“Shimmering Down River: Exhibition’s four venues celebrate sight, sound of water” by Cate McQuaid
Boston Globe
Friday September 11, 2009
NEWPORT, N.H. – Outside an old brick woolen mill here, a dam in the Sugar River pools the water and releases it in a crashing waterfall. Inside, reflections glint on the walls, and the sounds of water rushing and burbling fill the vast third floor, part of “H2O Film on Water,’’ a themed art exhibition now up at four venues along Connecticut River Valley waterways.
“It’s a yellow brick road of contemporary art,’’ declares creative director and art maven Cynthia Reeves, founder of the educational nonprofit Great River Arts in Bellows Falls, Vt., and owner of Spheris Gallery in Hanover, N.H., two of the project’s other venues. The fourth is the Brattleboro Museum & Art Center in Brattleboro. “We’ll lead people up the river,’’ Reeves says.
“H2O Film on Water’’ features a juried show of 40 water-related videos and a curated exhibition of work by 26 artists, ranging from young emerging artists to such big names as Mike and Doug Starn and rising star Cui Fei. A portion of the proceeds raised by the project will be donated to Water for People, a nonprofit that works to create sustainable drinking water resources in developing countries.
The exhibition was put together on a shoestring: “Virtually all the artists did everything at their own cost,’’ Reeves says, standing beside a spiraling fabric installation by Georgie Friedman in the Newport Mill space. The juried videos run on televisions donated by a hotelier friend who was switching to plasma screens. And the Newport Mill space is rent-free.
It’s quite a spectacular venue. At a generous 18,000 square feet, the mill’s third floor houses most of the artworks in “H2O: Film on Water.’’ At the time last year when Reeves proposed the art project to the building’s owner, William Ruger, the mill had been losing industrial tenants and was in need of an overhaul. Ruger has owned the mill since 1980, leasing it to businesses that made combat boots, miniature light bulbs, and more.
Reeves, who also owns Cynthia-Reeves, a New York gallery, found Ruger through mutual connections and was curious about his space. Ruger was no stranger to art; he has a collection of 19th- and early-20th-century American art.
“She came over a year and a half ago,’’ Ruger says in a phone conversation from a vacation in Maine. “She said, ‘We could open in 2009.’ . . . It seemed like the dim and distant future.’’
Reeves nearly swooned when she saw it that first time. Oh my God, this is fantastic. Oh my God, this is so huge. What will we do with the space? she remembers thinking.
Although the tough economy has seen many empty commercial spaces open to artists just to fill up square feet, Ruger says he had planned a renovation anyway, and Reeves’s project locked in the timetable. “I’d made the decision to change the nature of the tenants before the economic conditions set in,’’ he says.
The two signed a lease and a memorandum of understanding, and each went to work: Ruger on his renovations and Reeves on organizing the show.
“The artwork started arriving, and the elevator had just been finished,’’ Ruger reports.
The result is dramatic. The lights are dimmed, but brighten around certain works of art. The industrial feel of the space remains, with its brick walls and exposed pipes, but the wood floor gleams, and the 32 vast windows have been covered with black fabric to make it easier to see the videos. Daniel Wheeler’s brilliant, shimmering color photographs, “GULP (Generative Urban Landscape Project),’’ shot underwater in pools, hang suspended from the ceiling down the center aisle, leading the eye to the one uncovered window in sight, and a view of the Sugar River dam and waterfall.
Curated works in the Newport Mill include the chilling video projection “Seas,’’ by Jenn Moller, of a nearly frozen Cape Cod Bay throwing slushy waves ashore, and Amy Globus’s freakily beautiful video “Electric Sheep,’’ in which two octopi squeeze their way through narrow tubes between two larger plexiglass aquariums.
In addition to videos, there are two-dimensional works such as Stephen DiRado’s funny, fraught, black-and-white photo series “JUMP,’’ featuring swimmers taking the plunge off the American Legion Memorial Bridge on Martha’s Vineyard, and installations such as June Ahrens’s “In Depth,’’ in which a rotating light over a floor covered in mirror shards casts a spectacle of reflections on the wall. The monitors showing the juried videos line two long walls.
Reeves is thrilled with the result, and she has another show in mind to propose to Ruger. “For anyone to say, ‘Here’s the key to this building, have at it,’ it’s incredible,’’ Reeves says.
Ruger, never a fan of contemporary art, says he’s pleased. “I think it worked perfectly,’’ he says. “I’m delightfully surprised to find myself interested in something I wouldn’t think I’d be interested in.’’
And the mill’s future? “Who knows, maybe even people who visit as a result of the art show might be interested, maybe this will be some help in marketing [the space]’’ Ruger says. “It would be delightful if it turned out to be a building for the arts, if it could be made financially feasible.’’
