Participatory Projects: Artful Ice Shanties 2023

Brattleboro Museum & Art Center, Brattleboro, VT

During the Winter of 2023 I was involved in a collaborative project with artists at the Zea Mays Printmaking Studio in Florence, MA to fashion an ICE SHANTY for a competition at the Brattleboro Museum of Art in Vermont. Designed by Nancy Diessner, the structure was a 4-sided, triangular hut that was to have various types of prints papered on its inside, and printing plates attached to the structure on the outside.

On Zoom meetings I said I could carve plates to donate to the cause, and print prints, but being far away, and not good at building, would do my pieces from afar. Another member had images of tools used by Native people from the Vermont area for ice fishing, and I made carved woodblocks of these images, as well as additional images of ice fishing tools of Native people from the Great Lakes region. There were beautiful images online of wrought iron ice rakes from the 1930’s, as well as carved, wooden fishing lures of fish from that region. I used these images as inspiration for my work.

The ice shanties were exhibited outside for a week in February and were to be on a frozen body of water, but it was too warm for this to happen. Our shanty won for the most creative and artistic entry.