Spruce Peak Performing Arts Center Presents LOOKING OUTWARD Exhibition

On view from the outdoors through the windows and around the exterior of the Spruce Peak Performing Arts Center. By appointment indoors: November 5, 2020- February 28, 2021

Spruce Peak Arts reopens the Art Gallery for the first time since the Covid 19 pandemic with a group exhibition Looking Outward. This exhibition is in participation with: 2020 Vision: Seeing the World Through Technology, a statewide initiative of the Vermont Curators Group, featuring artists Trevor Corp, Robert Gold, Dominique Gustin, Rob Hitzig, Harlan Mack and Sean Clute & Otto Muller of Rural Noise Ensemble.

The exhibition includes outdoor sculpture and banners as well as two video installations and poetry viewable from the outdoors. In addition, mixed media works, photography and sculpture will be lit in the windows to view while visiting Spruce Peak.

The artists are responding to the current social, political and pandemic climate as well as finding ways to connect and be hopeful as we all navigate the future. Sean Clute adds the thought, "There is a cool air emerging from the north. A reminder that everything is in flux. And with movement is hope." Exploring identity, connection to nature, colors, texture with an urgency to create and connect are prevalent in this collection of work.

"At a time in which it seems that facts and logic are useless, art is needed more than ever. Artists need to find a way to reach people because there is more urgency than ever - as a country, as a planet, as living beings, we are running out of time." - Rob Hitzig, participating artist

Looking Outward features Trevor Corp's mixed media works have a unique texture and graphic quality. Says the artist "I believe all aspects of our lives and experiences become a part of our creations if we are invested in them." Robert Gold's photographic and mixed media portraits utilize super-saturation of color and abstraction that reveals the unconscious. Dominique Gustin's poem Together - Alone coupled with her video installation, evokes, in her words, "mesmerizing images of nature juxtaposed with slow motion of camera angles...conveying the surreal and unsettled quality of the 2020 summer experience." Harlan Mack's sculpture, wood constructions, and mixed media works reveal a mini-retrospective of his work over the last few years. Harlan's recent body of work incorporates brightly painted reclaimed wooden fence and blackened forged steel, constructed into symbolic references depicted within his narrative future. Rounding out the exhibition is a sound/video installation Contamination by Rural Noise Ensemble. Artists Sean Clute and Otto Muller dive into a 'third nature' with an unexpected layer of color and dialogue, urging the viewer to consider that "changing with circumstances is the stuff of survival."

To make an appointment to view the exhibition in a socially distanced setting please contact the Curator - Kelly Holt at kholt@sprucepeakarts.org. Viewing from outdoors welcome at any time.

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