2021 SEASON
CALAVERAS DE CORONAVIRUS
An installation by Jason Montgomery and Attack Bear Press
ON VIEW
APRIL 9 - MAY 16
CALAVERAS DE CORONAVIRUS is an installation art piece composed of 26,000 numbered paper postcards depicting calaveras skulls hung on jute string. Each single card represents 15 people in the United States of America who have lost their lives due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Upon entering CALAVERAS DE CORONAVIRUS one is presented with a cave-like enclosure created by the hanging strings of printed postcards. Fifteen ceramic calaveras skulls, all hand-painted by Indigenous and Latinx individuals in Western Massachusetts, are placed in the center of the space to represent the 15 individuals per card.
Jason Montgomery will also use this exhibit to explore his cultural heritage by incorporating 15 of his hand coiled low fire Ipai (Kumeyaay) terra-cotta pots. During this exhibit, he will present three "pop-up" pottery workshops at the gallery in the street-facing display case windows. Jason will occupy this space as his Luchador character and craft a series of hand coiled pots that will then be sold to support Neftali Duran's reforestation project in Oxaca, Mexico.
This installation will create a place of remembrance, memorial, and community healing. It will further introduce, and expand recognition of unrepresented BIPOC artists in our region, especially Chicano and Indigenous art in New England.
Jason R. Montgomery (JRM), is a Chicano/Indigenous Californian writer, painter, and playwright from El Centro, California. In 2016, along with Poet Alexandra Woolner, and illustrator Jen Wagner, JRM founded Attack Bear Press in Easthampton, MA. Jason’s work engages the cross-section of Chicano/Indigenous identity, cultural hybridization, post-colonial reconstruction, and political agency. His writing and visual art bridges the aesthetics and feel from the early cubist collage movement and the Russian abstract movement of the 1920,s with living and historical Native/Indigenous Californian and Chicano art traditions to explore the Post-colonial narrative through active synthesis and guided (re) construction. Along with numerous grants from the Mass Cultural Council and the Community Foundation of Western Mass, Jason is the recipient of both the New England Foundation for the Arts Spatial Justice for Public Arts, and Collective Imagination for Spatial Justice Grants.
CALAVERAS DE CORONAVIRUS is funded with a generous grant from the New England Foundation for the Arts.
SOCIAL MEDIUM
An installation by Pamela Hersch
ON VIEW
MAY 28 - JULY 4
SOCIAL MEDIUM is an installation that invites viewers and participants to consider the power of individual action to affect visible, positive change in the environment surrounding themselves and others. During a time of profound disruption and unrest in our day-to-day lives, SOCIAL MEDIUM offers the opportunity to reconsider the value and meaning of our interactions with others, whether digital or in close physical proximity. It provides space for participants to step away from their regular perception of presence and action into one where even simple, organic hand movements can bring beauty, color, and interest to a space and to the collective experience of a group of individuals.
“As we return to some semblance of “normality”—now that we are able to go out and have in-person social interactions—I think it’s important to give special attention to how we impact others and to try to use this to improve the lived experience of ourselves and those around us. My intention with putting this piece together is to represent the transition to this new normal and to create space for it. Participants’ reflections will be projected on a 10- by 9-foot screen. There will be different “looks” from which participants can select an option, and one person will be able to modify certain parameters in each scene using a sensor that reads hand gestures. The idea is that a group of people will be looking at themselves interacting with others on a screen while standing 6 feet apart, and the individual who stands in front of the sensor will have the ability to affect everyone else’s reflection by adding color and moving it around or increasing the intensity of an effect.”
“Our lack of awareness of the far-reaching effects of our actions may cause us to underestimate the potential power that even seemingly small actions can wield. As the American psychiatrist Irvin David Yalom writes in his book Staring at the Sun, ‘The rippling effect refers to the fact that each of us creates—often without our conscious intent or knowledge—concentric circles of influence that may affect others for years, even generations. That is, the effect we have on other people is in turn passed on to others, much as the ripples in a pond go on and on until they're no longer visible but continuing at a nano level.’ This installation aims to provide us with an opportunity to witness how even a simple gesture can affect several people in our proximity immediately. And maybe whoever visits SOCIAL MEDIUM will take something positive with them, and that will somehow be transmitted to some of the living beings they encounter as they continue along their individual paths.”
“Never underestimate the power of a small group of committed people to change the world. In fact, it is the only thing that ever has.” ~ Margaret Mead
ON BEING SEEN 👀
An installation by Mac Pierce and Christina Balch
ON VIEW
JULY 16 - AUGUST 22, 2021
The INSTALLATION SPACE presents On Being Seen 👀, an installation by Mac Pierce and Christina Balch exploring surveillance, data privacy, and the ambiguity of technology-based laws and rights.
Balch and Pierce examine the surveillance state across public and private spaces with an emphasis on people’s compliance and complacency in their own surveillance. They ask visitors to consider their own role in big tech’s power over our lives and what it means for the next generation.
👀 Mac Pierce considers how our lives have come increasingly under surveillance in public spaces. Cameras are common on many street corners and police use invasive technology with little oversight. Every action can be monitored, recorded, and judged by the state. Smile, you’re on camera!
👀 Christina Balch navigates the similarly insidious nature of data tracking on personal devices that track every click, tap, swipe, and geo-located step. Big tech and big businesses collect trillions of data bytes from their consumers every day—even from babies.
Balch and Pierce commissioned sound artist Giuliana Funkhouser to create a unique soundscape for the installation experience.
O, STONE, BE NOT SO
An installation by Studio HHH
ON VIEW
SEPTEMBER 3 -
OCTOBER 10, 2021
This exhibition explores two histories of North Adams: that of industry and that of art.
Upon entering the gallery, visitors are confronted by a giant black sculptural object snaking through the space, dividing the gallery in two, and governing the flow of visitors through the space. This shape is loosely modeled from the shape of the negative space between the solid marble rock of Natural Bridge State Park in North Adams.
The installation is comprised of two fundamental elements. Firstly, two large maps tell the story of the rich history of manufacturing and industry in North Adams, and how this rich history has paved the way for the rise of a new economic engine in North Adams, art. The relatively new presence of the art community is contributing to a fundamental shift and a new sense of place for North Adams, but has seemingly left the City in a state of split identity.
O, Stone, Be Not So explores this history through the process of "mapping" the complex patterns of human activity over time. Each map shows the density of built structures and how the large mill buildings, relics of past industrial activity, have provided new opportunity and growth.
The second component of this installation explores the tension between opposites, between seemingly divergent forces, by inverting the negative space between the colossal marble rock of Natural Bridge into a positive shape, a solid object. This protruding form is intended to appear distinctly opposite from the dense, white marble - this volume is black, translucent, and lightweight.
This tension is also recognized in the title O, Stone, Be Not So, a palindrome in which the same series of letters appear both forward and backward. Can we ask a stone to no longer be a stone? By inverting the balanced dualism of negative space into a positive shape, this installation invites visitors to question ostensibly contrary forces; density and lightness, presence and absence, certainty and uncertainty, and to examine the nearly universal desire to change that which is opposite, convert those who are opposing.
Studio HHH is a multidisciplinary design studio located in Cambridge, MA, led by artist and architectural designer Vanessa Till Hooper. The studio specializes in large scale interactive installations, exploring how interactive art has the capacity to empower the viewer with agency, voice, and choice. Studio HHH will soon be expanding beyond Cambridge, and opening an additional office in North Adams, MA.
Vanessa Till Hooper | Studio HHH
ALL that moves
A video installation by Allison Maria Rodriguez
ON VIEW
OCTOBER 22 -
NOVEMBER 28, 2021
all that moves is an immersive multi-channel video installation exploring themes of physical and spiritual interconnection within hidden worlds.
Utilizing the site of Churchill Manitoba – right at the arctic’s edge – as a foundation, this work bears witness to the story embedded in the landscape. From the unexpected beauty of an arctic summer, to the life cycle of water fleas, this work celebrates the artistry of the overlooked while also testifying to the urgent necessity of looking closer.
The North is a place often forgotten by the rest of the world, but it is here that it is possible to see the impact of climate change most clearly. The fatal flaws of a colonial world view are spotlighted against a stark tundra – remnants from thoughtless actions to genocide hold visceral energy in a place seemingly unmarred by human intervention.
Reflecting the place itself, the installation is a quiet meditation on our collective oneness and a testament that our stories, and our futures, are eternally linked. All materials used in the work were gathered during an Earthwatch Fellowship at the Churchill Northern Studies Centre, where the artist experienced profound personal discoveries. She is immensely grateful to both Earthwatch and the CNSC for this incredible opportunity.
Allison Maria Rodriguez is a first-generation Cuban-American interdisciplinary artist working predominantly in video installation. Her work focuses extensively on climate change, species extinction and the interconnectivity of existence. She is the recipient of an Earthwatch Communications Fellowship, a grand prize winner of the Creative Climate Awards, and was honored in 2019 by WBUR as one of The ARTery 25 (25 millennials of color impacting arts & culture in Boston). In addition to her practice, Rodriguez is also a curator, educator and arts organizer.
www.allisonmariarodriguez.com @allisonmariarodriguez
