork reveals how she dealt with and how she felt about everything shutting down and … the anxiety of being home during the pandemic,” Cross said.
Next up is “Local Color 2020,” which opens on Oct. 2 and features pieces inspired by autumn.
“Our gallery has three different rooms and three different exits as well, so we’re really set up for having airflow and traffic and enough space for people to be separate from each other,” Cross said. “It happened to work out in our favor during this particular pandemic. Hopefully we never have another one.”
Like Dwyer’s exhibit, Local Color will also be available online at artistreevt.org.
“I think people are grateful to be able to see the artwork even if they can’t attend in person,” Cross said.
Liz Sauchelli can be reached at esauchelli@vnews.com or 603-727-3221.
