The Gathering at Cold Hollow Sculpture Park.
Enosburg Falls, Vermont — Cold Hollow Sculpture Park will open its 2021 season on June 12, 2021 (running through October 12, 2021), with drop-in visits Thursday-Sundays, 12-6 pm. With more than sixty sculptures placed on over 200 acres of rolling landscape, CHSP offers a safe and invigorating way to gather, explore, and find respite.
Executive Director Rosemary Branson Gill says, “We’re incredibly eager to welcome the public back to the Park. Visitors are what make CHSP the park we love. Always, but particularly in 2021, we hope CHSP can offer restoration and invigoration to Vermonters and visitors.”
On July 24, CHSP will launch its programming series Why We Make Things, which will explore the human drive to create. Coming out the other side of the global COVID-19 pandemic, the Park seeks to explore further the creativity that boomed while in quarantine and introduce the public to new perspectives.
As sculptor and Park co-founder David Stromeyer posits: “Humans have always made things as a way of expressing themselves or solving problems. But, with the rise of AI-driven machines, will our hands, our words, our voices be silenced? Will our need to express ideas, our dreams be a need no more?”
Those questions and more will be examined in a series of events featuring an interdisciplinary selection of presenters. All events are free and open to the public.
July 17-18, 2021: Making Art to Catalyze Change With Jane Marshing. Activist artist Marshing explores our past, present, and future human impact on the environment. Her projects have been sited in museums and galleries as well as weather observatories, public parks, city streets, radio waves, and the Internet. Marshing will lead a small workshop and also a large artist talk at CHSP, both of which will engage how she uses hope and imagination to create a productive agency about our shared future.
August 21, 2021: World Premier Dance & Music Composition With Laurel Jenkins and Matthew Evan Taylor. Choreographer Jenkins and composer Evans, both professors at Middlebury College, will present Beacon Fire, a performance set amongst Stromeyer’s sculptures. Post-performance, they will lead a conversation about community-building as the motivation for artistic pursuits.
September 18, 2021: A Reading With Baron Wormser. Maine’s poet laureate for six years (2000-2006) will read and discuss his newest genre-bending novel, which explores creativity through poetry, prose, American music history, and the unique voice of protagonist Abe Runyan, a character-based on Bob Dylan.
Why We Make Things is the first in a triad of programs dedicated to Making. The Park will follow this with How We Make Things and Amazing Makers in 2022 and 2023, respectively.
Park co-founder Sarah Stromeyer explains, “The question this season’s theme poses, Why we Make Things, marks two auspicious occasions. In 2020, we celebrated the fiftieth anniversary of David’s coming to this land he specifically chose as the place to make his life’s work. We also cheer the transition of CHSP from David’s and my dream, to a nonprofit entity that is taking on a life of its own. Both of these endeavors are rich with many types of making, individual and collaborative, private and public. And in light of all that happened in 2020, this feels like the right moment to gather the diverse array of makers whose presentations will explore this mysterious and compelling aspect of our common humanity."
Executive Director Branson Gill adds, “Cold Hollow Sculpture Park is in a time of generative transition. Newly a non-profit organization held in the public’s trust, we are quite literally making a Park. What better question, then, for us, right now, than Why We Make Things? While we build a park we want to learn why others make; what drives poets, activists, engineers, and artists?”
David Stromeyer is no stranger to making things—he is close to finishing his 500th sculpture. A new work that will greet Park visitors this June is titled “Body Politic,” crafted after dropping a multi-ton boulder out of the sky onto a single sheet of steel in June 2020. This technique, coined as a “rock drop,” is wholly unique and will be the subject of Stromeyer’s book due later this year.
On more than 200 acres, Cold Hollow Sculpture Park is social distance-friendly. The Park staff regularly monitors government and CDC guidelines regarding COVID-19. Public and staff safety is the Park’s first priority.
Founded in 2014 by sculptor David Stromeyer and writer Sarah Stromeyer, Cold Hollow Sculpture Park in Enosburg, Vermont, is an admission-free, immersive art experience in a beautiful northern Vermont setting. Visitors can walk among and through 60+ sculptures spanning five decades by artist David Stromeyer and participate in programming that explores the intersection of intellectual and creative pursuits. The Park is open from June 12, 2021 through October 12, 2021.
