So like a mirror is the sea/So vast the vault above, an exhibition of works on paper and poems by JULIA ZANES featuring text from the work of F. Hopkinson Smith, will be exhibited at The Emblem Museum, 21 Elliot Street, 2nd Floor, Brattleboro Saturday March 4, 2017-Saturday, April 22, 2017. The opening reception is on Saturday March 4, 2017 from 2:00-6:00 PM.
Julia Zanes, who lives and works in southern Vermont, and has exhibited her work throughout New England for over two decades, often uses rich, deeply researched source material, such as fairy tales, fables and other historic narratives, as inspiration or as media that is directly collaged or integrated into her work. For this exhibition Zanes cut words directly from F. Hopkinson Smith’s Gondola Days, which became “an ingredient . . . the rest of the recipe was antique paper, gold, watercolors and gouache. . .” Zanes has created both the mixed media works on paper or “illuminated manuscripts,” and poems she has “written” by assembling “whole sentences and sometimes words or letters. . .which reflect what it is like under my own little ‘dome of heaven’.” She notes that both the works on paper and poems made her feel “as if I was collaborating with F. Hopkinson Smith. The book wasn’t a real page-turner, but the language was splendid.”
F. Hopkinson Smith built the foundation of the Statue of Liberty and was also a writer, artist and engineer. Gondola Days, published in 1897, is Smith’s account of his travels to Venice. The book was found, along with other books and objects, in the 1911 home in Marlboro, VT, where Zanes and her husband, artist and musician, Donald Saaf live. Venice had long been on Zanes’ mind since she met her husband when they both worked as security guards at The Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston, which, Zanes says “is a little microcosm of Venice.”
The Emblem Museum, 21 Elliot Street, 2nd Floor, is open by chance or appointment. Please email zanesjulia@gmail.com to make an appointment.
FOR MORE INFO: Julia Zanes at zanesjulia@gmail.com or 802.380.2504
Venice Manuscript, 32″ X 24″, watercolor, gouache, and gold on antique paper, 2017
