As someone who’s been going to look at art in the Upper Valley on and off for the past 20 years or so, I often experience a disconnect. There’s a lot of visual art out there, and a lot of it is pretty great, so where are the viewers?
It could be that I’m going to look during the workday, so I’m missing the evening events at places like AVA Gallery in Lebanon or the Main Street Museum. When I’m viewing art, I’m on the clock.
But I don’t think that’s the only issue. At the recent opening for Two Rivers Printmaking Studio’s Founders Show, I was struck by how few new faces I saw. How can local art draw in people new to the art community?
“I’m still trying to figure that out,” Lars Hasselblad Torres, executive director at AVA Gallery and Art Center, said in a phone interview this week.
AVA has a mailing list of 6,000 to 8,000 people, which is a substantial base of support, but at art openings, Hasselblad Torres said, AVA’s staff often see the same familiar faces.
“Artists bring their own following,” he added. “We try to work with artists to encourage them to bring their own groups.”
A recent show of work by Eva Sturm-Gross, an artist in her 20s who grew up mostly in the Upper Valley, packed the galleries, Hasselblad Torres said.
Otherwise, though, younger audiences are “a little bit harder to reach,” he said.
The annual show of high school art brings in a crowd of teens and teachers, but where are the young people who work at the hospital or the college? Skiing, I suspect. The Upper Valley was sporty before it was arty and retains that old bias.
Part of the reason I wanted to ask this question is because I think Upper Valley residents should go look at Upper Valley art, in the same way that I think New Englanders should read the region’s great writers. We live in fragmented times, with more options for education and entertainment than we probably need. It’s easier to go home on a Friday evening and see what’s streaming than to go to an art opening. The difference is that the artists are our neighbors.
Fragmentation is the norm, though, and even broad-based arts organizations have to work around it.
“When you’re building social environments and social spaces, I think people want to be seen and interact with their peers, with their affinity groups,” Hasselblad Torres said. So maybe that means AVA should do singles nights or create “a more tailored experience for small groups.”
Or maybe the art itself is a reason viewers don’t come to the galleries. If AVA wants to attract broader audiences, maybe it needs to exhibit art that expresses identity or lived experience, rather than landscapes, Hasselblad Torres said.
AVA plans its exhibitions 12 to 18 months in advance, and given how quickly the culture changes, shows put on the calendar the year before might not seem relevant once they hit the gallery walls.
But I don’t think that’s what visual art, or art in general is for.
“There’s nothing like standing in front of a painting, or a sculpture,” Samantha Eckert, AVA’s curator and exhibition coordinator, said in an interview this week. To go look at art requires some deliberation. It forces our eyes to move more slowly than when we’re working, or watching a film, or scrolling on a phone. We’re in touch with the artist, completing the circle between the maker and the viewer, where a single brushstroke or gesture can captivate us.
AVA started holding sessions titled “Learning to Look,” intended to demystify the art-viewing experience, last fall, and they were a modest success, Eckert said. “We’re going to start those up again in the spring,” she added.
Audiences for shows at Two Rivers Printmaking Studio, in White River Junction, tend to fluctuate, Rachel Gross, chair of the studio’s board and a longtime artist-member of the studio, said in an email. (She’s also Eva Sturm-Gross’ mother.)
Group shows and holiday shows tend to bring in more viewers, which is also true at AVA. Being able to show work is an important benefit to the artists, and the studio encourages them to reach out to their social circles, Gross said.
Maybe it’s possible to encourage more people to go see their local art by asking the question in a different way: Can looking at art made here open residents’ eyes to what life here looks like? I’d like to think so.
Here are a few such opportunities:
In addition to the annual high school show, AVA exhibits work by Lyme artist Greg Gorman, whose paintings of Tuscan landscapes range from the figurative to the abstract. “Abstracting the Landscape: In Search of the Essence,” is on view through April 25. Gorman will give a talk about his work at 3 p.m. on Saturday, March 21 at AVA.
The annual MUD (season) exhibition is on view at Artistree Gallery, in South Pomfret through April 18. The title of this show is on the nose: It contains art about the grimmest yet most hopeful time of year, the spring awakening of the frozen ground, the sap, the bears and everything else that’s been dormant since November.
“Meandering Mold: Messages from a garden library,” an exhibition of photographs by Lyn Swett Miller, is on view in the Mezzanine Gallery of Woodstock’s Norman Williams Public Library this month and next. Miller, a Quechee resident, has been taking photographs of compost, including composted books, for the past decade. An opening reception is slated for 2 to 3:30 p.m. Saturday, March 21.