New Website for Contemporary Pastoralism

Announcing a new website for the farms that have participated inthe Contemporary Pastoralism project and the work that came out of it.

Check it out HERE!

Postcards from the Field: Contemporary Pastoralism

A new solo show is up at Boston Sculptors Gallery through December 13

Installation view of Postcards from the Field: Contemporary Pastoralism

Every family has a farm somewhere in their past—a place where people came together to provide for the days ahead. As the seasons turned people helped their neighbors to bring in the hay or with lambing and harvest, making it the heart of the community. Men and women worked amidst smells and textures foreign to us now. Women, particularly, lived in a world of texture: running silky fibers through their hands as they spun and wove clothes, sifting through feathers and slippery intestines as they prepared food, sorting through rough and heavy rocks as they tended the homestead garden. Evidence of these lost homesteads is all over New England. A winter walk in the woods reveals dismembered stonewalls or collapsed barns surrounded by encroaching forest. It was these textural memorials of our landscape’s history that first inspired this body of work.

he Contemporary Pastoralism project was born out of a response to the working farms that surround my studio. Like pastoral painters that once walked the countryside, I have traded studio for farm to create site-specific explorations in collaboration with the seasonal rhythms, muddy pastures and beating hearts of small homesteads. It is not an explanation of what we have lost, but rather an exploration of what we may find. It is a way of looking: a rediscovery and reinvention of what we may already know.

New Book About Contemporary Pastoralism

We are very excited to announce there is a new book about the studio working on farms You can get it at Boston Sculptors Gallery, Flying Pig bookstore, or Here

My Mother Killed

The following is our son's poem he wrote when he was 17, as a result of my helping a farm cull some chickens for winter. Below is the responding sculpture. This can be seen at Greenfield Community College, along with other sculpture October 6 through November 7, 2015 in Greenfield, Massachusetts

My Mother Killed

My Mother killed

Some chickens in our backyard.

At night the coyotes come to lick the grass.

Charles Milliken

My Mother Killed, duck feathers, hardware cloth, 10x2', 2014

upcoming Artsalon artist talk

Next ArtSalon: Friday, September 18, 6:30pm, at Park Hill Orchard, Easthampton

riday, September 18th, 2015
6:30pm, presentations begin at 7pm
$5 suggested donation
at Park Hill Orchard, 82 Park Hill Rd, Easthampton

Heather Beck, metalsmith
Petula Bloomfield, painter & mixed media
Kait Brink, fiber art
Susan Halls, sculptor
Nancy Winship Milliken, sculptor
Dawn Howkinson Siebel, painter & sculptor

More about the next ArtSalon

A dynamic social evening of engaging presentations by established and emerging artists in the Pioneer Valley

Artist Talks in September, October and November

There will be five opportunities in the next few months to hear slide show artist talks and a walking tour of Boston Sculptors Gallery at Chesterwood, by yours truly. Hear about sculpture in the New England landscape and my newest project Contemporary Pastoralism, in which I have traded studio for farm in a collaborative effort to redefine our contemporary understanding of small farms.

Saturday August 29, 11:30-1:00 at Chesterwood, in Stockbridge, MA
Thursday, September 3, 6:00 at Dedee Shattuck Gallery, Westport, MA
Friday, September 18, 6:30 Artsalon at Park Hill Orchard, Easthampton, MA (home of the well visited Art in the Orchard exhibition)
Wednesday, October 7, 12 noon, south Gallery at Greenfield Community College, Greenfield, MA
Friday, November 20, 6:00 at Boston Sculptors Gallery, Boston, MA

 

Upcoming Artist Talk

Visiting DeDee Shattuck Gallery this Thursday at 5:00 to talk about outdoor art, small New England farms and the environment. Join me and hear about the studio's project, Contemporary Pastoralism.

image by Megan OBrien

upcoming artist talk in Westport, MA

Join us for an artist talk at Dedee Shattuck Gallery in Westport, MA. See More.....

image by Olivia Decker

Boston Sculptors Gallery at Chesterwood

Here is a link to a write up of Boston Sculptors Gallery at Chesterwood for the summer 2015. Very proud to be in this show of incredible fellow artists

Windscape Westport process video

Wonderful video of installation day in Westport, MA, Many thanks to Jon Alden for coming into the field to capture it!
At Dedee Shattuck Gallery through October.

Windscape catalog on sale now online!

Catalog of Windscape, an environmental installation at Shelburne Farms, in Shelburne, VT, for Burlington City Arts' Of Land and Local 2014 exhibition. on sale, online now! Lots of process images and thoughts about the unique installation

Windscape-Westport is up and sailing

Windscape-Westport, 2015, at Dedee Shattuck Gallery in Westport, MA

New placement of Windscape for the summer in an installation called Windscape-Westport. Salt and wool, field and stone, cedar and hay, coastal breezes: heaven. Up through October 2015. @Dedee Shattuck Gallery in Westport, MA. Many thanks to Jim Wood for the loan of his field, to Richard Sisson and his crew, Charlie McElwee and Olivia decker, and the Shattuck Gallery crew for their help in the installation of 16 meadow sails.

Pioneer Women exhibition in Easthampton, MA

Landmark I, II, III process

Landmark I, II, III are installed at Chesterwood in Stockbridge, Massachusetts where Boston Sculptors Gallery is exhibition its outdoor group show from May through October 2015. Twenty-foot tall sight-specific spires celebrate the textures of New England with century old barn board, New England raw wool, field stone wall, and even reclaimed horse hair from cello and violin bows. From sketch to onsite assembly the following images demonstrate the process from start to finish. Hover over the image for more information.

first sketches

spire sketch

At the welders, after months of design with an architect to make sure it was safe

weaving steel wool. Interns earning school cedit have helped along the way. This "wool" will rust and change over the seasons.

The beautiful barn of Peg Holcomb, where we took the century old siding off for a much needed facelift

Dunan Herman-Parks painting a wonderful mixture of lanolin and wax to help ward off rust on the frame. This is used by farmers for their machinery

Tim Holcomb pulling boards off. The money from the studio used to buy the boards will help pay for new boards to take the beautiful barn into the next 100 years

I got used to a ladder as you will see

pulling beautiful square head rusty nails out of the boards

we got to set up a frame inside and took design ideas from the existing boards on the barn

Horse harness from Vermont, cleaned with TLC and lanolin

finally arrival day. Many thanks to Andrew Milliken

preparing on the ground before they stand up

The spires are anchored with a magnificent earth anchor four of them per spire, four feet long. 

Dry stone mason, Kevin Donegan came down from Vermont to help. we had a glorious falling-down stone wall surrounding the field to gather our design ideas.

best laid plans...I wove these reclaimed children's cello and violin bow strings in the studio, all to be taken out again and woven while on a ladder

Last day and final touches. Charles Milliken provided stellar support to his tired Mom. Here he is inside Landmark I about to crawl out and attach the last boards.

over heard while these two worked "I bet no one has asked you to crochet horse hair cello bow strings into hardware cloth before"

Many thanks to this fabulous duo...Kevin Donegan and Studio Manager North, Charlie McElwee

UMass student intern Annie Conant sorts out all of the misc. nuts and bolts

Please visit Landmark to see the final outcome