At the Current‘s summer opening celebration in Stowe, a few of the youngest visitors enthusiastically climbed and bounced on Hank Willis Thomas‘ “Ernest and Ruth,” an 8-foot-wide orange cartoon thought bubble outlined in steel. It’s one of two “benches” by the Brooklyn artist in “Exposed,” the Current’s annual outdoor sculpture show.
“Ernest and Ruth” is the kind of fun, Instagrammable public art that draws visitors and looks fantastic in a selfie. Many of the other pieces in the show are much more subtle; they don’t demand attention, but they do reward it.
The Current is also presenting an indoor solo exhibition by Chakaia Booker and commissioned a sculpture from her for “Exposed.” The New Jersey artist has worked with discarded tires for much of her four-decade career, including in two sculptures that explode into the gallery.
Booker’s “Filtered Thoughts,” on the Current’s lawn, is in a new format: an 8-and-a-half-foot-high rectangular panel of rubber on steel legs. The artist riveted worn, bronze-colored swatches of burned-out NASCAR tires onto a surface reminiscent of a cedar-shingled coastal New England cottage. An eye-shaped portal breaks the surface, and black rubber whorls cascade down one side like curly hair. These enliven the sculpture and situate it somewhere between a person’s face and a building’s façade.
New York-based Don Porcaro‘s “Talisman 18,” on Main Street, also pairs formalist concerns with a nod toward the human. The sculpture is a 5-and-a-half-foot-tall stack of hand-formed stone discs. Each layer is unique, with stone sourced from as far as Brazil and as close as Barre.
During the opening tour, Porcaro detailed each type of marble and granite with love. He described adding feet to his forms, a figurative gesture referencing ancient amphorae. The vaselike silhouette resembles a person, or maybe a sleek, elegant version of the Michelin man.
New York-based Israeli artist Oren Pinhassi‘s three sculptures, outside Stowe Town Hall, reflect the body more directly. The artist called them “erotic constructions” — not exactly sexual but a vulnerable blurring of boundaries between bodies, architecture and furniture. In “Reception,” birdlike spindly legs support a facsimile of a bank teller’s window, fashioned from bronze and complete with a little ledge and a round hole cut in the glass. It invites viewers to pass their hands through this “body” and to question the divide between outside and inside.
Massachusetts-based Jonathan Prince‘s Cor-Ten steel “Mother Earth” represents the flow state — a state of mind ideal for creative work. But it could just as well be a slice of the Green Mountains tipped vertically. Three smooth sides set off the front’s geological nooks and crannies, which catch light, shadows and rain.
Stowe sculptor Chris Curtis, who was instrumental in starting the “Exposed” series 33 years ago, contributed a 7-foot granite-and-steel column called “Thought Cage.” A smooth-surfaced portal interrupts the rough stone from four sides. According to Curtis, the sculpture offers hope of sliding out of ideological prisons.
Viewers shouldn’t miss works by two other Vermonters — Brattleboro sculptor Justin Kenney and Burlington artist Clark Derbes — that are sited along the Stowe Recreation Path. Kenney’s 10-by-8-by-8-foot steel-and-concrete “Cacophony Winds” is like a concrete house of cards. Its intersecting vertical slabs, at once delicate and massive, seem terrifyingly in danger of toppling.
Derbes’ carved cedar “Lil’ Family” is a set of three narrow pillars surrounded by the tall greenery next to the bike path. The installation draws on tramp art — a style of carved cigar boxes made popular in the Great Depression. Though tourists might not find it, Derbes’ work is thoughtfully sited; it seems to have grown there and is just waiting for curious passersby.
