By Anne Galloway
Since the night before the Vermont Reggae Fest, five empty storefronts on Main Street in Hardwick have been filled temporarily—not with cheesy merchandise but with paintings, sculpture and objets trouvés. There’s even an installation.
As a steady stream of reggae fans cruised through town for pre-fest camping, the curious and the hip of Hardwick hung out on the sidewalk looking at art. It happened to be opening night for the two-week show, “Pretty Vacant/For Rent.” More than 30 artists from the Hardwick area have hung their work in the empty retail spaces. The multi-media exhibition of abstract and representational art ends Friday. But it spells a new beginning for these dusty old buildings.
Native New Yorker Clifford Jackman bought what’s known in town as the Hill Block—a massive, three-story building with triple storefronts that have been vacant off and on for years. It was his second real estate investment in Hardwick. Last year, he bought a 13,000- foot former factory around the corner – it had once housed sewing and furniture factories and a morgue. Jackman pur- chased the huge, code-ensnared building for what he could have spent on the typical flatlander’s dream – 10 acres and a run- down barn. He hopes to con- vert the factory into an arts center he calls Compost; meanwhile he’s living and working in it.
“I’m trying to fill a void that exists for bachelor of arts graduates,” he says, “to set up residencies for students and provide gallery spaces, classes, seminars.” The space is big enough, Jackman notes, to also host small theater and music productions. The Hill Block building would be used for residencies. The ambitious 28-year-old painter, clothes designer and entrepreneur is working with a group of like-minded others—from artists to developers—to put together a prospectus and financing.
When word got out about his impromptu show this month, within a week Jackman had received more than enough artwork to fill his own storefronts, so he arranged to use two more empties up the street.
At the opening, he was casual; with his ratty olive-green T-shirt and a two-day shadow on his face, Jackman looked like just another member of the buffalo Mountain Coop next door.
His own installation, “That Sweet! Smell,” is set up in a one-story, shoebox extension of the Hill Block. Jackman filled it with stuffed people, scarecrows, reclining in front of a blaring TV. Each face is a red flashing digital alarm clock. He’s left the room dark, so the clocks and TV eerily light the space. Baby pink and blue bunnies dumbly stare at the TV from a crib. “That Sweet Smell’ seems to refer to that distinctive post-party stench—the room smells like stale beer secondhand smoke and body odor.
Next door is Todd Graham and Tamar Thorne’s “Sticks and Stones, a whimsical combination of mobiles made of sticks and strings and elaborate pencil drawings of what could be construed as stones. The mobiles and drawings are hung from the ceiling. From the sidewalk you see the drawings through the mobiles and vice versa. In that sense, this exhibit is like an installation—the individual pieces, as a temporal part of the storefront, transform the space itself into art.
The whole show feels like an installation—an ironic take on window shopping in Hardwick. Some of the participating artists include: James Teuscher, Dot Kibbee, Piper Strong, Fred Varney, Angus Munro, Marie LePre Grabon, Heidi Pollard and Jennifer Ranz.
Jackman calls “Pretty Vacant/For Rent” an “outlaw” show. It’s modeled on the reinvented gallery spaces young unknown artists in New York City and Boston use—abandoned bodegas, warehouses, hotel rooms—any free space. With its hard-luck reputation, Hardwick is a perfect venue for artistic reclamation.
Seven Days, 1997
