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!

Gratitude for Rain

Rainstorms inspire beauty, changing light, oxygenated freshness, and a change in temperature. Inspiration from Lake Champlain is ever present, but last winter’s woodblock exhibition of Hiroshige’s prints at the Southern Vermont Arts Center inspired this white on white weaving - called Gratitude for Rain. While I normally knot the ends of a rug, this one allows the warp to continue unbound as if the flow was still there.

And, in reading Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall KImmerer, I am inspired to include part of the Thanksgiving Address. This section offers gratitude to the Waters. From https://danceforallpeople.com/haudenosaunee-thanksgiving-address/haudenosaunee-thanksgiving-address-3/ : It is offered as a daily sunrise prayer, and is an ancient message of peace and appreciation of Mother Earth and her inhabitants. The Thanksgiving Address teaches mutual respect, conservation, love, generosity, and the responsibility to understand that what is done to one part of the Web of Life, we do to ourselves.

We give thanks to all the waters of the world for quenching our thirst and providing us with strength. Water is life. We know its power in many forms — waterfalls and rain, mists and streams, rivers and oceans. With one mind, we send our greetings and our thanks to the spirit of Water.

NOW OUR MINDS ARE ONE

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!

Love Is

PLEASE JOIN US FOR THE OPENING RECEPTION ON JUNE 10:

Love Is. A new show of work by Sally Linder                                       

May 27 – July 27, 2022

Love is not a burden, but a transmission of faith, an eternal instinct of our Spirit.  When we love we hold all as sacred. We cry for the little birds in pain and sing with them in the joy.

Love is the opening of our hearts to the truths we do not see.

Love is transcendence of the habits and standards we are taught.

Love is our eternal being, that immortal state that is our true Self.

Love is community when we breathe together as one with the Universe.

Sally Linder’s paintings show us the many forms and ask us to meditate on the meaning of love.  Love of course comes in many shapes – physical love, old love, puppy love, emotional lust, faithful friendship, love of others, love of self, and painful love.  Her paintings intoxicate us and fill us with the ecstatic beauty that is love and allow us to dissolve who we think we are.  Through love our hearts leap out to the eternal, to our immortal Self, to that which is pure and free.

2021 - a year in review

Dear Friends and Neighbors,
It feels like a long year with many ups & downs -- for some illnesses, for others new family -- but altogether it seems we have the strength to face a new year, i.e., the coming Chinese "Year of the Tiger." This is one about courage, a sense of justice, exorcising evils, and maybe a little arrogance! I can't wait.

The images below highlight 2021 at GreenTARA, but in one sentence, the Gallery showcased some impressive Vermont artists over the year and continues to be home to Kraemer & Kin, our local micro-brewery and community hub.

Other tidbits: the North Hero Town Library now has a collection of Stave Puzzles. We donated about 24 of these hand-cut, non-linear, wooden jigsaw gems made in Norwich, VT for you to borrow. If you don't know about them, check out the website! www.stavepuzzles.com

First show of 2022 will be Scott Brown from Grand Isle with his primary colored constructions. Each piece is designed, cut, painted, then pieced back together to create interlocking geometries. And Kristian Brevick with his illuminated world of fishes and whales from Burlington:

I create illuminated sculptural lanterns representing the breadth of biodiversity in the living world. When lit, these lanterns reveal skeletons, colors, and patterns of the creatures they represent - they cast a warm glow, drawing the viewer in. These works encourage the consideration of these beings, their role in ecosystems, and their wellbeing in the world. www.kristianbrevik.com

Don't forget on Great Ice 2022 -- Feb. 18, 19, and 20. There will be events from snowshoeing and skating, to skiing and dogsledding... more is being planned as we go.

Happy winter to you all, Diane

CON EL MAR POR TESTIGO

CON EL MAR POR TESTIGO (With the sea as our witness) is a virtual gallery and photographic show created by EFCH photography school in Havana, Cuba. Several of us made a trip via the Cuban American Friendship Society (CAFS) which included a visit to EFCH in March 2020 right before the pandemic closed down travel. GreenTARA hopes to one day host a gallery event with EFCH, but this virtual event will have to suffice in the meantime. To view the video, please click on and scroll around: www.efchgallery.com

Portrait of US - North Hero, VT

These photographs and interviews by Monica Frisell and Adam Scher were part of Carole d’ Inverno’s gallery mural project in September. Together the two are creating an evolving and living document of our country in their ongoing project “Portrait of US”. They are back on the road again, but have left this collection of photographs and interviews for us to view online or at the Town Library and GreenTARA.

POP-UP Romulus Craft Pottery

We have a special Pop Up exhibit of Jeanne Bisson’s tea bowls. The matched bowls and saucers are exquisite examples of her work as part of Romulus Craft team. She and her partner Ikuzi Teraki make porcelain sing. Romulus Craft is about relationships, relationships between two distinct individuals from two different cultures, between nature and time, between control and spontaneous reaction. www.romuluscraftstudio.com

These tea bowls are a sensation of lightness to the eye and weight in the hand. They are meant to slow us down in this vast changing moment of time. The bowl sets are for sale and can be seen by visiting the Video Temple, downstairs from the Main Gallery.

Please contact me for more information: greentaraspace@gmail.com