For a long time, the focus on visual art in the Upper Valley has been on institution building.
It’s worth remembering that the Hood Museum of Art opened in 1985, less than 40 years ago, and AVA Gallery and Art Center will celebrate its 50th anniversary next year.
That’s old enough, though, for a generation or more of students to have grown up with arts opportunities that weren’t available in their parents’ era. Some of them, now in their 30s and 40s, have come back, in part because the art landscape is large and diverse enough to support a wider range of ventures.
The latest example is a pop-up show opening Friday night in White River Junction. Organized by Hanover native Jared Quinton, who studied art history at Williams College and has worked as a curator and writer on art since then in New York and Chicago, the exhibition brings work by five artists, all from outside the area, into the former home of Tourist Gallery at 89 S. Main St. A reception is planned for 4 to 7 p.m. as part of White River Junction’s First Friday, and the show is on view through April 10.
What Quinton’s pop-up show, and the brief existence of Tourist before it, tells me is that there’s room among the big organizations for smaller, more ephemeral enterprises. And to see Quinton, a 2006 Hanover High School graduate, present some work close to home is a cheering site.
“The pandemic has made me rethink the idea that to work in contemporary art you have to be in a big city,” he said.
But it helps to have those big-city connections. After studying art history at Williams, Quinton worked for institutions in Mexico City and Toronto as well as the Whitney Museum in New York and the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, among others. And he’s written for a wide range of art publications.
“The through-line through all of that is just building a huge network of artists,” he said.
These are artists he’s met, but also those whose work he admires.
The White River Junction show features three artists from Vermont — Arista Alanis, of Johnson; Neil Berger, of Shelburne; and Clark Derbes, of Charlotte — one from Williamstown, Mass., Mariel Capanna, and one from New York’s Hudson Valley, Lily Prince.
Quinton writes that these artists are all working “loosely in the fauvist landscape tradition.” The show’s title, “Mountains at Collioure,” is drawn from a 1905 painting by André Derain, who joined with Henri Matisse to establish fauvism, an early-20th-century movement in European painting that featured bold colors and a turn away from realistic representation.
This show follows a stint in Williamstown last year, where Quinton ran another pop-up gallery, Poker Flats, from June through October. He’s now living in Hanover.
There is room in the art world for smaller, short-term operations, he said.
“There’s a lot to be said for a model that’s a little more nimble and that allows you just to occupy a space,” he said. His generation, he noted, struggles to find a foothold amid skyrocketing property values, so using the former barbershop recently vacated by Tourist also is a necessity. He called it “an opportunity to do something meaningful without the burden of having to own so much capital.”
This model is becoming more common. Norwich native Ben Finer and Bevan Dunbar opened Kishka Gallery in White River Junction last June, and Tourist was run by Heidi Conner, who grew up in Chelsea, and Chad Etting.
Though he discovered the power of art at Williams, Quinton was primed for it by his mother, who was a docent at the Hood and took him and his sister to museums when they traveled.
For now, he said, he plans to take it one show at a time.
“At the end of the day, I’m really excited to show five artists whose work I really admire,” he said.
Gallery hours are Friday, Saturday and Sunday noon to 5 p.m., and by appointment. Email info@jaredquinton.net for more information or to schedule an appointment.
Kishka Gallery holds a reception Friday evening for Norwich-based ceramicist Megan Bogonovich, who makes vibrant botanical forms that aren’t exactly to scale. She’s written an artist statement that’s pleasingly out of left field. Favorite sentence: “Introducing speed to my practice has heightened the oddball-ness of the compositions.” You have to read the whole thing, at kishka.org to find out what she means by “introducing speed.”
BarnArts resumes its Annual Masquerade Jazz & Funk Winter Carnival on Saturday night in Barnard Town Hall. The last one took place March 7, 2020, at the end of the beforetimes.
This weekend’s runs from 6 to 10 p.m., starting with jazz from saxophonist Michael Zsoldos and guitarist Jason Ennis, and from Sultans of Saul, a quartet that plays compositions by Woodstock’s Sonny Saul. The main event, though, is New York City’s Nation Beat, which fuses Brazilian rhythms with New Orleans horns.
This is an all-ages event. Tickets are $20 for adults, $10 for students and free for kids 6 and under. Go to barnarts.org for tickets, or get them at the door.
Alex Hanson can be reached at ahanson@vnews.com or 603-727-3207.
