AT A CROSSROAD
By Victoria Blewer
October 30th - November 27th
Opening Reception : Saturday, November 4th 4pm - 6pm
In the Summer of 2023, Victoria Blewer’s show, At a Crossroad, was set to open at the Vermont Supreme Court Gallery. The show was originally scheduled for April 2020 and was postponed due to the pandemic. As the rain fell this July, the work was being installed in Montpelier at the Vermont Supreme Court Gallery. The city and the building quickly flooded causing the show to be postponed indefinitely.
Let's begin with this: this show was supposed to open in April 2020.
But first we had a pandemic. Details, I know.
Had this show opened three and a half years ago, it would have included my classic hand-painted and black and white Americana: a chronicle of how we define who we are by what we build - and then allow what we build to fall into ruin. Americana has been a theme I've explored since I first picked up a camera as a girl, my subjects ranging from those remarkable, glitzy, grandiose movie palaces of an earlier era to large signage for rundown motels on blacktop returning to desert. In rural America, i've been entranced by barns, agricultural buildings, and grain elevators - some also melting little by little back into the earth.
The pandemic changed this show - as it changed all of us.
In the lockdown, and then in the months when we clawed our way back to the new normal, I found myself experimenting. I began combining my photographs with vintage magazines, old books, acrylic media, and paints. Suddenly, I was building analog and digital collages.
Which brings me to the crossroad ahead.
I look to the future and see so many ways to incorporate my photographs into new pieces and craft a totally different form of 2-D art. The opportunities are bountiful...and I know my time is limited.
- Victoria Blewer, Summer 2023
MORE ABOUT THE ARTIST
Victoria Blewer grew up in Manhattan, but bolted for the quiet hills of Vermont. She works entirely with black and white films (sometimes using black and white infrared film), and then she hand-colors the images. Her hand-tinted photographs have been featured in full-length photo essays in the Boston Globe Sunday Magazine, Vermont Life, Vermont Magazine and Yankee Magazine. Her work may be seen at Woodstock Gallery in Woodstock, VT; the Vermont State Craft Center in Burlington, VT; the Edgewater Gallery in Middlebury, VT
Her photographs have appeared in numerous newspapers, magazines and books, and have been displayed in private homes and offices across New York and New England. Her work has been exhibited at The Fitchburg Art Museum, Fitchburg, MA; Dartmouth College’s Hood Museum of Art, Hanover, NH; the Erector Square Gallery, New Haven, CT; W Photography, Provincetown, MA; the Alternative Museum, New York, NY; the Fuller Museum of Art, Brockton, MA; the Attleboro Museum of Art, Attleboro, MA; the Berkshire Museum, Pittsfield, MA; the Westport Arts Center, Westport, CT; the Salmagundi Club in New York City; the Woodstock Gallery of Art, Woodstock, VT; the Stratton Arts Festival, Stratton Mountain, VT; the Vermont State Craft Center in Burlington, VT;
