Stretching 135 miles along Vermont's western boundary is Vermont's "Great Lake", Lake Champlain. Next year will celebrate the 2009 quadricentennial of its exploration, in 1609, by French explorer Samuel de Champlain. Our exhibit, Champlain's Lake Rediscovered, will participate in this celebration through a juried exhibit of Vermont artists interpreting this treasured Vermont landmark through their diverse perspectives.
Pressured by the upwardly spiraling cost of living in America's major cities, the last three decades have seen an influx of artists relocating to Vermont. As this migration took root, Vermont's reputation spread as a haven for artists and a place that mirrored their values. Here was a populace that prized individuality,even eccentricity, a place where self-reliance and small entrepreneurs were still the norm. Year by year more and more artists kept arriving bringing with them a wide range of art styles..
Now, at the end of the first decade of the 21st century this art community has grown large enough to include many artists of a truly high caliber. The size of Vermont's art community has become disproportionately large for the state's small geographic size.
Many of these new Vermonters felt inspired to paint the landscape,though Regional Art in America hadn't been a force in the art world since the 1940's. That is when Abstract Expressionist Art eclipsed, for a while, all forms of representational art. Reinspiring the dormant genre of landscape painting was the rising, new Environmental Consciousness and a frustration with the rootlessness of late twentieth century life.
Both "immigrant" and "native" Vermont arists are now employing the highly sophisticated and varied styles of Post Modern Art. The wedding of this wealth of talent and style to the celebration of a regional landmark is the focus of this exhibition.
Douglas Lazarus,
Curator of Champlain's Lake Rediscovered
Vermont's Landmark Exhibition
