(Host) When you walk into Brandon’s Gallery in the Field, the first things you notice about B Amore’s exhibit are the hands and faces.
They’re everywhere – surrounded by eye-catching textures and colors. Amore founded West Rutland’s Carving Studio and her latest show -Heads Hands and Hearts – is on display in Brandon through October 26th.
VPR’s Nina Keck has more.
(Keck) It’s not easy to take slabs of marble, animal bones, silk organza, photographs, wood, tin and work gloves and create art. But that’s just what Benson sculptor and artist B. Amore has done. Let’s start with the work gloves – the "hands" of the exhibit.
(Amore) "Each glove has its own story because each glove really retains the shape of the hand that worked it and its wear and tear."
(Keck) Amore has spent years finding and preserving gloves. She’s found them on street corners, in alleyways and parking lots – in Rutland and Burlington and more exotic locales like Paris and Singapore.
(Amore)"The first glove I picked up was in one of the marble yards. And it attracted me because it was just so antic – one finger was sticking up in the air and the rest of it was completely flat and I am a sculptor so I always look at forms and forms in space. So, I had that one cast in bronze and I loved it and people just really enjoyed it and I couldn’t stop picking up gloves." (laughs)
(Keck) To turn them into works of art, Amore coats them with resin and bronze. She scrubs them with steel wool and adds a patina for color.
(Amore) "And that patina is rather mysterious. It’s a little bit like a glaze in ceramics as you have no idea what you’re going to come out with."
(Keck) Some look green, some a mottled blue, while others have a red or brown tone. There are 65 gloves in all.
(Amore) "I’ve only shown a few at a time before, but in this particular show I really wanted to show a number of them – myriad gloves. Because they have a different impact when you see many of them next to each other – you really see how individual each one is and how each one has its own personality. . . ."
(Keck) . . . its own humanity. Amore says this exhibit is all about our shared humanity.
(sound of steps in gallery
(Keck) She walks over to a large wall sized piece. The base is an old tin ceiling. Then come irregular slices of white marble. The top layer is made up of faces – hundreds of them reflecting every nationality. Amore says she took the faces from old history books, and photographs she took of crowds on city streets. She painstakingly transferred each face onto a small square of transparent silk which she then glued to the marble and tin.
(Amore) "And it’s like the story of immigration – you see this sea of faces. And the text is just writing that comes to me while I’m working. So one says do we extend hands of peace or aim a gun? And if we lie buried next to each other are we so different and if we dance together are we so different? Where is the oneness of the world? . . . The still point where the surface is calm."
(Keck) Amore says for an artist, mixing so many materials together can be risky.
(Amore) " And I have to deal with my own inner voices that say you’re crazy – what are you doing you know, putting this illuminated writing with these faces on pieces of tin. And it is a work that requires looking – it’s not simple work."
(Keck) Amore hopes people will take the time to pick up and touch the gloves and really look at her artwork. The visual impact comes quickly, but she says the true meaning may take some time and effort to uncover.
For VPR news, I’m Nina Keck in Brandon.
Photo: Michael Heeney