Works in Minature

Artists exhibit small, affordable pieces.

This piece first appeared in The Vermont Standard.

When Woodstock artist Charlet Davenport was a young girl in the 1940’s and 1950’s, she was fascinated by the small porcelain-like figurines of colonial-era ladies and gentlemen that seemed to be in every dime store, department store, and souvenir shop. But her mother invariably said “no” when asked to buy one; she’d turn the figure over to show Davenport its telltale “made in occupied Japan” stamp. It wasn’t until many years later that the artist acquired any of the figures, often called “OJs,” that had so attracted her in childhood. For the last several years, she’s also been creating art around them. Two of her pieces, Eve and Adam, are part of the ArtisTree Community Arts Center show, Fine Works in Miniature, which opens Saturday, December 4.

This latest show for the fledgling gallery focuses, as its name implies, on small art pieces. The idea is that smaller works in general are more affordable and therefore allow the art to reach more people who wish to begin or add to collections, or to give art as gifts during the holidays. For this exhibit, artists working in two dimensions were limited to 150 square inches, the equivalent of a 10” x 15” surface; sculptures and other three-dimensional works had to fit into a modest-sized box.

The size restriction didn’t impede the number or variety of pieces entered in the juried show. About twenty artists from across New England have submitted multiple works, which range from photography and painting to collage, mixed media, pottery, and sculpture.

Davenport crafted her plate-sized, heart-shaped Eve and Adam pieces from porcelain clay and high-fired glazes accented with gold luster. In Eve, a woman in a full-skirted gown strokes a lute as she pauses by an apple tree; in Adam, a seated man in breeches and topcoat plays a recorder near a snake-entwined column. The “made in occupied Japan” figurines representing Eve and Adam can be removed from their scenes; they sit on little spikes that Davenport sculpted into the pieces as part of her concept. Both are Valentines Day representations from a holiday-themed series that had its genesis in the conflicted feelings Davenport harbors about the little figures she’d wanted so badly as a child.

“No one really talked to me about the war until I was probably in fourth or fifth grade,” says Davenport of World War II, the Allied occupation of Japan that followed, and her confusion over her mother’s chagrin.

Of the figurines that were mass-produced for a few years after the war, she adds, “My parents are English background and I think they felt like these were a mockery, and were flooding the country, but I have a sentimental feeling about them.” Davenport has used “OJ” figurines in a number of creations. A fall show at the AVA Gallery in Lebanon, You Cannot Win in Occupation, included Davenport’s larger works created around OJ pieces.

Lisbeth Hall, another artist showing in Fine Works in Miniature, discovered the ArtisTree Gallery just by driving past it on Route 12 one day.

“I’ve been waiting a long time to have something like this happen in Woodstock,” she said of the venue’s focus on local artists, “I wanted to get back and be active in showing.”

Hall has been sculpting since her college days, but at her parents’ urging she pursued a career outside of art, in psychology.

Still, she’s produced many pieces in the last fifty-five years, mostly in bronze or stone. Hall acknowledges her affinity for creating mother-and-child pieces, and nude females; all of her four entries in the ArtisTree show embody that theme. “Sculpture ends up being a very personal thing,” she says, “I make a piece of sculpture because it makes me happy or sad…so far, that’s been reasonably successful as far as other people liking it also.”

Her bronze Mother and Child on the Way, for example, depicts a gaunt Ethiopian child sitting at the feet of its mother. “They are desperate, they’re dying,” Hall says, “I’d seen a picture, I think it was Time magazine…I just kept it.” She was inspired to create the sculpture when she realized, “It was years ago I cut that picture out, and nothing has changed.”

To form her bronze sculptures, Hall generally works with wax, plasticine, or clay. She first builds an internal structure, called an armature, from heavy gauge wire, then forms a figure bit by bit around it. The completed model goes to a foundry for casting.

ArtisTree Gallery Director Adrian Tans feels that there’s something unique in all the show’s fifty or so pieces, which together form an array designed to satisfy those who are looking for art that’s different and interesting.   In addition to the juried exhibition, the Gallery will display paintings by Burlington artist Brooke Monte, whose work draws on, and sometimes combines, realism and geometric abstraction.

Going forward, Tans and ArtisTree Community Arts Center staff have teamed up with the Pentangle Arts Council to plan some exciting collaborations. When family-oriented folk musician Dan Zanes performs for Pentangle in Woodstock this January, ArtisTree hopes to mount an exhibit of the quirky and whimsical work of his illustrator brother-in-law, Donald Saaf. Building on the success that ArtisTree has had bringing local artists together, Tans is working with Pentangle to organize a “collector’s circle,” a group for art lovers interested in appreciating, viewing, and buying art. And for next summer’s Bookstock, ArtisTree will host a show of book-related art including hand-made and altered books.

Fine Works in Miniature opens at the ArtisTree Community Arts Center Gallery, 1206 Route 12, Woodstock, on Saturday, December 4 with a reception from 6:30 to 8:00 PM. There will be a second reception during Wassail Weekend on Saturday, December 11 from 5:00 to 7:00 PM, following the Lighting of the Luminaries. Normal Gallery hours after December 4 are Monday through Saturday from 11:00 AM to 2:00 PM, or by appointment. For more information, visit www.artistreevt.org or call 802-457-3500.