Exhibit Reception and Film Screening for Amazing GRACE: Celebrating Forty Years of Grass Roots Art and Community Effort, Friday, December 9th, 5:00-7PM at the Vermont Folklife Center, Middlebury, VT.
Join us for an exhibit reception and film screening in conjunction with the exhibition, Amazing GRACE: Celebrating Forty Years of Grass Roots Art and Community Effort. Free and open to the public, the program will include remarks from members of the GRACE organization—as well as a screening of the short 1988 documentary film, Roland Rochette: A Retrospective, which profiles one of the exhibit artists.
A treasure from the Vermont Folklife Center Archive, the 10 minute film explores the life and works of Vermont-based artist, Roland Rochette—who himself was a part of the GRACE phenomenon.
View an interview excerpt with Roland Rochette from the film, Portrait of Three Artists.
Grass Roots Art and Community Effort began in the 1970’s when Don Sunseri moved to Vermont to “get away” from the competitiveness and hustle of the New York City art scene. Working as a dishwasher at the St. Johnsbury Convalescent Center, Don had the idea that a “well of untapped creativity might be lurking in the halls and common rooms around him in the nursing home.”
Amazing GRACE celebrates the works of more than twenty-five current and past artists supported through GRACE’s hundreds of annual workshops in nursing homes, adult day centers, mental health agencies, or on-site at GRACE’s Old Firehouse facility in Hardwick, Vermont over the organizations forty-five-year history.
The Amazing GRACE exhibit is on display at the Vermont Folklife Center’s Vision & Voice Gallery through January 21st.
The Vision & Voice Gallery is free and open to the public Tuesday through Saturday from 10:00 AM to 5:00 PM. The program is generously underwritten by the Rotary Club of Middlebury, VT, Cabot Creamery, the Vermont Community Foundation, and our membership at large. The Gallery is ADA accessible on the first floor of the Vermont Folklife Center headquarters building at 88 Main Street in Middlebury.
The Vermont Folklife Center's mission is to broaden, strengthen, and deepen our understanding of Vermont and the surrounding region; to assure a repository for our collective cultural memory; and to strengthen communities by building connections among the diverse peoples of Vermont.