CUBAN IMAGES - Join us!

Cuban Images by Cuban and Vermont artists abound! Such talent surrounds us as we strive for beauty in our world. Please join us at these two events to celebrate coming together again. The exhibition FOUR CUBAN PHOTOGRAPHERS is at the Darkroom Gallery, Essex Junction, VT and the VERMONTERS’ VIEWS OF CUBA is being held in the Pickering Room, Fletcher Free Library, Burlington, VT.

As of today, we are still unsure of whether the Cubans will be able to get US visas in time for these events, but we are very priviledged to have their photos and the exhibition of 50 images is going up as you read this.

Plus we are delighted with the availability of the FFL Pickering Room to show off the images of Cuba that have been taken by Vermonters traveling to Cuba. The number of Vermonters traveling and photographing Cuba is impressive.

Other notes: We have a beautiful poster and Exhibition Book for sale. Of course the Images are for sale — with the money going to support the Cuban artist…. We also plan on videotaping the shows in order to create a media exchange if the in person exchange doesn’t quite happen… stay tuned!

And thank you to Green Mountain Camera for the printing!!!

Dark inky sky

three stars and a crescent moon

pure Joy!

Call to Artists

Vermonters’ Views of Cuba… This is a call to artists for a parallel exhibition to the FOUR CUBAN PHOTOGRAPHERS upcoming show to be at Darkroom Gallery in Essex Junction, VT June 3 thru July 1, 2023. Reception June 11, 2023 3-5pm.

The Vermonters’ Views of Cuba… show will be less formal but just as lively. Images do not have to framed, but must be ready for hanging. Depending on the submissions this could be a dynamic parallel to the Four Cuban Photographers (see images below). Please email: greentaraspace@gmail.com for an application form to submit your low-res image and information. This is all happening with a short-timeline! $10 submission contributions. Submissions DUE: May 28, 2023.

Also once you’ve sent me your images, please be ready to bring them to the Fletcher Free Library at 10am on June 5th for hanging! RECEPTION will be Friday June 16, 2023 from 4pm to 6pm in the Pickering Room.

Beauty calms the thrashing of the soul — James Hillman.

CAFÉxchange Project

GreenTARA Space is so happy to be moving forward on this Cuban-American Friendship Exchange project : CAFÉxchange for June 2023. This will be our main focus for the year.

 CAFS – the Cuban American Friendship Society in Burlington, Vermont, sponsored a recent visit to Havana to reconnect with several photographers that we met in 2020 before the Covid pandemic.  Our goal is to rebuild trust in a mutually beneficial exchange of cultural identity and aspiration for the future.

The team of CAFS, VICII (Vermont Institute of Community and International Involvement), The Caroline Fund, and Friends of GreenTARA, Inc. met with three of the four photographers that have been invited to visit Vermont as part of our program for community development and ongoing future exchanges.

 The Feb/March trip included meetings with Tomas Inda Barrera, Alfredo Sarabia Fajardo, and Yadira Ismael Sotomayor.  The fourth photographer Nadhiesda Inda Gonzalez will be coming from Argentina. 

Their work talks to the social contract we have with the environment, humanity, workers, and cultural constructions. The international level of their photographic art is world-class and we are very honored to be able to invite them to Vermont.

Always amazing!

The Lake is always amazing. I am in awe. And yes conditions in City Bay for Great Ice 2023 are a bit sketchy. The ice that was forming is now again changing and skating may be in trouble but the fireworks celebration on the 17th will happen… Check the Great Ice 2023 website for more details.

Saturday will offer a variety of activities - including watching the lake and sky! But not to be missed is the Ingalls Camp snowshoe walk starting at noon, followed by The Quarry Project Film at GreenTARA, 4pm. If you simply want another cup of coffee or cocoa, that’s possible too, upstairs in Main Gallery.

This is a perplexing time, we depend on winter for so many things. Adjusting to fluidity in our expectations takes energy but the result can be joyous spontaneity — so much easier to say than feel. Instead of skating or skiing across that incredible expanse of frozen beauty to get to Knight Island, I will simply try to adjust and breathe in the depth of reflection that water can be in any state of itself. We are that.

On View

Ice Follies

I used to want two winters a year, but now that winter is so fickle, I am losing my trust in it. I am willing to trade in the two for just one good winter. I love the brilliant white when it snows; watching ice form and create mysterious humps and shapes, or crystalline patterns; and the glint of setting sun on the phenomenal transformation of liquid to solid.

But how are we going to cut ice blocks to store for summer in the icehouse? Or kill off the ticks, the emerald ash borer, and other non-native bugs without long deep months of cold? And even worse, I am afraid that this current blanketing of snow with no deep freeze into the ground below is already pushing up our seasonal plumbing into a network of broken pipes!

Snowflakes take a kernel of sand or dust to form around. This microscopic bit becomes the catalyst, the creative stimulus that generates the creative force of becoming. Listening to Shankar Vedantam on Hidden Brain I am intrigued by the discussion of how “creative force” comes into being. Whether artist or not, my fundamental question has to do with the moment of “whoosh” when something seemingly comes out of nothing into something!

So back to Ice Follies, to the Great Ice 2023 Festival, in North Hero! - ice or not, winter or not…. We need to get out and gather, to laugh and play, at home or with others, stomping the ground in celebration of winter. Things to do: walk to your favorite ponds and look for beaver activity… Check out what’s happening below the slush in the water, look for all those little animal tracks in and out of your foundation wall, and listen to wild creative music!

Migrations and songs: Cristina Pato at TEDxMadr www.youtube.com/watch?v=37e2EiGhcQE

Enjoy the time we have! See you on Feb 18th at 4pm for Hannah Dennison’s The Quarry Project - Film.

Women builders and earthen architecture!

Here we are weathering both hurricane and election season... They do tend to overlap and look like they are getting worse, more dramatic with more casualties, but even so, we seem to make it thru with resilience and faith. Do I say this because I feel safe and sound, maybe, but still I recognize that in both situations it takes a belief in democracy, a reliance on communal energy, and an effort to build sustainability to get thru the trials and tribulation of the work at hand.

We cannot innocently sit by. We never could. To imagine beauty takes us all. Beauty is our interpretation of the eternal, our internalization of the immortal. We see it in Bierstadt's painting of Yosemite at The St. Johnsbury Athenaeum and we see it in our human connection with each other. We can eat a Gianduja chocolate in Italy or we can clean the muck out of the basement after a storm, it's all the same, we must bring heart to it. "Before enlightenment, chop wood, carry water. After enlightenment, chop wood, carry water."

But back to GreenTARA : Kreamer & Kin Microbrewery is now at the Alburgh Golf Links, the Gallery hosted an Afghani Wedding Engagement Party for 50 people this past week, and GreenTARA has a visiting French architect from the Cameroon, Amélie Esséssé as guest this coming week. A segment of her film on WOMEN BUILDERS AND EARTHEN ARCHITECTURAL HERITAGE IN AFRICA will be aired on Thursday November 17, 2022, on CCTV, at 6pm, a VICII program.
The Program Title is : African Women’s Traditional Building Practices - Today . This is a VICII Program thanks to CCTV and Sandy Baird, VICII. Co-hosted by Eric Agnero, citizen journalist / co-producer of VICII and Diane Gayer, architect / ecological planner. We will host a discussion with guest Amélie Esséssé about her film as a means of addressing the re-claiming of cultural identity, global architectural expectations, and climate change.

Please join us!

We the People

We the People

Janet Van Fleet’s large figures hanging on the wall are half- to three-quarter human scale. They are made with found and re-purposed materials, including wood, metal, wire, rubber, buttons, and glass. Their presence as People remind us that we are made of many things and ideas, yet united in our collective future and desire for freedom.

Janet Van Fleet:

They are looking at you, and you are looking at them. I like to think that they may be saying something to you, and you might be replying, or making a statement of your own. This is a bit like our mixing it up with the other people around us, our co-citizens. Often it seems impossible to understand where they’re coming from, and they sometimes have no clue what we think and why we think it. Connecting with art often requires a similar effort to open ourselves and relate. I wish you a good conversation!