Nominally, this column is supposed to be about visual art, and I’ll get to that with some information about artist talks and gallery shows.
But visual art takes innumerable forms. One of my favorite pieces of art is a terra cotta mug thrown and glazed by Woodstock potter Veronica Delay. It’s beautifully decorated, fits perfectly in my hand and makes a strong cup of tea more enjoyable.
So I am not wandering far afield in taking note of Vol. VI of Vermont Almanac. I’m a bit late to this party, since the sixth volume of the almanac came out at the end of November. I finally got around to picking up a copy this week and it might be the loveliest volume yet of this small but mighty publication.
Previous volumes have felt almost a bit overstuffed, but this one is a bit looser, and a bit shorter. The visual explorations are all over the lot, starting with still life cover art by Susan Bull Riley and realist paintings for each season by Heidi Broner. Both artists are from Montpelier.
The almanac’s roots are here in the Upper Valley. It was founded by former staffers of Northern Woodlands, a magazine once headquartered in Corinth, but now published in Lyme. Hartford farmer Chuck Wooster presides over the publication’s small board.
Each year’s almanac documents the previous year, starting in the fall and working through to the following summer. Stories and imagery range from contemporary farming practices to foraging to history to essays and poems. It draws in a wide range of contributors, which this year includes the celebrated novelist and poet Julia Alvarez, poets Sidney Lea and Verandah Porche and nonfiction writer Leath Tonino.
This year’s edition is full of Upper Valley stories, including a piece about Behind the Times, the Vershire newspaper founded by novelist Annie Proulx in the 1980s, before she got famous and moved out west. There’s a piece about Vershire broom-maker Meghan Carroll and another about Junction Fiber Mill in White River Junction.
Unrelated to the Upper Valley, the opening piece is one of the best Vermont essays I’ve read in a long while. Editor Dave Mance wrote about the former logging town of Glastenbury, in Bennington County. After some disappearances in the regenerated forests there, people have come to claim that it’s haunted. Mance dispels some of that mythology.
Back to the visuals. I often find images of the natural world a bit boring. They can seem flattened in a way that renders them dull. But on pages 66 and 67 are three photographs of a giant flock of more than 3,000 snow buntings taken by Catherine Holland along the Connecticut River in Newbury. One is of just a slick of birds, some blurred, some in sharp contrast, all dizzying movement smeared across the page.
Vermont Almanac is undersung, like a bird you can’t hear, much less photograph, unless you know where to find it. Copies of Vol. VI, and previous volumes, are available at local bookstores (though not at Barnes and Noble), and through its website, vermontalmanac.org ($25).
In the galleries
Matt Brown Fine Art, in Lyme, will hold a series of “Gatherings at the Gallery,” starting with one from 1 to 3 p.m. on Saturday titled “Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.” The next two are slated for March 14 and April 11, on the subjects of “Artists’ Sketchbooks,” and “Art Heals, How?” respectively. These events are free and open to the public and are meant to foster conversation about art, led by the gallery’s namesake artist, an exceptional printmaker who renders the New England landscape in the style of master Japanese printmakers. For more information, go to mattbrownfa.com.
A suite of exhibitions is closing after Saturday at AVA Gallery and Art Center in Lebanon. I caught a glimpse of “These Beautiful Hands: A Tribute to Our Elders,” by Juni Van Dyke, and “Beasts of Eden” by Eva Sturm-Gross and meant to go back for the longer immersion that both shows deserve. Sturm-Gross is slated to give a talk from 5:30 to 6:30 Thursday evening, Feb. 12. Admission to AVA exhibitions is free, as is Thursday’s talk, but all nonprofits need donations.