Ask many of today’s classically trained musicians to improvise, and you’re likely to be met with fear and anxiety. Not so for Providence, Rhode Island, cellist Laura Cetilia. She revels in living in the musical in-between.

Cetilia still loves her Mahler and Britten—she plays in the Eastern Connecticut Symphony Orchestra and the New Bedford Symphony Orchestra—but her real passion is improvised and conceptual music. “Conceptual music is not about melody or even rhythm,” she explains. “It’s about sound over time. That’s a huge shift compared to contemporary classical music, where it’s still meters and keys you have to play.”

Take this composition she wrote for a string quartet. In it, the musicians need to slide up their respective instruments in half-note increments, essentially creating one 20-minute-long glissando. The notes need to remain in the correct chordal structure—i.e. move together so that the sound is tonal—and the instrumentalists must also sing the note as they play. “It’s kind of impossible,” Cetilia admits. “But the imperfections are what make it beautiful. Things start rubbing up against each other. You get all these overtones that you won’t hear if it’s done perfectly. The result with human error makes this beautiful moment.” 

Playing this kind of music, says the 42-year-old, is both liberating and scary. “I’m attracted to that fear,” she says. “What I like about it is that it’s all about the moment. Everyone—the audience and the performers—are experiencing the same thing, in a way. I think when you’re busy sawing away on these notes [in traditional music], you’re so concentrated on what you’re doing that it separates you from the listener, whereas if you have to sit in silence for a minute before you play one note, and then sit in more silence, you’re experiencing the same thing as an audience member. It gets to the heart of what performing should be—you’re sharing this moment and this space with the listener. It’s what I love about it.”

Cetilia performs in a variety of groups dedicated to experimental music. She and her husband, Mark Cetilia, perform together as Mem1—she on an 1892 German cello, often gigged up with a computer and other electronic devices, and he using video/audio hardware and software. They improvise to create a sonic duet. Cetilia also plays in Suna No Onna, a viola and cello duo committed to performing new music, and Ordinary Affects, a collaborative effort of performers and composers devoted to experimental music.

Appropriately, Cetilia’s romance with the cello starts with a robot. Like many children, Cetilia was forced by her mother to take piano lessons, which she resisted. But in fifth grade, she saw the movie Electric Dreams. “There was a cellist in it and the computer falls in love with her after hearing her practice,” Cetilia recalls. “The owner of the computer falls in love with her, too. I fell in love with the cello through that movie.”

The dream might have died with the film’s closing credits, but Cetilia, who grew up in East Los Angeles, went to a public school with a music program. “The orchestra’s conductor was really keyed into what was going on around town,” she says, noting that he referred her to a program on the California State University campus called the Saturday Conservatory of Music. “It was for kids who are really into playing music. You get group lessons and then orchestra on Saturday mornings from nine to twelve. I would stay until three because this amazing cello teacher would give me lessons. It was for low-income students, mostly Latino families, so it was very affordable for my family. That sealed the deal for me to have that.”

The Saturday program gave Cetilia a haven in a world where, as the child of a Mexican-American mother and a white father, she always felt a little in between. “I was the only one of my friends who was mixed. I never felt like I fit in, so I became accustomed to that,” she remembers of her weekday public school life. “It’s another reason why I didn’t go the traditional route after graduating from school. I didn’t want to do what everyone else was doing musically. It’s something that’s ingrained in me.”

Laura Cetilia at home. Photo by Natasha Moustache

Cetilia’s childhood musical opportunities are a big reason why she works at Community MusicWorks, a neighborhood music school in Providence that’s its own mix of the nontraditional. “I am a product of a public school’s music program. That’s why I work where I work,” she says. “It was my savior.”

Cetilia’s interest in experimental music started at that Saturday program, too. “My teacher encouraged us to experiment,” she says. “We would just go crazy. She gave me the freedom that allowed me to experiment. To me it was a natural thing to do. I realized later you have to put in more focused practice to get even better at your instrument, but my heart was really into exploring other things.”

The sense that music goes far beyond black dots on a page is something she’s trying to introduce to the kids she works with now. “I want to get them acclimated to a different way of playing music and thinking about sound and space and the sounds around you,” she says. “It’s a much looser interpretation of what music really is.”

Cetilia put her own interest in experimentation on the back burner while attending Indiana University’s Jacobs School of Music. “They’re into contemporary music, but it’s more that you’re a performer and you have to master your instrument in order to play whatever music is in front of you,” she describes of her time there. “I was more interested in exploring my instrument as an extension of who I was, not just re-creating someone else’s vision.”

Of course, wanting to play conceptual music and getting experimental music gigs can be two different realities. In an effort to remain true to their mission, she and Mark started their own record label, Estuary Ltd., devoted solely to producing experimental music. “We try to release music that wouldn’t be released otherwise,” she says.

After artist residencies in Norway and the Netherlands, they landed in Providence because Mark came to Brown University to get his PhD, and the city has proven to be exactly the right spot for musical experimentation. “Providence is sort of the best place for us to be in making the music we care about,” she says. “It has a long-standing history of nonconformist musicians/artists living in and throwing shows in abandoned warehouses and such, so pretty much anything goes. That scene is changing a bit these days due to gentrification and the fact that Providence is also a transitory city for lots of kids on their way to New York, but there is always a handful of dedicated people that continue to present challenging shows, despite whatever obstacles.”

Laura Cetilia–cellist
Providence, Rhode Island
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The post Positive Space appeared first on Take Magazine.

At first glance it sounds like a joke. A craft beer aimed at menopausal women? With herbs and spices designed to possibly help symptoms? Cue the laugh track.

But Joanne Francis, co-owner of Portsmouth Brewery, is serious in the way that only a woman of a certain age can be serious, as in she’s been around enough to know what she’s doing — and if you don’t get it, well then, your loss. (See subhead.)

Francis, who has been in the craft beer industry for 26 years, first got the idea for a beer aimed at older women a few years ago. “I have seen a lot of beers developed. The focus is always on 21- to 35-year-old male,” she says, noting she brewed her first batch in her home in 1986. “As we’ve seen the craft beer industry grow and grow and grow, it’s so oversaturated. The same ground is constantly planted. How many IPAs can you possibly make? Here I am at 58. No one is talking to my peers who love beer, who drink a lot of beer, but no one is speaking to my menopausal friends.”

At the office, initial reaction to Francis’ idea was, um, flat. “’You can’t say menopause. It’s so distasteful to young men’,” she says. “I said screw it. I won’t push it. I have to respect that employees need to get behind this too.”

But then she and Portsmouth head brewer Matt Gallagher were talking one day and decided to make a small batch. “He’s very progressive and a new dad,” she says. “He has a new awareness of women in his life, so he said let’s do it.”

Joanne Francis and Matt Gallagher. Photo courtesy of Portsmouth Brewery.

Creating Libeeration took a lot of experimentation. It’s a gruit, which is made from an herb mixture rather than using hops. Francis was inspired in part to make a beer with a strong herbal mix from her own health issues. As someone with Lyme Disease and chronic migraines, she is no stranger to alternative health practices. “I have dabbled into having to know a lot of herbal remedies,” she says, noting she worked with natural health practitioners while experimenting to find the right herbal mix for Libeeration. (The beer includes motherwort, lemon balm, chamomile, stinging nettle, mugwort, rose, chickweed, and damiana.)

“I thought wouldn’t it be great to make a beer using some of these floral remedies,” she says. “Wouldn’t [women] appreciate being honored and being treated as if menopause is not a curse but a liberating part of your life. Let’s have a drink together and celebrate it.”

Alternative health fans (and women who’ve tried everything short of knocking themselves out with a hammer to get a good night’s sleep or dousing themselves in a cold shower to stop a hot flash) will recognize many of these herbs. Several can help calm and/or reduce moodiness. Damiana, meanwhile, can potentially help add moisture to your body. Francis and Gallagher started by making teas with the various herbs. “The herbs had to pass the tea test to be sure they had a nice flavor,” she says.

Francis has a simple response to skeptics who might question the potential health benefit of a beer. “This isn’t medicine,” she says. “I’m not trying to be a doctor. Even if it doesn’t help, it helps to know someone cared. That’s my primary purpose. What would be a nice tribute to women at a certain age. I’m making a flavorful beer with some nice properties that I think you would really like.”

It’s a prescription a lot of women appear to be ready to adopt. Portsmouth Brewery sold out of its first batch and is about to release its second batch. “It’s been ridiculous. I never expected the amount of attention,” Francis says. “We’ve been getting hundreds of emails from every state and across the world.”

So far, Libeeration is only available at Portsmouth Brewery, but Francis hopes to change that. “The next step is to graduate this beer so we brew it in a bigger facility.”

Take that, skeptics.

Joanne Francis–co-owner, Portsmouth Brewery
Portsmouth, New Hampshire
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Top image: The Libeeration ladies. All photos courtesy of Portsmouth Brewery.

The post A Libeerating Experience appeared first on Take Magazine.

That show got Lund and Folsom talking about a Valley-centric women self-portrait show. “We talked about it, brainstormed it,” Lund says, noting Stone joined in the discussion and organization. “There are so many artists around here. The place is crawling with them.”

The self-portrait focus was deliberate, Lund says. “They always seem to be a potent subject matter. They’re telling pictures of how an artist thinks about themselves,” she says, noting that in earlier times women artists often used self-portraits as a marketing tool. “They would hang them in their studio and people could see they really can do a likeness. I think it’s a powerful image.”

Nannette Vonnegut, one of the 50 participating artists, loved the idea of the show. “Since Jane Lund and the other curators involved were artists I admired and whose integrity I trusted, I didn’t think twice about participating in the show,” she says. “APE Gallery is an excellent venue as well. In every way I was honored to be included.”

Having an all-women show in the Valley is important for the message it sends to the art world at large, Vonnegut says. “Women are still under-represented in the art world, so it’s always a good thing to give space and time for exhibits like this,” she says. It’s very moving to see women as they relate to themselves, not in relationship to others, although I have a man’s tattoo on my chest … in these portraits, we are telling a story and given much needed time and space to do so.”

Jane Lund–artist
Northampton, Massachusetts
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The post Putting Women First appeared first on Take Magazine.

You may be what you eat, but are you also shaped by where you live? That’s part of what performance architecture artists Ward Shelley and Alex Schweder are examining as they live for days at a time in an installation they’ve created in the Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum.

Called Your Turn, the installation features a 23 x 23 foot wall that looks like a house that’s become two dimensional, almost as if its width has been squished by a compactor. A bed, mini-kitchen, table with four chairs, and IKEA chair with lamp sit on different small platforms that slide from one side to the other like large drawers. The critical point is this: there is only one bed, one mini-kitchen, etc. And that means that the men, each of whom “lives” on one side of a wall and can’t see the other person, must communicate when he wants the bed . . . or the bathroom . . . or the chair. These platforms slide from one side to the other like large drawers, but only one man can access a platform at a time. Pull the platform over to your side without first yelling over to your partner, and he could well end up on the floor.

Ward, who hails from Easton, Connecticut, when he’s not on the wall, and Schweder, who is from Brooklyn, are living in the installation for various multi-day stints while the exhibit is up. It is not the first time the men have collaborated in this kind of living-their-art installation: in ReActor, on view at the OMI International Arts Center’s Architecture Field and until August 2018, the men created a narrow rectangular “room” atop a single column that twirls when the wind blows and tilts see-saw like with the shifting weight of its inhabitants. (A video about their time living on ReActor is included in the Aldrich exhibit.) This is the first time, though, that they’ve experienced this kind of divided experienced.

Alex Schweder and Ward Shelley,Your Turn, 2017. Installation view. Photo: Jason Mandella

“This has really turned out to be more about communication than anything,” Ward says, perched in the chair 15 feet above me as we talk. “I’m going to pull out the kitchen, all right?” Schweder yells from the other side, confirming that Ward has not started making his way over to the kitchen by way of the giant staples that allow the men to climb around the wall.

“It’s dependent on other people’s feelings,” Shelley adds, noting that his impaired hearing has only added to the challenge.

When I visit the other side, Schweder, who is an architect, explains the idea of performance architecture further. “Generally speaking it’s a way of approaching a built environment as a question rather than as a problem to solve,” he says. “In the end it’s a way of thinking about architecture through performance art; it’s about breaking habits rather than reaffirming.”

Ward and Schweder have been doing these kinds of installation performances for a decade. “It’s an extreme environment,” Shelley says. “We’re not sure what it will do to use. It’s about what we become in this situation. We started doing performance architecture before we had an idea of what it was.”

Shelley quotes Winston Churchill as part of the inspiration behind their environment theories: “First we shape our buildings. Thereafter they shape us.” “Humans shape their environments,” Shelley explains. “It becomes feedback in a loop of changes. Our buildings are like scripts for social behaviors. We could compose different scripts.”

Your Turn explores the idea of balance. “People have to react to each other to keep peace and balance, Shelley says. “Balance manifests itself in different ways. Our pieces are about this.” Ward places his arm on the arm rest: “It’s about the dance of who gets to put his elbow down there.”

The potential implications can go beyond their wall. How do people negotiate things, such as space, that are scarce? “The armrest may be inconsequential,” Shelley says, “but for bigger things the issue is exponential.” On the wall, sharing is a necessitated syncopated coordination. “What better place than a wall to explore this?” Shelley says. “Walls are having their moment,” referencing  to Trump’s proposed border wall.

Dressed in orange and red jumpsuits, the men look at little like prisoners. Ward says their attire is for simplicity of living rather than making a statement. “It’s our own motif,” he says. “It’s a way for people to find visual continuity. We don’t feel we are in prison.”

Shelley and Schweder are scheduled to live in Your Turn, November 30th-December 2nd, and December 8th-10th. To check additional times for their installation residency, visit the Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum website.

Ward Shelley–performance architecture artist
Easton, Connecticut
Website

Top image: Detail from Alex Schweder and Ward Shelley: Your Turn (installation view), 2017. The Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum, Ridgefield, CT. Photo: Jason Mandella

The post Your Turn, My Turn, Our Turn appeared first on Take Magazine.

Harmonizations VIII by Susan Schwalb. Photo by Izzy Berdan

Susan Schwalb has been called the Pied Piper of metalpoint, her chosen medium. The technique, at its core, is drawing with a metal point—but of course, there’s much more to it than that. “I hope more artists take it up,” Schwalb says. “If I’m able, with colleagues, to put out a technique book that will give more people information about the medium, then hopefully with enough images of non-figurative work, more artists will think this is something they want to play around with.”

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The post Extra, Extra: Susan Schwalb appeared first on Take Magazine.

Metalpoint artist Susan Schwalb uses a fork a bit differently from most people. While you or I use it to pick up a floret of broccoli or stab a piece of beef, Schwalb uses it to draw. She also uses steel wool; flat bars of silver or gold; and special styluses that hold fine pieces of silver, copper, or other metals. Basically, if it’s metal, chances are she’s tried drawing with it.

While this might sound like a strange new idea, drawing with metal—aka metalpoint—actually has a long history. In the Renaissance, long before graphite or red chalk existed, Leonardo da Vinci, Albrecht Dürer, and other Renaissance masters used metal to sketch out their ideas. The works were often unfinished, really more a means to an end than a product in itself.

Schwalb’s work, however, is anything but unfinished. This is work that is absolute and final, her intricate lines meticulously drawn, each with its own place in the abstract story she’s creating. Schwalb has taken an ancient technique and made it boldly contemporary by experimenting with different metals and evolving it from its figurative beginnings into the abstract. Her innovation and vision are recognized far and wide in the art world—her drawings and paintings can be found in the collections of New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art, Boston’s Museum of Fine Arts, and London’s Victoria and Albert Museum, among many others.

Not bad for a technique Schwalb discovered by happenstance. “I was doing very precise ink drawings with a Rapidograph pen,” she recalls. “I kept looking for finer and finer lines. And then I was in the Hamptons with a few other artists for a few weeks. I looked at this artist working; it was silverpoint. Here’s a tool to make a line on my painting! I went back to the city, bought paper and tools, and started. Within a year it was my primary medium. “It’s the precise line I love. I never looked back.”

Intermezzo XXI, 2015, tin, silver, and goldpoint on black gesso, 12 × 12 × 2.125 in. Photo by Jacklyn Boylan

And yet, of course, she did look back, at least initially. Because looking back at the Renaissance is really the only way to learn how to do metalpoint. The drawings themselves are the only points of reference.
“I’m not that interested in all Renaissance drawings,” Schwalb says, “but I’m always interested in Renaissance silverpoint.” Apparently . . . how else to explain her spending not one, not two, but four days looking at the metalpoint retrospective Drawing in Silver and Gold: Leonardo to Jasper Johns at the National Gallery of Art in Washington DC in 2015? “By day two, my husband was looking at other parts of the museum, but I wasn’t. There are things in these drawings.

“I’m not looking at the whole image,” Schwalb continues. “Sometimes it’s just a little section.” She cites Rogier van der Weyden’s Portrait of an Unknown Young Woman as an example. The woman wears a traditional Dutch headdress with a flowing scarf. “I was really looking at how he got the darks and the lights,” Schwalb explains. “Right below her neck is a really thin line. I kept looking, looking, and looking.

“I found this medium, and it doesn’t seem to let me go.”

At her airy Watertown, Massachusetts, studio, Schwalb stands by her drawing table to illustrate various metals’ versatility. She picks up a piece of paper and grabs the aforementioned silver fork, pulling it across the paper to leave a line. She trades the fork for a piece of steel wool and creates a different set of lines. “You can draw with jewelry,” she says, scraping her ring against the wall to make a smudge. “It’s not complicated. What’s hard is the drawing. It is a direct medium. You have to be able to draw.”

Susan Schwalb lines up at her Watertown studio. Photo by Izzy Berdan

Each metal has its own properties, too. Understanding which one tarnishes and how much, for instance, is something Schwalb considers before she begins a piece. Silver, copper, and brass all change color differently. Tarnishing is also affected by the surface and time of year. In humid summer months, a piece can tarnish overnight. In the winter, it can take months. “I try to anticipate it, but I don’t always know,” she says. “Even after 40 years, the medium can surprise me. That’s the fun.”

Schwalb prefers to create series of drawings or paintings rather than individual works, exploring variations on a visual theme. “I do it because I want to try something else—different colors, different metals,” she explains. “One piece leads me to another.”

Her Orchid series, which began as a figurative study, gradually morphed into abstraction as Schwalb created lines around the orchid. “I took the image out. I was drawing what was behind it.” Then she began to tear the paper, eventually burning its edges. “I used a match, then a candle. I finally had to give up burning; if you put your finger on it, there’s a fingerprint,” she says, noting she used burning from 1978 to the early ’80s.

Through it all, she was always searching for the perfect exact line. “I have combined everything—gold leaf, tempera, burning the edges of the paper,” she says, recalling various phases. “It was that I was looking for a very fine line.”

While the colors, textures, and metals vary in her series, the linearity unites her work. Sometimes the lines are straight as arrows—she uses a T-square to ensure that. Other times they waver slightly. Sometimes she mixes the metals. Other times it’s one metal against a solid color.

Schwalb gives her series fairly generic titles—Strata, Music of Silence—deliberately. Individual paintings simply receive a number, as in Strata #246. She often uses musical references. “I don’t want a title that makes you read an image in it,” she says.

Harmonizations is a divergence from her signature line-and-band work. A series of squares with intricate lines, each one is slightly different, yet all meld to create a shimmering design. Each painting looks one way as you look at it straight on; if you look from the side, its depth and intricacies change entirely.

Orchid, photo courtesy of Susan Schwalb

“The creative process is peculiar,” Schwalb says. “Most work doesn’t have the clear narrative everyone would like. There is a narrative; it’s just not as obvious.”

Today, Schwalb draws primarily with styluses. In her earlier years, she often used wider, heavier bars of silver to make her marks, which was hard on her hands. For the same reason, she only shakes hands with her left. “I have to save my right hand for my work,” she explains.

Part of that work involves spreading the news about metalpoint as an art form. While Schwalb would prefer to answer questions about the intent of her art at her shows, she often carries a piece of paper and a silverpoint tool in her pocket. “In the end, I surrender,” she says. “They want to know. It looks like a pencil, but it isn’t. It’s shiny, more fine. People are curious. What is this?” And so, she tells them.

For more images of Schwalb’s work, plus a look around her studio, visit our subscriber-only gallery. 

Susan Schwalb–metalpoint artist
Watertown, Massachusetts
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Top image: Polyphony VIII, 2015, gold and silverpoint on carmine gesso, 16 × 16 × 1.5 in. Photo by Izzy Berdan

The post On Point appeared first on Take Magazine.

“There is power in art,” writes Connecticut’s director of culture, Kristina Newman-Scott, in the strategic plan she helped create for the Connecticut Department of Economic and Community Development’s Office of the Arts when she first took over in 2015. “Its power comes in its messages. Its power comes in its ability to agitate for social change. Communities convene because of the power of art. The voiceless find words through the power of art. There is power in the emotional reactions art evokes in people. There is power in the reflective spaces art creates. And there is power in the way art allows people of all backgrounds to relate to each other.”

We asked Newman-Scott to tell us about how she hopes to speak art-truth to power as she implements this strategic plan.

Take: You were an artist in Jamaica. How does being an artist inform your work as director of culture?
Kristina Newman-Scott: In a developing country like Jamaica, you really have to think about how you’re going to use this [artistic] skill set to make a living. Because I was able to invest in my voice and the thing that spoke to my heart, it gave me the confidence about where I could use this skill set. It’s not just the act of painting: it’s about building relationships with people. If you know how to speak “artist,” you know how to go further and deeper. It let me develop programs that I knew—even if I grew up in Jamaica—were relevant to art students in America. No one is teaching us [in art college] about pricing or how to market yourself. I knew those things firsthand. I realized, especially when I got into government, that this wasn’t commonplace.

T: How did becoming a U.S. citizen in 2013 influence your work as an artist and in your job?
KN-M: In America, a lot of our efforts when engaging with immigrant communities are built on American formulas. Because I grew up in a different country, I’m always curious how it works for different people. I created the first human-centered strategic plan for Connecticut. [The plan, known as READI, uses five guidelines—relevance, equity, access, diversity, and inclusion—as required criteria for all policy and programs.] Our population is changing quickly; I want to know what works for us here and how we fit folks into it, but also how we can challenge ourselves about how we think and develop our programs.

We will not be investing any dollars in Connecticut that are not aligned with this plan. Our office is really challenging itself every step of the way. Are we leading by example? How are we responsible for things that are not working well? This comes from my background in Jamaica, being an artist, and my curiosity growing up. My father was a Jewish black; I was raised Roman Catholic. I am quite the mongrel, as we would say in Jamaica. I want to make sure others have a space at the table, not just major thought leaders. The kid who creates art on Saturdays and works three jobs . . . that kid deserves a place at the table, too.

T: In a 2015 TEDx talk, you quoted your grandmother saying to you in Jamaican, “What is fi yu cyaan un fi yu,” which means “If it belongs to you, it is yours already.” How have you made this job yours?
KN-M: I came into this job, and there was no job description. I knew there were certain things that had to be done for federal funding. That’s where you start. I‘ve been able to make it mine with things like READI. I’ve given space to my team to push back and come up with ideas that might be horrible—but that’s great. I celebrate risk and failure, because that’s where innovation lives. Just because of that same curiosity, I can push back at my team, too. As you can imagine in government, you do something one way, and that’s how it’s done. I don’t care what we do; I want to know why we do it. I like to unpack and rebuild. I’m not afraid of finding issues and problems.

T: What do you hope to accomplish in your tenure?
K-NM: When I came into this office, there was no social media on the historic preservation side. My staff was swamped. Two years in, we’re on every social media you could want to be on. We do e-newsletters. We host statewide conferences for the arts and historic preservation, too. I’m committed to serving my community the best way I can. The fact that READI is something that is real and tangible and guides how we function—I’m so proud of that. I’m bringing READI to historic preservation, too. We’ve got to think about how all that we’re doing aligns with social justice. It’s all about leading from a human-centered point of view.

T: What is the role of the arts and preservation in our society, especially in times of political crisis?KN-M: We’re not going to be remembered for trash pickup. When people are studying our culture hundreds of years from now, it’s going to be about how we communicated with each other. The culture and the arts are what’s going to continue our story of humankind. Arts and culture communicate in ways that the barriers of languages sometimes fall short in. When you go to foreign countries, one of the first things they’ll ask about is our entertainment. They’ll want to know about Beyoncé or some movie or artists. We go to places to enjoy culture. As we are trying to attract people to our state, they’re going to come because Connecticut is a place of great historical and cultural treasures.

Kristina Newman-Scott | Illustration by Brittany Loar

Kristina Newman-Scott – Connecticut’s Director of Culture
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When photographer Sarah C. Butler first visited her mother after getting a call from her mother’s husband that he was concerned about her health, she agreed to the trip with trepidation. She and her mother had had a tumultuous relationship, and she had not visited her mother in eight years, a time during which her mother had purchased her “dream” home not far from the Mount Desert Isle home where Butler was raised. An abandoned Cape complete with a barn and acreage for the animals she loved, the house, her mother told her in their infrequent phone calls, was well on its way to being restored.

Instead, what Butler saw as she drove up to the property was a ramshackle house that looked almost uninhabitable, a physical metaphor of their relationship and her memories of her mother as a child. Or so it seemed at first glance.

Looking Out, Looking In from Frozen in Time, Sarah C. Butler

What evolved, after six years of photographing the house and her mother, was a different story, a story scraped away like so many layers of wallpaper as Butler took hundreds of photographs of her mother and her life. Slowly, Butler grew to love her mother once more. They became, she says, friends. The house may not have been repaired, but their relationship was.

Contemplation from Frozen in Time, Sarah C. Butler

“We became great friends, which is incredible. I have come to respect her as much or more than any woman I know,” Butler says. “She did things the way she wanted. Once I was just there and was her friend, she’s a strong person. Who am I to interfere in what she wants? She gave me a good life.”

This love story to Butler’s mother, Frozen in Time, is being released in conjunction with an exhibit of some of the photographs at Star Gallery in Northeast Harbor, Maine. The large-format book—the only format Butler, who shoots film on 5X7 sheets, uses—is stunning. We sit on Butler’s shoulders as she peeks into her mother’s life and, with Butler, we slowly see the love beneath the dirt and chaos. “Going there was shocking,” Butler says of her initial visit. “The only way for me to go there was with my camera. It was a shield, an excuse for me to be there.”

During the first year, it was an image of two dresses belonging to her and her sister, hanging pressed and pristine, lovingly preserved amid the dirt and despair, that caught Butler’s attention and enabled her to keep going. “I couldn’t let go of it,” she says of that photo. “I knew that piece of my mother that was good, was kind, I knew that mother was there even though we hadn’t gotten along for years. I determined from that image to continue the project.”

Dresses, May 2009 from Frozen in Time, Sarah C. Butler

“I never intended to show it to anybody. I was doing it for myself,” she continues. “I just reacted basically to what was in front of me. In time I learned from my own photographs. I learned from the work, which is different than I’ve ever worked before.”

What Butler learned was that, contrary to the 8-year-old version of her life, a story she’d been telling and retelling since that year her parents divorced, her mother actually did—albeit in a damaged way—love her and her sister. “Initially I would shoot a photo like the sink and the emptiness of the space proved her failure as a mother,” Butler says. “Over time I became comfortable with that stillness. She loved that house. In fact I’d fallen in love with that house.”

Yellow Gloves at Kitchen Sink, April 8 2011 from Frozen in Time, Sarah C. Butler

Initially it didn’t go smoothly. Butler’s mother often kicked her out. But after trust developed, it became, Butler says, a collaboration. “She would tell me stories,” she says, “let me in on her secrets.”

“I thought I had dealt with her, and all my issues,” Butler adds. “In those first two years it was almost like a psychodrama with my mother. I was looking at her as an 8-year-old, furious with her. But then hearing her talk about her side of the divorce, I got respect for her and what she’d done and how she done it. It was my baggage, not hers.”

Frozen in Time, then, is a story of loss and redemption with all the ensuing guilt and distress that comes from poking holes in a lifetime story. It is at once deeply personal and deeply universal. Which is precisely Butler’s hope for the project. “The most important thing to me about work was, yes, it was the relationship with my mother,” she says. “But it is more than that. People look at it and relate to their own story. For other people to answer those questions about their own lives is great.”

Sarah C. Butler–photographer
Mount Desert Isle, Maine and Boston, Massachusetts
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Top image, “Irrelevance of Time,” (cropped), all images courtesy of Sarah C. Butler

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