On view through October, 2021 – Closing Reception Saturday, October 30, 6-7pm
By appointment by contacting gallery@sprucepeakarts.org.
Spruce Peak Arts Gallery presents Exploring Earth, the third exhibition in their environmental art series, following Exploring Air in 2018 and Exploring Water in 2019. Exploring Earth reflects on the intersection of spirituality and art, celebrating earth magic, spirits in nature, animals, plants, and transcendence. The group exhibition features work by artists Jennifer Herrera Condry, Will Kasso Condry, Amy Hook-Therrien, Gilbran and Harlan Mack.
This group of artists have been collaborating in the Spruce Peak Arts virtual panel discussion series Being a BIPOC Artist in Vermont. “The work on exhibit examines our connection to Mother Earth, reaching into our spirit as artists, and rituals that feed creative practice,” states Curator, Kelly Holt. Exploring Earth highlights and honors BIPOC artists, telling stories as they relate to the land as a contemplative space, plant life, spirituality, healing, creatures and our global community through painting, drawing, mixed media and video installation.
View our BIPOC Artist in Vermont virtual panel series here:
Being a BIPOC Artist in Vermont – Part 1
Being a BIPOC Artist in Vermont – Part 2, The Intersection of Art and Spirituality
View the Times Argus review of the exhibition HERE
| Exhibition and BIPOC Artist in Vermont Panel Series Sponsor: | Media Sponsor: | ||
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Meet the Artists:
Jennifer Herrera Condry and Will Kasso Condry of Juniper Creative Arts
Jennifer Herrera Condry and Will Kasso Condry founded Juniper Creative Arts in Southern Vermont a family-run, community-based arts collective. Jennifer Herrera Condry is a visionary creative director and concept designer who facilitates creative placemaking to foster community-building, personal expression, and healing. Jennifer’s inspiration is deeply rooted in her cultural heritage, spiritual lineage, and plant life. Will’s works are characterized by their Afro-futuristic aesthetic, intricate layers, and explosions of color. Juniper Creative’s work centers on using mural arts as a vehicle for community-building, beautification, and healing. 
Amy Hook-Therrien is a Vermont watercolor artist originally from Chelsea. She now lives with her husband Alex Drew (also an artist) in Windsor, Vermont. Her work explores the beauty in the imperfect, the fragility of nature. A gnarled birch tree, a broken branch, a fallen leaf. Her true love is in painting birch trees. Amy’s work starts with a pen and ink sketch, drawing in fine details. She then goes in with layers over watercolor, building colors and texture. She is a tribal citizen of Koasek Traditional Band of the Koas Abenaki Nation. Amy graduated from the University of Maine, Orono with a BFA focusing in painting. She has been practicing watercolor for the past 10 years. She was recently featured in Image Magazine. You can find her work on her website as well as Instagram @hooktherrienart & Facebook.
“I have always been drawn to birches; their individual characteristics always catch my attention. They are almost like ghosts of the forests. They bring a sense of tranquility and fragility to a landscape. They sit quietly, giving a hint of color and their personality as their bark curls away. I thought I might get bored eventually, painting the same type of tree time after time might become a tedious exercise. It hasn’t. Every time I go out to investigate a landscape I always search for birches. I think I could paint birches for the rest of my life and be wonderfully happy. “
Gibran Isaias Lopez professionally known as Gibran – international muralist, speaker, writer is an international muralist and an eclectic artist that travels with his family to diverse parts of the world to collaborate with like-minded families to listen, learn, remember and share methods to align with the harmony of humans, animals and Mother Earth. They use the vehicle of multidisciplinary project-based learning including breathing techniques, free form dance, singing, music, theatre, art, storytelling, science, mathematics, communication media, nutrition, gardening, exercising, and many other experiential practices to co-create HARMONY with others.
He has authored a novel, “The Crow’s Aura: The Path to Forgiveness; and a companion workbook containing mental, physical and spiritual exercises titled: The Crow’s Aura: Unearthing Our Gifts Workbook.”
Due to his multi-faceted skills and work experience ISAIAS is sought out by U.S.A Embassies, architects, builders, program managers, community leaders, teachers, professors, counselors and therapists to collaborate with them on complex projects that require communication, trust and alignment with multiple moving parts.
Follow Gibran on YouTube, Instagram @_Gibran.
Harlan Mack of the Vermont Studio Center
Harlan Mack is a Vermont born multidisciplinary artist based at the Vermont Studio Center in Johnson, Vermont. He employs blacksmithing, steel fabrication, painting, and oral storytelling to build an expanding, constellated narrative that invites viewers and listeners into an elaborate imaginary future timeline. This world is generated and inspired by Harlan’s life experience, exploration and thoughts around identity, labor, perception, contemplation, fiction, community, emergence and afro-futurism.
Harlan’s work can also be found online through his website, and on instagram as, @harlan_mack , as well as @bloodmountainforge.
Harlan’s most recent body of work incorporates brightly painted reclaimed wooden fence and blackened forged steel elements, constructed into symbolic references depicted within his narrative future. Harlan’s use of forged steel faces and animal figures symbolize the complexity within every moment lived. Through this type of distillation and combination, Harlan, invites the viewer to contemplate, revive, and utilize the potential from disuse as a cornerstone to what comes next.
This exhibition is presented in participation with 2020 Vision – Reflecting on a World-Changing Year, a statewide initiative of the Vermont Curators Group which began in 2020 and concludes this Summer.