This article originally appeared in our December/January 2015 print issue.

The Green Mountain State’s most famous musical product is almost certainly the jam band Phish. If that quartet, formed in Burlington in 1983, earned a reputation for playing extended improvisations and working in the spiritual and musical wake of the Grateful Dead, MV & EE took shape largely in the twenty-first century, in the southern end of the state around Brattleboro, still playing off many elements of the Dead’s legacy but with drastically different results.

Valentine and Elder are also a couple. Unlike Phish, MV & EE are unlikely to sell out Madison Square Garden anytime soon, but the duo operates on a whole other level, making deeply psychedelic, small-batch, boutique, esoteric folk music that’s tinged with noise. Or maybe it’s indie rock tinged with folk. Either way, their recordings and performances are highly improvisational and experimental. The music of MV & EE embodies a thread of the reality of their home state: it’s both earthy and spacey, and it’s all propelled by a spirit of intrepid self-reliance.

This year was a big year for Valentine and Elder. A new MV & EE double album, Alpine Frequency, came out in the summer, at about the same time Valentine released a solo double album as well. “They were both pretty large records,” says Valentine. “We try to make a record that someone ideally is going to go back to and revisit. So we try to make the album have a certain depth or trajectory. There were several years of work on both of them. Hopefully that will tide some people over for a while.”

Photo by Paul Specht

Valentine’s new record is called Midden Mound, which, if you’ve forgotten some of the terms from your college anthropology class, is basically a prehistoric trash heap made up of shells and bones and other stuff. It’s a meaningful pile of refuse, dense and old, yielding secrets to those patient and learned enough to sift through it. The title seems to fit right in with the concept of “sonic agriculture” Valentine has spoken of, a utilitarian, plow-sow-and-reap vision of music making, with natural forces and human labor producing fertile results.

“I can’t get out of the underground,” jokes Valentine about the record’s title. But then he adds, “I thought [the title] worked for that body of work specifically; it’s definitely the remains of a certain sonic settlement of mine.”

That’s not all just talk. Sound attains something close to physicality in Valentine’s solo work and in the music of MV & EE. The music and the recordings are more about textures and resonance than melody, lyrics, and song form. The attention to the physical extends to the packaging and marketing of the music as well. Both new records were pressed on vinyl in addition to being available in other forms, such as CDs and MP3s. The duo often creates limited-edition original artwork to go along with some of their small-batch releases or to bring to shows, to make each record one of a kind.

Valentine’s connections with recorded music—with vinyl in particular—go back to his formative musical experiences.

“I’ve always been around records,” he says. “My parents collected records. They had a record library. They encouraged me to use the turntable. I heard a lot of music growing up that was interesting to me. I worked at record stores since I was a teenager. I stayed working at record stores. I was a lifer, a record-store casualty.”

Selling records has never been the most remunerative line of work, and surviving by playing DIY avant-garage folk presents challenges. But Valentine and Elder approach the work with a flinty Yankee ethos. They are impressively prolific, releasing an average of two records a year, which brings their total to something like 32 since 2001. They also run a boutique record label that releases limited pressings of live recordings, packaged with original artwork. Oh, and they have a two-year-old daughter. So they keep pretty busy.

Elder does work as a freelance graphic designer, and she says their living space reflects the creative multitasking that goes on there. “You should see our house— it’s part house, part workshop. It’s all blended together,” she says.

MV & EE possess a particular kind of twenty-first-century musical eclecticism, drawing on the Old, Weird America of Harry Smith’s epic Anthology of American Folk Music, steeped in old-time music, country blues, and field recordings (the duo was asked to contribute a song to the highly regarded 2015 tribute record to English singer and folklorist Shirley Collins), and yet their work is also in conversation with some core ideas of contemporary classical music, minimalism, and free jazz.

Photo by Paul Specht

“That’s very natural,” says Elder. “If you look at our record collection, we’ve got our Carter Family and our Sonny Sharrock records right next to each other.”

She grew up in Virginia, where singing was a regular part of her extended family gatherings. “I kind of brought the Appalachia to the table,” Elder says. “I grew up thinking that everybody just got around the piano on Sundays and played different songs.” That included folk songs and plenty of religious material, sources that MV & EE have returned to.

“I played sax in elementary school,” says Valentine. “I got kicked out of the school band for trying to play like [keening iconoclastic saxophonist Albert] Ayler. I got booted.”

Valentine got one strand of his musical education for free by auditing classes in the Conservatory of Music at the State University of New York at Purchase, where several pioneers of experimental and computer music taught and where the homemade instruments of maverick composer Harry Partch were housed at one point.

Extended drones, ominous echoes, alternate tunings, dub effects, and spooky war whoops all make appearances on Valentine’s new solo record. Two-chord vamps attain a mystic density as they’re prolonged. It fits right in with the MV & EE oeuvre. The DNA of much of MV & EE’s material seems like it can be traced to either “Dark Star,” the Dead’s epic interstellar exploratory vehicle; “Cortez the Killer,” Neil Young’s mythic caveman-like protosludge masterpiece; and “If I Could Only Remember My Name,” David Crosby’s haunting and beautiful comedown opus. Those are good genes, at any rate.

Valentine and Elder make the most of what they call the global I-91 corridor—a joking way of referring to their spiraling network of friends, fellow musicians, and collaborators. And the town they live in, outside of Brattleboro, is something of a magnet for other creative people.

“We’ve been here for 13 years,” says Elder. “Everybody who lives in this area whom we’re friends with is here for the energy. It’s still a very important reason why we’re here.”

But the actual I-91 connection links them to likeminded artists from New Haven, Connecticut, through western Massachusetts and up through Vermont. Contributors to the new batch of records include J Mascis of Dinosaur Jr. and Pete Nolan of art-noise trio The Magik Markers. And the band has recorded on Thurston Moore’s Ecstatic Peace! record label, based in Easthampton, Massachusetts.

For MV & EE and for Valentine’s solo album, recording isn’t just a matter of heading into the studio with some tunes, some guitars, and rolling tape. Bits are recorded in Valentine and Elder’s home studio or sometimes at a friend’s place, or while traveling; then sometimes layers are added on elsewhere. Some tracks might take shape in a living room and others in a fancy studio. The setting needs to be conducive to improvisation, which is central to much of the duo’s work.

“I have pretty elaborate recording techniques deployed that we use now,” says Valentine. “And they’re primitive, too, in some cases. There are techniques used to sometimes make one performance sound like multiple ones. The mood of the moment was more important than the technicalities.”

MV & EE balance the raw and the refined, the overstuffed and the stripped down. “It’s sometimes very minimal, sometimes very maximal,” says Valentine.

Photo by Paul Specht

For all of their folk tendencies and pedigrees, MV & EE can also sound like a stoner rock outfit, with lumbering bass lines and bruising drumbeats anchoring their unison singing and slashing guitars, like on “Susquehanna (Sole Art Trample)” from 2007’s Gettin’ Gone. Though the deep psychedelic connection is clear, there’s also a classic rock aspect to some of MV & EE’s eclecticism. “Susquehanna (Sole Art Trample),” for instance, is followed by a song called “The Burden,” which has gentle finger picking and high, atmospheric pedal steel guitars. It’s a pairing that might be at home on Led Zeppelin III, where the howling stomp of marauding invaders gives way to soothing and dreamy acoustic songs rooted in traditional folk music. “I’m in such a trance state usually when I’m playing,” says Elder.

That textural and tonal perspective is what helps the music withstand repeated listenings. “We try to keep it interesting for ourselves as much as for people who might be hearing it,” says Valentine.

But—as with something like a Fela Kuti record, an Indian raga, or a piece of music by La Monte Young— sometimes the music of MV & EE and Valentine’s solo work are meant to possibly scramble one’s sense of time: to transport the listener into a slow-drip mindset, where a pattern repeating for 15 minutes somehow becomes more gratifying and meaningful than one that stops after 3 minutes. Sometimes that aesthetic can be at odds with the demands of the marketplace. Valentine had originally planned on making Midden Mound a triple record, but he decided to settle on a double album.

“I kind of peeled that concept back,” he says. But he will be releasing the material that would have been that third record as another single solo album in 2016.

Valentine and Elder don’t have an elaborate promotional machine behind them. They do much of the behind-the-scenes logistics themselves, booking and publicizing shows. So if people are possibly starting to hear their music more and know their name after years and years of productivity, it’s because the world is beginning to come around to them. The combination of heavy rock, obscure folk, and experimental music is perhaps less of a head-scratcher than it was 20 years ago. “People are a little more ready for what we’re doing now,” says Valentine. “People are catching up to the sound.”

One senses that being creative and productive is just the way Valentine and Elder live their lives, and they’d be playing music every day and handcrafting one-of-a-kind art to go with it whether or not they had fans and a career. “I just like to make things,” says Valentine. “It’s probably why I like living up here.”

MV & EE–musicians from Brattleboro, Vermont
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The post Small-Batch Mystical Folk Noise appeared first on Take Magazine.

“My heroes have always been artists who reinvent themselves every few years,” says Brattleboro, Vermont artist Mutsu Crispin. “I love it when an artist goes through a transformation repeatedly. Picasso. Miles Davis. Someone who isn’t afraid to step out of their norm and become something new.“

Mutsu Crispin is also the pseudonym of John DiGeorge, a bouncing, 46-year-old dervish of an artist who is at times a costume designer, puppeteer, oneiric film instructor, filmmaker, choreographer, and, currently, a classic visual artist. Mostly though, Crispin is an explorer interested in transformation.

Mutsu Crispin | Photographed by David Nielsen

Crispin grew up in Marietta, Georgia, and then attended Harvard, where, he says, “they’d just hand you a camera and tell you to go make something.” After Harvard, Crispin moved to New York City, where he learned how to make movies, then to Brattleboro to begin work on Redbelly, a film written with his cousin Justin Allen. Redbelly is a freakishly old-world fairy tale, featuring a princess trapped in a stone tower, bereft of human contact. It also features a prince with an external glass stomach, born unable to use his mouth to speak, cry, or eat, who was captured by an opportunistic moonshiner who uses the glass stomach as a still.

“I’d been doing a lot of dream work,” Crispin explains. “I’d been delving deeply and consistently into my dream world. There were a lot of themes and images and interior dramas playing out in my dreams that a fairy tale would be an easy vehicle for. Redbelly (still in production) is very particular to Vermont, but not set in Vermont. It all grew out of the landscape. The stone tower. . .there’s stone walls everywhere. There’s also a monster in the movie. What’s the monster in the woods of Vermont? It’s a bear that carries winter in its belly. The prince gets stuck in his belly, and it’s the harshest winter imaginable. We filmed that sequence in a snowstorm in the White Mountains. The mythology is definitely grown out where we were when we conceived it.”

Redbelly Tower | Photographed by Mutsu Crispin

Crispin’s alternative project, Bouncy Ball Art, seems crafted by an entirely different artist. The series, which can be seen at the A.P.E. Ltd. Gallery in Northampton, Massachusetts March 8-April 2, is whimsical, bright, and playful. The constructions feature bouncy rubber balls pressed between plates of heavy plexiglass, then screwed together to hold them in place. The clue that links both pieces is an almost mythic reexamination of the fantastical aspects of childhood, never mind that the finished pieces look like massively constructed Hasbro Lite-Brite screen panels.

“There’s a lot of places these pieces go,” Crispin says. “The grids are pixelated. I grew up playing Atari, playing Nintendo. I was totally into video games—all those early video games like Super Mario Bros. All of these pieces are like the background of Zelda or Super Mario Bros. They’re also used to express the deepest impulses of things I’m exploring in my life.”

So where did the name Mutsu Crispin come from? DiGeorge used to spend summers working on a farm; he saw the words repeatedly on old apple crates, and they caught his imagination. “I’ve always felt a connection with Japanese words and filmmakers,” he explains. “I liked the juxtaposition of the Japanese word Mutsu with the English word Crispin. I came up with these two characters: Mutsu is an alien and Crispin is a monkey. They came together to form Mutsu Crispin, which is an apple, but also the name of my production company.

Sanctuary | Photographed by Mutsu Crispin

“I’ve always been caught by cultures where as an adult you name yourself,” he continues. “You go on a vision quest, and when you come back you name yourself. Sometimes at an art opening, someone will come up to me and ask, ‘Are you Mutsu Crispin?’ I really like that.”

Mutsu Crispin – multimedia artist
Brattleboro, Vermont
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Top photo Bugs, photographed by Mutsu Crispin.

Bouncy Ball Art can be seen at the A.P.E. gallery in Northampton Massachusetts, March 8-April 2, 2017.

The post How Do You Like Them Apples? appeared first on Take Magazine.

Recently, it’s been the cultural trend to rope off the beginning of the year to catch up on all the moments, movies, music, and writings we missed last year. So, once you’ve caught up with Moonlight and/or finally get around to listening to the newest And The Kids album (released summer ’16), consider looking ahead to our Artists to Watch for 2017.

Though we do have favorites of our own, we could not adequately survey the region for artists to watch without consulting a few of our many trusted curators and friends: Abigail Ogilvy, Owner of Abigail Ogilvy Gallery in Boston’s South End; Randi Hopkins, Director of Visual Arts at Boston Center for the Arts; and Ian Alden Russell, Curator at Brown University’s David Winton Bell Gallery.

All of these artists sculpt, paint, record, and perform works worth following, especially considering our current social and political climate. Since we’ve recently been reminded that we cannot rely on the centralized leadership of our democracy to defend our integrity as human beings, or the integrity of thought through the defense of facts and mutual respect, we look to artists like these as our true cultural gatekeepers. The artists on our list are people we can trust to use bold expression, tenderness, and knowing imagery to question the status quo. Sometimes they hold up a mirror to our culture. Other times, they hold up a loudspeaker or a puppet mask, a paintbrush, a bouncy ball, or a digital camera.

These cathartic, sarcastic, pointed, paradoxical, and, most of all, inimitable artists are who we’re watching in 2017.

Nabeela Vega, Visiting Thahab (series, ongoing) | Photo courtesy Robin Allen LaPlante

Nabeela Vega | Boston, MA

Using photography, performance, and video, Boston-based artist Nabeela Vega creates immersive works that examine elements of our individual experiences of the social world as it intersects with identity, personal politics, and queerness. Oftentimes, the work calls into question our taken-for-granted notions about bodies, media, and gender. As Hopkins points out, “Vega’s rich exploration of the contemporary presence and experience of the Muslim femme takes forms that are performative, collaborative, generous, vulnerable, and exquisitely beautiful. The artist takes risks with their own body to think about our greater body as citizens and humans, work that feels vital and particularly brave today.”

Tanja Hollander | Auburn, ME

“This month sees the premiere of the entirety of Tanja Hollander‘s Are you really my friend? at MASS MoCA, the Maine-based photographer’s epic endeavor to photograph all 626 of her Facebook friends,” says Russell. “Bringing her across the nation and around the globe, the work probes the issue of friendship and connection in our digitally mediated age. Questioning the boundaries between personal, public, and online life, the project presents us with intimate portraits she took of the personal spaces and environments of the people she is connected to via social media.”

Teatime, 2016, Acrylic and mixed media on steel 18 x 12 in. | Photo courtesy Abigail Ogilvy

Katie Wild | Pawtucket, RI

“Wild’s striking, cinematic paintings transform the tradition of figure and portraiture to achieve a contemporary understanding of the human condition,” says Ogilvy. “In her most recent series, Steampunk, Wild references photographs she took of real people at a steampunk festivals. In 2016 she was a recipient of the Fay Chandler Emerging Artist Award in Boston, MA.”

Kai Franz | Providence, RI

“Originally from Cologne, Germany, Kai Franz makes sculptures and drawings that confront and complicate the relationships between process and artifact,” says Russell. “Testing and questioning the potential of computer-aided design while appearing as formal aesthetic statements in their own rights, Franz’s works and projects are strong examples of the tradition of critically and technologically-engaged art making in Providence.”

Mutsu Crispin, Mapping the Day, 2015, bouncy balls, plexiglass, stainless steel, 41″h x 41″w x 2.25″d | Photo courtesy Mitchell Giddings Fine Arts

Mutsu Crispin | Brattleboro, VT

Atlanta, Georgia transplant turned Southern Vermonter mutsu crispin (aka John DiGeorge) is a performance artist, filmmaker and. . .bouncy-ball sculptor? Last year, DiGeorge found a way to make those familiar, seemingly childish forms simultaneously fun and subversive. We’re sure we can find some comfort in these delightfully bright pieces as the year turns potentially darker. “. . . the balls float forward and back within their designs or wanderings, rhyming with their cast shadows, ghostly glows, nearby hardware and reflections,” says the artist. “These dear objects from our childhood are animated and transmogrified, speaking in a chorus at once lighthearted, humorous, mysterious, and ecstatic.

Matt Neckers, Crash Site, 2015, 72 H x 24 W x 24 in | Photo courtesy the artist

Matt Neckers | Eden, VT

“Neckers’ Portals hidden in forests, a rocket in a tree, a parachute caught in branches—Matt Neckers’ installations interrupt the serenity of the woods,” says Russell. “Fascinated by the impact of mechanization on our imagination, Neckers opens up earnest, generous, and sustained conversations about the world we inhabit, the others that may exist, and the precarious journeys between.”

Arien Wilkerson | Hartford, CT

“I am Arien aka TNMOT AZTRO aka ARI AZTRO.”

Wilkerson is one of Hartford’s many young Renaissance Men. His list of current projects is too long to add here; suffice it to say that Wilkerson, at age 25, is an uber-accomplished dancer, film artist, activist, artistic director, and overall creative mastermind. In the words of our dear friends at Breakfast, Lunch, and Dinner, “He’s too black, too vocal, and too flagrant. He’s also one of the few indispensable figures in Hartford’s ever-continuous push to art and cultural prominence. Say hello to the city’s new brash monarch.”

Toby Sisson, 2015 Black Tears, Ink and beeswax on paper 7″x5.5″ each, approx. 6.5’x16′ overall | Photo courtesy the artist

Toby Sisson | Providence, RI

“Toby Sisson‘s encaustic paintings and drawings rigorously explore the metaphoric potential of abstract form,” points out Russell. “Often contrasting shades of black with shades of white, Sisson’s works are informed by personal narrative and her mixed race heritage. Her images and forms offer open-ended prompts for poetic reflection on the assumed oppositions and conflicts with which we struggle—personally, emotionally, and socially.”

Michael Stasiuk, Marco the Magician, 2012, 25″ x 24″ x 10″ metal crumber pan, darning egg, rhythm stick fragments, assorted wood fragments | Photo courtesy Abigail Ogilvy

Michael Stasiuk | Portsmouth, NH

“His multimedia sculptures assemble found objects into playfully illustrated characters,” says Ogilvy, “each with a unique personality. His choice of material imparts a sense of nostalgia and memory, imaginatively re-purposing everyday objects that accompany us throughout our lives.”

J.R. Uretsky and Scott the cat | Photo courtesy the artist

J.R. Uretsky | Providence, RI

If you read Take, you already know we’ve had a crush on J.R.’s awkwardly signature brand of brave, big-feeling, truth-telling performance for a long time. Yet it’s not only her magically strange, emo-queer performances to watch out for in 2017. Specifically, it’s J.R.’s puppets that will lend you space to emote and bring us all solace as 2017’s social and political climate sags and twists. “The characters that emerge through her performances are relatable yet also alien and non-specific,” says Hopkins, “forging an ambiguous space where emotion is the remaining constant.”

Titus Kaphar, Space to Forget, 2014, oil on canvas, 64 x 64 x 2 3/4 inches | Photo courtesy Jack Shainman Gallery

Titus Kaphar | New Haven, CT

Kaphar creates new histories with each work he paints and sculpts. It’s through his careful reinterpretation of the past, mixed with artful exclusion and deconstruction of specific images that makes his work powerful, “In my work I explore the materiality of reconstructive history. I paint and I sculpt, often borrowing from the historical canon, and then alter the work in some way.” says Kaphar “I cut, crumple, shroud, shred, stitch, tar, twist, bind, erase, break, tear, and turn the paintings and sculptures I create, reconfiguring them into works that nod to hidden narratives and begin to reveal unspoken truths about the nature of history.”

Inside shot of Love Shack instillation featuring video loop of “Waking Up And Getting Up Has Never Been Easy”, instillation and video by Coe Lapossy | Photo courtesy the artist’s website

Coe Lapossy | Boston, MA

Ever wonder what it’d be like to wake up in a super-cozy, literally endless bed? Well, Lapossy has theorized it, and has many more other immersive, speculative works ready for the upcoming year. “Lapossy brings feminist sass and romantic charm to smart sculptural and installation work,” says Hopkins. “Pop culture seeps into her artistic vocabulary with ease, for example weaving 20th-century art history together with early 90s romantic-fantasy film in a setting that evokes the vaudeville vibe of the magician’s trick.”

Nabeela Vega – Boston, Massachusetts
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Tanja Hollander – Auburn, Maine
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Katie Wild – Pawtucket, Rhode Island
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Kai Franz – Providence, Rhode Island
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Mutsu Crispin – Brattleboro, Vermont
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Matt Neckers – Eden, Vermont
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Arien Wilkerson – Hartford, Connecticut
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Toby Sisson – Providence, Rhode Island
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Michael Stasiuk – Portsmouth, New Hampshire
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J.R. Uretsky – Providence, Rhode Island
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Titus Kaphar – New Haven, Connecticut
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Coe Lapossy – Boston, Massachusetts
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VISITING THAHAB AT SUPERNOVA PERFORMANCE ART FESTIVAL | PHOTO COURTESY THE ARTIST

The post Artists to Watch 2017 appeared first on Take Magazine.

Step into the Brattleboro Printmakers studio and it’ll take a moment for your eyes to focus. There’s racks of screened clothing, tables covered in ephemera, a t-shirt press in the center of the floor, and shelf upon shelf of screens and prints hiding a cavernous exposure unit and photo lab in the far back of the studio. It’s chaotic, but organically chaotic as happens when a print shop is both well used and constantly evolving. Even Brink Gallery initially conceived as a way for the studio to show the work of outside artists, has simply morphed into a dense collection of prints in every stage of production.

At the center of Brattleboro Printmakers stands the heavily bearded James Primrose, owner, co-founder, and director of the studio. Primrose set out to build a print shop unique to the area, and one that also fulfilled his own interest in music. Brattleboro Printmakers is a non-toxic, water-based, membership-driven silkscreen print shop that hosts a twice-monthly music series, making it doubly unique in the region. It’s also a repository of a seemingly endless, shifting set of ideas as to what a print shop can be and how it functions.

“There’s nothing like it anywhere nearby that’s not in a collegiate facility,” Primrose says. “People in Southern Vermont appreciate it because it’s more DIY, and friendly to anyone who wants to play around. Musically, there’s a lack of venues in the area that fit the bill of ‘underground music’ coming through. We also have people traveling from Western Mass to do the art stuff, but mostly we have people coming from all over to see the music.”

A natural showman and organizer, Primrose is also the founder of The Wonky Press, a startup monthly image design contest with the winning entries voted for directly on Primrose’s Facebook page. The Wonky Press winners can have their work printed traditionally on paper in a limited edition, or on t-shirts or hats. Though the competition is an open call, it’s also a potential tool for members to get their art into the public views. “Printmakers’ members are getting to the point where they’re just starting to make large numbers of things,” explains Primrose. “Wonky Press is a way to constantly have a new product that doubles as an advertisement for the artist and shop. The artist takes a commission out of every piece without fronting any money.”

Gravitron by James Primrose

Fully into its third year, the studio is also working to develop its own screen-printed quarterly called A Pile: A Brattleboro Zine, a mixture of text and illustration, as well as expanding the capabilities of what the shop offers new members. Unlike traditional print shops, Brattleboro Printmakers don’t offer classes. “I just teach everything for free,” says Primrose. “When you join the studio, your first 3-4 sessions are on the house, everything is accessible. I’ve never had regular business hours; I’ve always been at the whim of other people’s schedules. It’s not always easy, but we’re still here and that’s something.”

James Primrose is a printmaker and co-founder of Brattleboro Printmakers in Brattleboro, Vermont. Follow the Brattleboro Printmakers blog and keep track of their upcoming events featuring work from their members.

The post What Comes Next Is Already Happening appeared first on Take Magazine.

The joke in Vermont is that it takes two jobs to survive. Joshua Farr, director of the Vermont Center for Photography, has at least seven. Beside his work at VCP, Joshua is a web designer for Good Bear Productions, handles event photography for the Brattleboro Art Museum, repurposes old furniture, organizes Pop-Up Brattleboro, teaches photography at In-Sight Photography Project, and is also is a professional photographer whose documentary-style work is a sweet mixture of the awkwardly bucolic and the deeply held. But it’s at VCP where Josh’s largest regional impact is felt.

Cameras for sale at Vermont Center for Photography | Photo by David Nielsen

Farr is a New England native, born in Maine but now a full-time resident of Brattleboro. After getting his BFA at the New Hampshire Institute of Art in 2011, Farr responded to a Craigslist ad for a Gallery Manager position at a non-profit in Brattleboro. “I thought it was pretty far-fetched,” he says. “I was a photographer, but never held an administrative position, especially for a non-profit. I applied, drove out in my rag-tag farm clothes during Hurricane Irene, and a week later I was offered the job. Turns out the deciding factor was that I’d been an Eagle Scout as a kid. I’d hesitated to put it on my resume, but it was one of the best things that ever happened to me.”

As Director and architect of the entire 2017 calendar at VCP, Farr makes a point of focusing on New England photographers. “Brattleboro is an extreme example of an arts-rich community that really puts a focus on supporting local artists,” says Farr. “That said, I feel like artists in Brattleboro are starving for a venue. I like being able to support our local photographers while simultaneously exposing them to people they’d otherwise be unfamiliar to.”

Photo from the Curbside series, 2015 | Photo by Joshua Farr

Founded in 1998, VCP is a member-driven organization that has semiannual member shows as well as practical workshops, a public darkroom, printing services, and artist discussions. Farr thinks the member shows are the strongest representation of what VCP has to offer. “There’s certainly no lack of local talent,” he says. “Our immediate radius is an hour to an hour and a half outside of Brattleboro. Our members also submit to an Open Call for exhibitions. We usually get 50 or so proposals for solo shows that we whittle down to five or six annually. At least half of these are New England photographers, and some of them end up being members, but membership isn’t factored into the solo show selections.”

Farr’s own photographs are intensive studies, thematically culled from the commonplace items of Farr’s own life. Works like Curbed Collections, a series that documents household objects left by the side of the road, collects images of items we ourselves once collected, forming a disjointed narrative that speaks to how we value the things we own. The series Things That are Orange features quirky images of things that are orange in our everyday life, and Downstairs, perhaps the most intimate of all Farr’s work, documents the collected objects and vignettes of his father’s basement, servings as a disembodied “time capsule” of his life.

Photo from the Downstairs series, 2015 | Photo by Joshua Farr

“It interests me when you start to notice what you notice. When you decide to start looking for orange things, for example, you’ll see them everywhere.” Farr shrugs then adds, “Maybe my goal as a photographer is to convey the personal meaning behind my photographs to people who don’t know anything about me, but still somehow be true to myself as an artist.”

Joshua Farr at Vermont Center for Photography offices | Photo by David Nielsen

Joshua Farr is the Director of the Vermont Center for Photography in Brattleboro, Vermont. Follow Farr on Instagram, and follow Vermont Center of Photography on Facebook.

Top photo from the Things That are Orange series, 2016 | Photo by Joshua Farr

The post Curating the Visual appeared first on Take Magazine.

When Brattleboro artist David Nielsen was asked to talk about his work on WVEW’s “Art Talk” hosted by Jim Maxwell, he decided instead to use the broadcast as a platform to discuss protest art in America, as well as a creative call to artists to take a political stand and make their voices heard in the wake of the painfully divisive presidential election. Take Magazine spoke with Nielsen about the role of art in these turbulent times.

Why is art especially important right now following the election?

DN: For me, and I think for a lot of artists, art is about affirming your humanity, about saying I’m alive and this is what I’m doing. This is what I believe in during my very brief period of time on this planet. We have elected an anti-human president and we have an anti-human government. It reminds me of the Reagan years. It reminds me of both the Bush wars where there was a populist movement of folks who didn’t want anything to do with war, didn’t want anything to do with the destruction of the middle class, didn’t want anything to do with the monopolization of power in the hands of very few.

I think it’s incumbent on artists and those of us who give a shit about their lives and about what happens after we’ve gone to make a stand in whatever way is possible. It’s not just about the stand that we’re making for ourselves today: it’s about what we leave behind for the next generation of artists and human beings, so they can see that there were people who didn’t like the direction the planet was going in, and wanted to do something about it.

When you talk about protest art in response to a particular political climate, what are some of the historical periods that really speak to you?

DN: The entire twentieth century, actually. Protest art was made throughout the entire twentieth century. Sometimes it was direct protest art, and sometimes it was observational art after the fact, like Picasso’s Guernica. Photographs of soldiers in the moment they’re being shot. Spoken word poems. Text-based art like that of Jenny Holzer and Barbara Kruger. And then we get into identity politics, especially in the 70’s and 80’s with women identity artists. That need to speak up and have a voice. One can directly say, Fuck you, Trump as a form of protest, or you can make something magnificent that goes beyond just the anger and gets at the heart of what it means to be a human being with a conscience.

We’re a pretty solid band of blue here in New England. Do you think that living in a progressive region impacts how we, as a community, respond to our current political climate, either positively or negatively?

DN: I know this will piss some people off, but I think that it can make us complacent because we feel less directly threatened by what’s going on. I recently saw a protest march in downtown Brattleboro. There were a couple hundred people there, which was heartening. I went over, and a fellow in the middle had an acoustic guitar and they handed out paperwork and everybody was singing “We Shall Overcome.” I thought it was complete bullshit and I walked. It’s an easy, unfocused, not terribly useful, not galvanizing, thing to do; and I understand there’s a need for community, but I think the election has just shown us that these are much more wicked times than a happy little ’60s protest song will ever manage to fix.

I spent ten years in Portland, Oregon before I came out here, and Portland has had some of the rowdiest protests of any city in America. Even in a blue state you can be angry. Even in a soft little town like Brattleboro you can be outraged. I think a lot of people are dealing with hurt right now, and they’re choosing to indulge and wallow in their hurt as opposed to saying, let’s just move past that. We’ve already been through this; we know how this goes. Eventually we’re going to be angry, and eventually we’re going to mobilize, and eventually we’re going to make decisions that affect our lives. Let’s just get there right now as opposed to waiting and seeing how we feel about things later. I think we’re pretty clear about how we feel about things. It’s what we do about things that matters.

Le Morte de Gaia | THANK YOU #1, 2012 | acrylic on canvas

What’s the most important takeaway for you from the election?

DN: When Roe v. Wade is threatened, when our civil rights are threatened, when trade deals are threatened, when our sovereignty is threatened, when the white supremacists have klan marches in support of Donald Trump and the Right begins to flex its very grotesque muscles, we really do need to learn to protect ourselves. In an era of state’s rights, we need to be more proactive, instead of waiting to have these things dictated to us. That is what the Right has done. I think it’s a lesson worth learning.

Nielsen’s discussion on protest art can be heard on “Art Talk” with Jim Maxwell Friday, December 9 at 4pm on WVEW, 107.7, Brattleboro, or streaming at WVEW.org. Following the broadcast, Graffiti Sandwich in downtown Brattleboro will host a show featuring Nielsen’s Le Morte de Gaia (The Death of Earth), a triptych of triptychs about what happens when the first thermonuclear bomb drops. The work will be up through the end of the year.

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