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Date: 6/20/2023
NORTHAMPTON — If you are riding your bike or taking a walk on the bike path between Northampton and Florence, you may notice something different along the way.
Located within the bike path between the Bridge Road roundabout near Look Park and the bike path entrance behind Stop N Shop are five small-scale, interactive pop-up art galleries courtesy of a new community project called “The TINY Art for All Gallery,” where residents and visitors are invited to explore and interact with the work of local and regional artists ranging from students, professional artists, and makers to galleries and museums.
“I’m just always thinking about the different contexts in which artists can show their work,” said Kim Carlino, the co-founder of the TINY Art for All gallery as well as a longtime local artist and muralist.
The idea, which is to showcase big artistic ideas inside of small-scale galleries, spawned during a period in 2021 when Carlino was working on a project with the Friends of Northampton Trails for the city of Northampton. It was here where Carlino met the other co-founder of the TINY Art For All Gallery, Freeman Stein, the secretary on the Friends board.
Carlino said she was inspired by small-scale galleries that were popping up all over the world during the pandemic in places like France, Vancouver and across the U.S. But it was a particular initiative in Boston called “Shelter in Place” that really caught her eye.
“I started seeing popping up on social media, my friends having these exhibitions in this new gallery space called Shelter in Place,” Carlino said. “They were scaling their work in a way that looked like it was large scale, but it was small.”
The goal of the “Shelter in Place” project was to show artists’ work during a time when museums and galleries were closed because of the coronavirus pandemic. Local artists were asked to send scaled-down versions of their most ambitious exhibition proposals so they can be displayed in a miniature one-inch to one-foot scale space.
“I was like, ‘you know what, that’s something cool that would be really great in our community,’” Carlino said. “I liked the illusion of that, and I love things in miniature.”
With TINY Art For All, Carlino wanted to replicate the concept of these small-scale galleries but do so in a manner that fits within the context of Northampton’s communal nuances, so placing the artists’ work along the bike path felt like a logical direction.
“The pairing of art and nature really made sense to me,” Carlino said. “It’s just a really beautiful section of the path, too.”
The five galleries currently on the bike path feature an eclectic group of work from Luke Cavagnac, Lynn Sisler, Anne Seuthe/Martha Burkett, Rachel Thern and Michael Medeiros. Each artist offers a unique way for walkers and bikers to interact with their art.
For example, Sisler’s gallery, located on the Straw Avenue section of the bike path, includes a “Squirrel Shrine” that honors the local squirrels and squirrels in general. Handmade squirrel magnets hang on the walls in the space and the community is invited to take one squirrel magnet per person or family.
“In exchange, that person must leave an offering that a squirrel would like in its place — a peanut, acorn, a tiny love letter, a poem to [or about] a squirrel, a drawing, or any other unique or creative offering, on the floor of the gallery,” reads the description of the gallery. “Other visitors can see and read these gifts, which may inspire their contribution and further goodwill toward squirrels.”
Another gallery, created by Medeiros called “Gardens Haunted by Each Other,” is an ongoing oral history project that asks participants to share personal memories of garden spaces they have known, “the plants, people, creatures, objects, and experiences that have made those spaces unlike anywhere else in the world.”
All five of these galleries will be featured on the path until Aug. 4 before another round of small-scale galleries enter the fold. Carlino said that every two months, the exhibits will change and feature new work to be engaged with. In total, approximately 30 galleries are scheduled to be displayed on the bike path from now until next June.
“We had a number of different aspects of the mission of the project, and one was to make it accessible and just trying to do as much outreach as possible,” Carlino said.
According to Carlino, a group of committee members — which includes Robin Griffith, Maggie Nowinski, Alyona Skripka and Carlino — worked with the director of the Northampton Arts Council to develop language that addressed accessibility for the application process.
The committee conducted an open call in February across Facebook groups, networks, newsletters and listservs. Once all of the proposals came in, selections were juried by Carlino, Nowinski, Griffith and Pamela Matsuda-Dunn.
Carlino said the committee was able to help people with their applications and provide a stipend to those who were selected. There was no specific theme artists had to follow in their work other than addressing some community engagement element, and the goal of this selection process was to find artists outside of their own artistic circles.
“We wanted to get the word out to not just artist groups, but also those who identified as a maker, a hobby artist or a student artist,” Carlino said. “We have this full range of all different experiences with art…so it feels like this is really successful.”
Accompanying the 2023-24 group of galleries will be events driven by the artists themselves, including various talks and workshops. Other events will be spearheaded by TINY Art’s main sponsor, the Friends of the Northampton Trails.
“Their mission is to bring more art to the trails, so I think that they’ll be doing bike tours that will include artists and curators so people can learn more about each project as they’re changing,” Carlino said.
The hope is to have another callout to artists in January for another round of galleries, but Carlino said that curation will specifically include a certain number of slots for artists of color with the help of Griffith.
“We’re really excited about that,” Carlino said. “We’re thinking about how we can make this an opportunity for collaboration and exposure.”
The sponsors of the project include the Friends of the Northampton Trails, the Northampton Arts Council, High Five Books & Art Always, Pedal People Co-Op, Downtown Sounds Workers Co-op and the city of Northampton.
The gallery builders and installers including George Kohout, Tom Annese, Chuck Hommes, John Power and Barry Feingold.
Readers can learn more about the TINY Art for All gallery by visiting the website: https://www.tinyartforallgallery.com/about.