What can we imagine for 2023? … Looking ahead, I’m hoping for a rise in returning energy.
As I began writing this week, I was thinking about this question on my 45th birthday and looking through photos from the last year. About this time I was walking through Hopkins Forest in 5 degree weather with sun on the snow. And remember the day after the ice storm when every tree on the ridge was coated and shining?
2022 has held quiet moments of intense beauty. And still, 2022 seemed to carry a tiredness. We were all blinking between the pandemic and the election.
I remember moments of color. Spring bulbs opened on the hilltop at Naumkeag, and Frantz Zephirin’s and Tomm El-Saieh’s paintings came to town — Loas in the Haitian woods and bright abstractions. My summer interns tasted asparagus at Tu Le’s microfarm and fresh corn tacos at Nudel.
Some nights flooded with the energy of dance and music — a zydeco bandleader from New Orleans, a choreographer from Lagos, tap performers in Brazilian rhythm.
But finding this kind of energy could take a long and steady effort, and making and sustaining it could take more. This year, I’m wishing us momentum and sweetness, like a kayak on the river in the sun.
Flashes of color
Color appears this week even on overcast days …
Mosses show vivid green on a winter afternoon on the shore of Lake Paran in North Bennington.
Lake Paran glimmers on a winter day at the center of North Bennington.
A birch and a spruce intertwine on the shore of Lake Paran in North Bennington.
Miriam Kellogg Fredenthal weaves mountains from wool in a wall hanging at the Bennington Museum.
Abenaki artists Francine Poitras Jones, Jeanne Morningstar Kent and Kerry Wood carve stories and weave black ash baskets and bark. Press photo here courtesy of Bennington Museum
Jean-Baptiste Hilair sketches gardeners picking fruit in the Orangerie in the Jardin des Plantes. Press photo courtesy of the Clark Art Institute
Eloise in the books by Kay Thompson — the indomitable six-year-old girl who lives in the Plaza Hotel — sits on a pouffe next to her pet turtle. Press image courtesy of the Norman Rockwell Museum
Bouquets of blossoming branches rest in brown paper at the Plant Connector in North Adams.
Blue cloth brightens the walls in Amy Yoes' new installation, Hot Corners, at Mass MoCA.
A walk along the shore of Lake Paran in North Bennington gives a clear view. Mass MoCA celebrates artists in Building 6, and North Adams brings wellness and candlelight downtown. Eloise visits the Norman Rockwell Museum, and a wall hanging ripples with mountains at the Bennington Museum. And the Clark opens free to all this winter, as their newest show explores drawings from the Bibliotheque Nationale de France in Paris.
Events coming up …
Find more art and performance, outdoors and food in the BTW events calendar.
