Sprinkler Factory Gallery Showcases Exhibition on Visual Art and Poetry

Wednesday, April 11, 2012

GoLocalWorcester Features Team

Photograph by Dorothy Magadieu

A group of area artists and poets have turned the key on a collaboration that has resulted in Voices and Visions, a near month-long exhibit of art and poetry at the Sprinkler Factory Gallery in Worcester.
“When we held our first show in 2010, we had no idea how it would work out. We were amazed at how seamlessly it came together,” Patricia Youngblood, one of eight members of the Worcester-area collaborative 4x4, said. “We had the same experience at our recent opening.

As Youngblood explained it, 4x4 emerged from a lunch meeting two years ago between Susan Roney-O’Brien of Princeton and Susan Sedgwick of Holden. When they were done eating, the two women had brainstormed a group that would invite area artists and writers to share their projects and, they hoped, generate more creative ideas.

The group includes Roney-O’Brien, Sedgwick, Youngblood, Lisa Barthelson of Rutland, Carrie Crane of Boylston, Clair Degutis of Princeton, Dane Lewis of Worcester and Dorothy Magadieu of Sherborn. As its title suggests, the members are split evenly into a group of four artists and four poets.

Barthelson is a mixed media artist and self-described “materials junkie.” Crane is a practicing artist for 25 years who grew up on a Berkshire Hills Farm. Degutis writes poems drawn on her close observations, experiences, and relationships to the natural world. She is a natural history guide at Princeton’s Wachusett Meadow Wildlife Sanctuary. Lewis’s work has appeared in numerous journals, including “Margie,” “The Worcester Review,” “Beloit Poetry Journal” and others. Magadeau is a photographer whose work has been exhibited at venues throughout the Northeast, including the Photographic Resource Center, the Danforth, DeCordova and Fitchburg Art Museums in Massachusetts. Roney-O’Brien, a poet, also teaches middle-school English, while Sedgwick primarily shoots landscape and nature shots. Youngblood is the 2011 winner of the Worcester County Poetry Association’s Frank O’Hara prize and is the retired online content editor of Bose.com and Furniture.com.

The Voices and Visions exhibit was first held in 2010. This year’s is larger and more complex, according to Youngblood, and represents the fruits of 18 months of labor. It started April 5 and runs through Sunday, April 29.

A Gallery Talk and Reading will be held Thursday, April 12, from 6-8 p.m.

This year’s exhibit offers more opportunities to meet and engage with the artists and writers, Youngblood said, “But people are still intrigued by the way individual poems and art works compliment and expand each other. We’ll be exploring that at the Thursday Gallery Talk and Reading.”

As part of the exhibit, The Worcester County Poetry Association will honor National Poetry Month by hosting its annual Spring Open Reading at the gallery Wednesday, April 18, from 7-9 p.m.

Additional open hours are 5-7 on Thursday evenings, Saturdays from 1-5, and Sundays from noon-4.

A closing reception for the exhibit will be held Friday, April 27, from 6-8 p.m.