Artists in residence showcase climate art

PUTNEY - In response to the ongoing climate crisis, the Brattleboro Museum & Art Center recently created an artist residency program to support artists seeking time and resources to engage with the profound questions and challenges presented by climate change. Over the past year Elizabeth Billings, Evie Lovett, and Andrea Stix Wasserman, the museum’s inaugural climate change artists in residence, have worked together and separately to create work that Lovett described as a very deep dive into the subject of climate change.
Billings, Lovett, and Wasserman will present their work in an exhibition titled “WHERE ARE WE?” at The Putney School’s Currier Center from Friday, November 4, through Monday, December 19, with an opening reception on Saturday, November 5, from 5 to 7 pm.
The trio of artists, known in the Brattleboro area for their “Ask the River” creative placemaking initiative, used the BMAC residency to deepen their individual practices and their relationships with the environment through writing, research, activism, and art making. Billings’ “Tree Rubbing Project” includes cyanotype bark rubbings that she describes as holding an essence of tree. Lovett’s cyanotype work, which focuses on themes of loss and resilience, was inspired by the story of the American beech tree in Vermont and New England. Wasserman’s “Disappearance” is a series of suspended silk panels that the artist says “expose the sentient vitality of trees and give a sense of our shifting and impermanent landscape.”
BMAC awards one climate change artist residency per year. The residency comes with a $6,000 stipend. The nature of the residency is flexible and is tailored to serve the needs of the selected artist, which may include temporary lodging, studio space, exhibitions or other public-facing activities, and opportunities to connect with other artists, curators, scientists, educators, and activists tackling climate change. BMAC will announce its 2023 climate change artist in residence on Tuesday, November 8. For more information call (802) 257-0124 or visit brattleboromuseum.org.