A Heart of Stone: Art Project Pictures Barre’s Recovery

Community organizer and poet Shawna Trader doesn’t love the word “community,” which she feels is overused. But she acknowledges that the thing itself is vital, especially during disasters such as the flooding that devastated Barre and other parts of Vermont the past two summers. So when painter and fellow Barre resident Dierdra Michelle approached her to help with a project highlighting their neighbors’ stories of flood recovery, Trader thought it would be a great opportunity to show what “community” really means.

Michelle’s impulse wasn’t that different from what prompted people to muck out others’ basements or hand out food and water in the wake of the flood. “When we are in the center of that kind of need, of that kind of trauma within a community,” she said, “you want to bring to the table the thing that is truly yours — and what I truly have is art.”

The resulting project is a pair of paintings with an ephemeral sprawl of stories and poems, quotes, and QR code-accessible audio clips currently on display in the windows of Nelson Ace Hardware on North Main Street in Barre. The central work, “Heart of Barre,” is a composite of 20 16-by-20-inch canvases, framed as a grid, each a portrait of someone affected by the floods, from unhoused residents to politicians to those who pitched in during recovery.

Trader interviewed each of them in Michelle’s home studio while the artist took photos and listened. Then, as Michelle worked on portraits, Trader crafted poems — often using the subject’s words. In all, there are portraits of 23 individuals and more than 300 pages of transcripts.

There is former Barre mayor Peter Anthony, whose home of 46 years was destroyed. There is Garrett Grant, assistant director of the Aldrich Public Library, which he helped turn into a volunteer hub in the flood’s aftermath. There is Lucian Stamper, who has been living unhoused in Barre for 20 years and, according to the project’s bio, “lost everything he couldn’t hold in his hands.”

The second painting, another grid of canvases, pictures the river itself. Lotus blossoms form the outline of a heart, framing stones, pebbles and rippling water. Michelle said this painting was originally intended as the background of the portraits, but there was too much going on visually.

Yet its inclusion adds depth to the project, acknowledging that the river itself is a character in this story. Rather than casting it in a sinister light, the painting celebrates the waterway as the connection between neighbors and reminds the viewer to pay attention. “When you know your environment,” Trader said, “you are capable of knowing the other people in that environment.”

The project is a little bit crowded in the windows of Nelson’s, but it was important to the artists that everyone be able to see themselves and their neighbors in the work. And it’s a perfect spot: The hardware store was critical to flood recovery, giving away supplies even as its staff bailed out their own basement. Owners Bob and Linda Nelson are pictured in the work.

From here, the piece will move to the Card Room at the Statehouse in September; at the end of January, it will be installed in its permanent home at the Aldrich Public Library in Barre. The artists are also creating a book version of the project, due out in February, with proceeds to benefit the library and nonprofit recovery group Barre Up.

Trader said Barre’s flood response, as grassroots and community-led as it was, has become a model for other places dealing with disaster. “What we did here was pretty amazing,” she said. “There’s a reason for that, and it’s the people. That’s really what the heart of Barre is.”

This article appears in Aug 6-12, 2025.

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