Paul Bowen and his wife moved to southern Vermont a dozen years ago, but he never really left the beaches of Cape Cod behind. That’s because he brought so much from those beaches with him — worn planks, rusty nails and marine detritus he collected after it washed ashore. Those found objects, now stored in a garage and top floor of an historic barn where he lives in Williamsville, Vermont, still serve as the foundation for most of his work.

Whether large-scale wall hangings or smaller, intricate figures, Bowen’s sculpture merges sharp, geometric, abstract shapes with the rustic imperfections of wood shaped by sea and sand. BigTown Gallery is hosting an exhibition of his work at each of its Vermont locations, in Vergennes and Rochester, through December 2nd.

Bowen was born and raised in a seaside town in Wales, United Kingdom, and moved permanently to the United States in 1977 when he was given a fellowship at the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, Massachusetts. He lived across the street from the water. “I could go to the beach two times a day and collect materials,” he recalls.

He still gathers there every summer, when he returns to teach sculpture classes at the Fine Arts center and the nearby Truro Center for the Arts at Castle Hill. One of his favorite recoveries is the beat-up fishing boxes where fishermen pack their catch on ice. Bowen loves the big but very thin boards, many no more than ¼ to 3/8 of an inch thick. “It’s a very beautiful material,” he says. “It has a kind of honey color from being in seawater.”

Bowen’s collections fall into categories: One is all white-painted wood; another is wood covered in black tar. It’s his version of a painter’s palette. “I don’t throw anything away,” Bowen says. “I need bent nails. I need rusty nails. I even save old staples.”

For years, he has kept a large stash of wood rusted by metal and industrial waste, the remnants of Provincetown’s commercial waterfront, as it sat wedged in the sand. Bowen has hung gallery shows featuring only his rust-stained wood, he says. Now, he’s running low on his stock, so he’s filling buckets of water with rusty nails and wood to get it to pick up the right color.

Life in a quintessential Vermont town, in an old house next to a covered bridge, has provided Bowen with new materials and new fodder. Wood piles up at the foot of the bridge after a big spring snow melt or flooding from major storms.

A series of drawings, several of them in the BigTown show, juxtaposes images of covered bridges onto old maps and other landscapes, even a set of antique greeting cards he found. Bowen uses his own ink, made from a black walnut tree in his yard or from the squid that he catches with his summer students in Provincetown.

The covered bridge is to Vermont what the medieval cathedral is to Wales, Bowen points out. Both are iconic to their surroundings. “It’s just a matter of looking and seeing what’s there,” Bowen says, “and learning from the environment you’re in.”

Paul Bowen–sculptor and artist
Williamsville, Vermont
Website
Facebook
Instagram

Top image: Photo of installation. Photo courtesy of Paul Bowen

The post Unburied Treasures appeared first on Take Magazine.

In some cases, Erik Baier has become good friends with the people living in the communes; they share stories and food, they become invested in and supportive of his project. In other cases, they avoid him, making a wide path around him and his “picture making.”

“It’s their loss really, I’m a fairly interesting and funny guy,” says Baier, the photographer behind the lens of the COMMUNE series recently featured at the BigTown Gallery in Rochester, Vermont.

The photos, which to date have been captured in Vermont, North and South Carolina, Tennessee, Virginia, Kentucky, and as far west as Texas, depict the dwellings present in these exclusive communities. Some of the homes featured are made of wood, woven sticks, animal hides, adobe, tarps, paper crete, tires with rammed earth, cloth tents, vans and gutted school buses—the mediums vary widely.

From Erik Baier’s COMMUNE series. Photo courtesy of the artist.

Yet while the materials used to create these homes might differ from what is typical, Baier points out the many similarities between commune residents and the general population. “They are more or less like everyone else. Most prefer the comfort of their community and neighbors, but the outside world, not so much,” Baier says. “I suppose that’s one of the draws they have to live together.”

Due to this hesitance towards outsiders, it sometimes takes Baier months to open the doors to these communities. While some have internet presences, many more were referred by commune dwellers who had lived somewhere else previously. Luckily, Baier is very good at opening doors, and also at old-fashioned persuasive letter writing.

From Erik Baier’s COMMUNE series. Photo courtesy of the artist.

It makes sense that Baier would be drawn to capturing uncommon homes—he and his wife live in a 200-plus-year-old former school house in Rochester. “We both liked the idea of living in an unconventional structure,” says Baier. “Living in two school buildings that are mysteriously fastened together, plus a new painting studio/darkroom/office structure I added a few years ago, has made this unique, if not odd, building very purposeful.”

Baier, who was quite popular on the exhibition scene during the 1980s, started taking pictures at age ten and entered the school of The Museum of Fine Arts in Boston at 19. After having been featured at galleries throughout the country and in a few publications, Baier dropped out of the scene and continued to mainly make work for himself, until recently. Now he’s considering making his COMMUNE series into a book.

While seeking to peek into the private lives of these commune members remains a goal for Baier, who is by no means done with the COMMUNE series, he also enjoys his privacy at home in Rochester. “I love knowing most of the townspeople by their first names. I love the quiet and being able to have a day with no human interaction, then the next day being fast forwarded in a car driving somewhere to meet strangers, who then let me make pictures of how and where they live.”

Erik Baier–Photographer
Rochester, Vermont
Website
Instagram
Facebook

Top image, from Erik Baier’s COMMUNE series. All photos courtesy of Erik Baier.

The post An Un-Commune Life appeared first on Take Magazine.

“Sometimes I think my work [is conveying] nothing. Nothing at all. I am just an explorer seeing what there is to discover. On the other hand, I am a storyteller and many of my works are narrative and I have a lot of things I am saying with my work.”

Bhakti Ziek expresses herself through the art of weaving and manipulating contemporary fibers. She has lectured and taught workshops in The Netherlands, Great Britain, Mexico, Canada, as well as all over the United States. But what exactly is weaving, and what does the process involve? In Ziek’s words, “I am a weaver. I have worked on almost every type of loom from back strap looms to fully electronic jacquard looms. Each loom has its advantages and disadvantages. I don’t think one is better than another, but sometimes one is better for executing an idea than another. So I ask myself, what is the proper equipment to use to manifest my idea, and then I go there.”

Taqueté Sunset | Image courtesy of the artist

Currently living in Randolph, Vermont, Ziek completes her work in her weaving studio and offers weaving tutorials. She has lived in the Green Mountain State since 2008 with her husband who is also an artist. The two moved from Tempe, Arizona, where Ziek was a visiting professor in the art department at Arizona State University. Ziek explained,  “Before that we lived in New Mexico, Kansas, Pennsylvania, Massachusetts, Michigan, New York, Maryland and we also traveled around the world in 1982 for 18 months. We call ourselves urban nomads.”

Having lived all over, Ziek truly recognizes the effect that living in New England, and particularly Vermont, has had on her work. Ziek jokes, “The lack of activities that I enjoyed in cities and colleges means that I have lots of uninterrupted time to work in my studio–so I have gotten a lot of weaving done since moving to Vermont.”

She adds, “Having lived in so many places, I understand that there is beauty everywhere.”

As for her work itself, she has a varied collection, all with different feels and aesthetics. Some of her exhibitions include Études, Stardust, Nomad Series, and Continuum Series, all with vibrant colors, intricate designs, and her impressively detailed hand-woven stitches.

Florence Cross-Sections, 1997 | silk – woven jacquard

Ziek’s more recent efforts include a show at BigTown Gallery called Lexicon. “Looking back at my work, I see that there is often a theme running through them that is referential to weaving itself. My weaving Florence Cross-Sections, made in 1997, has diagrams of the weave structures used to make that weaving as motifs in the weaving (that weaving is in the Lexicon exhibit).”

Ziek is currently on her way to Berkeley, California to begin a weaving collaboration. In addition, she will be co-teaching the Spring Concentration in weaving at Penland School of Craft in North Carolina with Tommye Scanlin, a tapestry weaver, from March 4-May 5, 2017.

Bhakti Ziek is a weaver and multi media artist living in Randolph Vermont. Her current exhibition Lexicon runs through November 24th, 2016 at the BigTown Gallery in Rochester, Vermont.

Top image: Taqueté Rabbit | All images courtesy of the artist

The post Looming in Vermont appeared first on Take Magazine.