A few weeks before Nick Pattis installed a new exhibit at the Vermont Arts Council sculpture garden, he visited the site on State Street in Montpelier. Pattis, project manager at Yestermorrow Design/Build School in Waitsfield, was viewing the space for the first time.
“I was like, Wow, this is up front!” he recalled. “This is right across from the Statehouse — the big-time!”
It’s an appropriately visible location for an exhibit that reflects on two of Vermont’s most pressing problems: the housing crisis and climate change. The sculpture that Pattis and his team installed, “Elements of Shelter,” is a collaborative work composed of five pieces and centered on the art of Thea Alvin and Meg Reinhold.
Alvin worked in stained glass and Reinhold with paint to depict the five elements of traditional Chinese medicine: earth, wood, metal, water and fire. The shape of each towering structure that frames their art resembles a house; the elements rendered in glass and paint suggest the precarious nature of resources in a volatile environment.
A stonemason and artist who lives in Morrisville, Alvin is known for her stone arches and other sculptural works. Reinhold, of Granville, is a muralist and textile artist who owns Trillium Handcrafts. Like Pattis and his crew, the artists have a Yestermorrow connection: Alvin teaches at the school; Reinhold was a cook at Yestermorrow and has painted murals on the campus.
Alvin’s pieces are framed by Reinhold’s paintings on wood — designs that extend and complement the glass art, continuing Alvin’s color choices and echoing her lines. Each image is set in a timber frame built by collaborators from Yestermorrow.
Constructed from hemlock that Pattis milled, the frames rise to 13.5 feet at their peaked tops. The five structures stand along a path that passes through the garden, straddling the walkway to form a series of gates that invite viewers to come through and consider the nature of shelter.
“Glass is so fragile,” Alvin said. “And having sections and slices of things out there in the wild, on their own, pointed to the homeless crisis. Here we are so fragile and exposed, just out there.”
Yestermorrow’s exhibit at the sculpture garden is the first new work at the site since the start of the pandemic. It will be on view at the garden, which was established in 2002, until spring 2025.
Since its installation in late May, “Elements of Shelter” has drawn a range of visitors to the outdoor space — from kids leading their parents along the path to state employees on their lunch break, Vermont Arts Council executive director Susan Evans McClure said. McClure, who assumed leadership of the arts council last month, noted that she has the “privilege” of seeing the exhibit out her office window.
The installation is “one of the ways that we’re supporting art being a [means] to connect us to our democracy,” McClure said. “Montpelier is the state capital, and it’s important that everyone sees themselves there. It’s also important that people who maybe don’t see themselves in Montpelier feel connected to this work instead.”
“We are so fragile and exposed.” Thea Alvin
Making stained glass is a relatively new practice for 55-year-old Alvin. She started working in the medium primarily so that she could make art from her home studio, rather than travel for site-specific stonework. Alvin needs to be at home because she’s taking care of her mother, Abbie Alvin, who has Alzheimer’s disease.
“Every day has been a little bit beautiful,” Alvin said of caring for her 78-year-old mother. “Needing to keep her safe and healthy have been my priorities.”
In addition to the practical reasons for working with glass, Alvin has developed an artistic interest: The material compels her to think about color in a way that’s absent in her stone pieces.
“I really worked hard to disregard the color and texture,” she said of working with stone. “It’s about shapes and making things fit together.”
Stained glass also harkens back to Alvin’s childhood, when she “played” in the Hyannis, Mass., studio of her grandfather, Arthur Alvin, a sculptor and stained glass artist. She has a lamp that he made and was inspired to take a stained glass class a few years ago at Yestermorrow.
“I’m an enthusiastic learner of new skills,” Alvin said. “I’m a curious person, and I want to learn all the things I can learn. I really encourage other people to do the same.”
For Reinhold, “Elements of Shelter” also represents a new form of work: It’s her first collaboration and first public art. Collaborating with Alvin, her onetime teacher in an Art of Stone class at Yestermorrow, was particularly thrilling, she said.
“It was really wonderful to be working on a project where we had an equal exchange of ideas,” Reinhold, 39, said. “I think we have a similar eye for design.”
The new exhibit in the Vermont Arts Council sculpture garden also includes two pieces by Johno Landsman, 33, a sculptor who teaches woodworking and canoe-making at Yestermorrow.
“Entropic Four” is a black walnut and metal sculpture that hangs from a tree in the garden; its form suggests the letter Y. Landsman also made a double-sided bench, constructed from hemlock, with a double back that forms a peak. A former student at Yestermorrow, Landsman said being in a show with his coworkers is a “beautiful opportunity.”
“I’m here because of the school,” he said. “To see this and get to be part of it is pretty magical.”
The sculpture garden on State Street has always been a gathering place, Landsman said. He’s hopeful the new installation, complete with his bench, “will invite people to stay and sit a while.”
Correction, June 9, 2:55 p.m.: A photo caption in an earlier version of this story misidentified Johno Landsman.
The original print version of this article was headlined “Gimme Shelter | A new outdoor exhibit in Montpelier reflects on the climate and housing crises”
This article appears in Jun 7-13, 2023.
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