VSC - Vermont Studio Center fellowship
Awarded to Joe Wilson and Chanelle Collier
Johnson, Vermont, USA. June - July 2022
The Vermont Studio Center welcomes writers and artists for residencies in Johnson, Vermont, providing onsite and online programs and events. The VSC mission is to provide studio residencies in an inclusive, international community, honouring creative work as the communication of spirit through form. VSC buildings, many of them historic Vermont landmarks, overlook the Gihon River in the northern Green Mountains. VSC supports diverse groups of creative individuals within a safe, equitable, and supportive environment so they can generate new work, solve artistic problems, and cultivate new connections. The program provides residents with the time and space to connect, support one another, and advance creative practice and professional development. VSC’s staff work is centred on inclusivity, equity, and accessibility. For over three decades, the residency program has offered residents and the general public an opportunity to engage with global creative communities. They invite Visiting Writers and Artists from around the world to to mentor residents, present readings, facilitate craft talks, and give lectures that are open to the public.
river show
Vermont Studio Center
Sunday, June 26, 2022
The River Show, conceived by artists Rachel Cohn and Joe Wilson, brings together residents of the Vermont Studio Center’s June 2022 session in a communal group exhibition. Visual artists and writers contributed installations, performances, poems, prints, and sculptures to collectively celebrate our time together in Johnson, Vermont.
Running through the residency and town, the Gihon River served as direct inspiration for the site-specific works. Orange and white cotton tape trailing from steel dances with the current in River Piece made by Wilson and his partner Chanelle Collier. Vincent Edward’s woodblock Architecture on a Rock sits, as if levitating, above the water itself. In Yes, His Son Is Present, a collaboration between Silvie Deutsch and Kyle Larson, children’s inner tubes painted the colors of peppermint candies float ceramic dogs and wildflowers downstream.
For others, the river harkens to parallel homes beyond our temporary residence. Cutouts from leaves gathered around the Gihon River connect Gina Palacios to the border river, the Rio Grande, of her hometown in Amor del Rio. Yolanda Franklin both memorializes and personifies a hurricane as an act of God (“Katrina / flaunt her diva complex”) in “Porch Sitters Sippin’ Sweet Tea in Heaven,” while Kassy Lee, who penned “On the Gihon River” during her time here, calls upon “ancestors.” Biblical allusions to the Gihon, a named river in the Book of Genesis and one of four that branched from a single river within the Garden of Eden, echo throughout Cohn’s River Amulet, in which a twilight spell against nightmares sewn onto tie-dyed fabric glints under the sun during golden hour.
Over moments of contemplative reflection loomed the shadow of the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade, along with the ongoing pandemic and climate crisis. Karen Gustafson used hair to stitch fallen peony petals and visiting artist Debra Priestly gently pierced yellow flowers in Quiet Offerings to the river. Dayann Pazmino summoned the astrological energy of water signs in an impromptu reading. Beneath a whimsical exterior of movable, multicolored parts, Xandra Ibarra’s Fine Lines Mixed Feelings made from conduit responds to structures of power.
In this way, the River Show became its own act of resistance. For one evening, we gathered, laughed, and broke out into a spontaneous rendition of “Somewhere Over the Rainbow,” accompanied by Kelly Moore’s banjo. The next day, the torrential rain nearly washed away works that had been left on the banks. Ultimately, the river reclaimed what was hers.
Mimi Wong
