Past Exhibitions and Events 2020
2nd Annual Community Ofrenda and the Calaveras De Coronavirus exhibit
December 17 -20 Jason Montgomery of Attack Bear Press is the lead artist for this project. Working with illustrator Jennifer Wagner, artist JRM and the Attack Bear Press team has created 15,000 4" x 6" Calaveras cards that will be strung and hung in the A.P.E. gallery. Each skull represents 15 people lost to COVID. This would mean at the time of the printing we are representing 210K people who were lost in the US. We then had members of the Latinx and Indigenous Western Mass community paint 15 bisque ceramic skulls that were placed with the cards in the gallery space. |
Seeing Red, Feeling Blue
November 10 - December 13, 2020
Nanette Vonnegut & Jennifer McCandless
See the Virtual Tour HERE
Artist Statement
Jennifer McCandless and I met in the spring, 2017, at The Loomis Chaffee School, where I was an artist in residence. As the head of the art department, it was Jen’s job to find out how I might be useful to the students there, which involved showing examples of my work. Shortly after that Jen gave me a tour of her studio. We quickly recognized something kindred in our work, dark undertows hiding under flowery scenes and cartoonish figures. There was laughing involved and, as artists, a very real connection. Before I left Loomis Chaffee, we knew we would find a way to show our work together. The idea that it would be fun was no small part in our thinking.
Thankfully, A.P.E. agreed, well before the pandemic hit us. Jen and I have chosen to not share everything we’ve been working on these past many months, trusting the thread of our connection would be there, as it was from the beginning. Jen recently told me she was feeling blue and it was affecting her work. How my work is being affected isn’t exactly clear, but there is a lot of red and fire in it, which might suggest anger. I’ll go with anger. What is certain for the both of us is that making art saves us from despair. Letting humor take a lead, in all its shades, is our way of taking shelter from the storms and ambient grief all around us.
November 10 - December 13, 2020
Nanette Vonnegut & Jennifer McCandless
See the Virtual Tour HERE
Artist Statement
Jennifer McCandless and I met in the spring, 2017, at The Loomis Chaffee School, where I was an artist in residence. As the head of the art department, it was Jen’s job to find out how I might be useful to the students there, which involved showing examples of my work. Shortly after that Jen gave me a tour of her studio. We quickly recognized something kindred in our work, dark undertows hiding under flowery scenes and cartoonish figures. There was laughing involved and, as artists, a very real connection. Before I left Loomis Chaffee, we knew we would find a way to show our work together. The idea that it would be fun was no small part in our thinking.
Thankfully, A.P.E. agreed, well before the pandemic hit us. Jen and I have chosen to not share everything we’ve been working on these past many months, trusting the thread of our connection would be there, as it was from the beginning. Jen recently told me she was feeling blue and it was affecting her work. How my work is being affected isn’t exactly clear, but there is a lot of red and fire in it, which might suggest anger. I’ll go with anger. What is certain for the both of us is that making art saves us from despair. Letting humor take a lead, in all its shades, is our way of taking shelter from the storms and ambient grief all around us.
Zea Mays Printmaking Studio
Extractions: Green to the Extreme October 3 – November 1, 2020 View the virtual tour by Nick Verdi Zea Mays Printmaking presents Extraction: Green to the Extreme, an exhibition featuring multimedia printmaking works by 38 artists about the political, social, and personal issues related to natural resource exploitation—its forms and its consequences, including its effect on art making and human life. The exhibition is associated with a pan-global art project, Extraction: Art on the Edge of the Abyss, “a multimedia, multi-venue, cross-border art intervention that will investigate extractive industry in all of its forms from mining and drilling to the reckless exploitation of water, soil, trees, marine life, and other natural resources.” (https://www.extractionart.org/home). Zea Mays members were challenged to join this “international art ruckus” with a loud and spirited voice while using only repurposed, plundered, rescued, recycled, traded materials in their art. Zea Mays Printmaking (Florence, MA) is a studio, workshop, gallery, educational facility and research center dedicated to the safest and most sustainable printmaking practices available. |
September 4-27, 2020
DOES MY VOICE COUNT? Voter Suppression Then and Now Photographs and Narrative by Jim Lemkin Watch the Virtual Tour and Narration, created by Nick Verdi https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v9zljuoUa-8&t=75s This September, A.P.E. Ltd. Gallery presents DOES MY VOICE COUNT? • Voter Suppression Then and Now, an exhibit of photographs spanning two moments in U.S. history, separated by 55 years, against a backdrop of a 400-year history of injustice and institutional racism. These photographs focus on only one aspect of that history—the attempt to suppress the voice and power of another. About the Exhibit: For millions of disenfranchised Blacks and people of color in the U.S., the 1965 Voting Rights Act marked the beginning of the end of voter suppression in Southern states. Within weeks of its passage, several civil rights groups issued a call to college students to come help register Black voters in Mississippi during the 1965 Christmas vacation. It was called Mississippi Freedom Christmas. Jim Lemkin, a volunteer photographer heard the call and traveled the rural roads of Walthall County, Mississippi with a small group of other northern college students to help get the word out that voter suppression was now illegal. Against a backdrop of southern white resentment and hostility, the students went door-to-door, speaking with Black residents about their newly-won right to vote, and bringing them to a Federal registrar to complete the voter registration process. In March 2020, equipped with only an iPhone, Jim returned to the same county in Mississippi to learn what had changed in 55 years. He did interviews with several Mississippi Black elders and activists who were willing to tell their stories and talk about present day voting problems in Mississippi. Today, voter suppression is far from over. In 2013, a key protection ensured by the Voting Rights Act was removed, opening the floodgates nationwide to evermore deliberate and unjust ways of suppressing the vote of people of color, minorities, the poor, the disadvantaged, and students. Handouts will be freely available at A.P.E. Gallery that discuss the forms of voter suppression that existed before the Voting Rights Act, and the present, even more pervasive suppressive laws that exist in a majority of U.S. states. Also available will be an extensive list of organizations that need help to address voter suppression |
|
normal pop-up curated by Zoe Sasson
Five artists show work in the window of A.P.E. at 126 Main Street. June 8 - August 17, 2020 Until it’s safe to re-open our gallery doors, A.P.E. is excited to take advantage of our very large windows at 126 Main Street in downtown Northampton. This summer, we’ll be bringing artwork to the public through normal pop-up, featuring the work of five visual artists in our window space, curated by local western Massachusetts artist Zoe Sasson. Artists: Danielle Klebes, Galen Cheney, Alicia Renadette, Zoe Sasson, Roberley Bell. |
Nancy Stark Smith
February, 1952 - May 1, 2020 -For a long time, I just knew of Nancy Stark Smith as I saw her move at A.P.E. in the beauty of her strength. The mind bender, earth shaker, gravity tender, force of nature. Then once at a gathering she asked me what I did. I explained my work with children. She asked if I would write something for CQ. The process of her editing while sitting with me met every dead end, loose thread of my thinking, every “um” or pause in conviction, every vagueness or shadowy hiding. She exposed and caught and challenged my words into clarity. At the end of her dedicated hours, I knew my own work and myself better. The best part was to be close to her essential and loving rigor. It was beyond feminism; in this case, it was really standing behind being a woman. It seemed all her actions were like that. She couldn’t just stop at dance, she had to make things conscious. (She is saying now, what do you mean by "things"?) I mean your curiosity, Nancy. Almost anything in your path, you would want to know more about. And if you brought your observations forward to others, you would want the garden of them not to have weeds. With admiration and gratitude, Annie Woodhull, Director, A.P.E. READ MORE ABOUT NANCY |
|
POEMS EACH DAY
by Group 18 April 2020 - Poetry Month Poets include: Anne Love Woodhull, Bill O'Connell, Margaret Lloyd, Henry Lyman, Rosalyn Driscoll, Bob Coles, Doug Anderson, Rich Michelson, Paul Jacobs, Trish Crapo, and Missy Marie Montgomery Read all poems on our Facebook page and Instragram |
VHS (T.)A.P.E.
Gibson + Recoder March & April, 2020 Kinetic sculpture, light works, and paintings made using discarded VHS video tape, conceived during Gibson + Recoder’s recent artist residency at the Jentel Foundation in Banner, Wyoming. The title of the exhibition is a play on the Available Potential Enterprise (A.P.E.) of VHS video tape. Gibson + Recoder have been exhibiting their expanded cinema installations and projection performances since 2000. Their works are in the permanent collections of major art museums, including the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York, Memorial Art Gallery in Rochester, and Museum Kunstpalast in Düsseldorf, Germany. They live and work in NYC. More about Gibson & Recoder: https://miltonartbank.com/electric-shadows http://www.gibsonrecoder.com/ |
Tiny Pricks Project
DESPERATE TIMES, CREATIVE MEASURES CREATED BY DIANA WEYMAR TO RECORD TRUMP’S WORDS BY STITCHING ON VINTAGE TEXTILES. Tiny Pricks Project Northampton was spearheaded by Jill St. Coeur and A.P.E. to create some local interest in this national project and is supported in part by a grant from the Northampton Arts Council. Local participants are already making tiny pricks to exhibit in conjunction with pieces from Diana Weymar’s archives. OPEN GALLERY HOURS FEBRUARY 8 - 2 FOR MORE INFO: WWW.TINYPRICKSPROJECT.COM Funded in part by the: Northampton Arts Council |
A SKULL IN CONNEMARA
by Martin McDonagh A dark comedy by the writer/director of "In Bruges" and the Academy Award winning film "Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri" December 2019 & January 2020 Performed by No Theater veterans Roy Faudree, Charles Holt, Jane Karakula and Tom Mahnken, the play takes place in McDonagh’s fictional rural West Ireland small town where people “smile at you ‘til you’re a mile away before they start talking behind your back." No Theater, the resident theater of A.P.E., takes its time working on its original scripts and productions of the published works of playwrights. No Theater presented three separate local productions of Richard Maxwell's CAVEMAN over a period of three years before its New York run in 2013. 2018's google gogol was the result of members of the community reading several translations and adaptations of Nikolai Gogol's Ревизор (THE GOVERNMENT INSPECTOR) for a year. A SKULL IN CONNEMARA is presented by special arrangement with Dramatists Play Service, Inc., New York. A SKULL IN CONNEMARA was first presented as a Druid Theatre Company and Royal Court Theatre co-production in Galway, Ireland and then in London in the summer of 1997. "Mr. McDonagh's great strength is that he combines a love of traditional story-telling with the savage ironic humour of the modern generation.... In A SKULL IN CONNEMARA, a gravedigger, whose job is to disinter the bones of seven-year-old corpses and smash them to a pulp, is hotly suspected of killing his wife." THE GUARDIAN Based in Northampton, No Theater has been presenting their new original experimental works in Western Massachusetts and around the world since 1972, alongside innovative productions of plays by such diverse writers as Shakespeare, Chekhov, Čapek, Kroetz, Gogol, Williams, Albee, Berkman, Maceda, Mullin, McDonald, and Maxwell. |