Burlington’s the Other Half Opens a Gallery With Expressions of Grief

Waya Usdi was forced to evacuate his Barre residence when it flooded last July. When he could finally return, he found his home in shambles. All that was left to eat was a moldy lemon. Usdi’s acrylic still-life painting depicting that moment is part of an exhibition titled “Blossoms in a Blizzard: A Study of Adversity, Grief & Resilience” at the Other Half in Burlington.

“When life gives you lemons, you make lemonade, but when life gives you a flood, you get a moldy lemon,” art director and curator Cassidy Sargent said.

The Other Half, a new bar and gallery space at 202 Main Street, opened its doors in November and now has art on display. One wall is covered with paintings, photographs and collages representing 18 local artists’ perseverance through tragedies and obstacles, both internal and external. Spurred by the struggles within her community, Sargent said she curated “Blossoms” to honor her own grief and to offer a creative outlet for others’. It is the first of her planned bimonthly exhibitions in the petite gallery.

Sargent, 31, said several people in her life have recently died from suicide and opioid overdoses.

“Burlington is really going through it right now,” she said. “I’ve been witness to a lot of the grief and trauma in this town.”

Sargent, who lives within walking distance of the Other Half, where she also bartends once a week, said she has observed drug abuse and heard gunfire downtown. When three Palestinian students were shot in Burlington last fall, she was deeply affected.

“There were so many conversations after that,” Sargent said. She hopes the current show will inspire more discussions.

A few pieces in the exhibit comment on Israel’s ongoing bombardment of Gaza. Derek Zwyer, a social worker who uses art to explore psychological themes, created the abstract acrylic piece “Processing It” about the conflict. In it, a dark red and black object hangs menacingly in a cloudy sky; the words “the terror” are faintly visible through the backdrop. After attending a local protest, artist Constance Craik created “social/structure,” a small watercolor and acrylic depiction of a Palestinian woman holding a jug. The woman, surrounded by painted sparkles, appears calm, almost angelic, as she pours out glimmering water.

Sargent, who grew up in Warren, managed Burlington’s Flynndog Gallery and Flynndog Station from 2018 to 2019. In that role, she showcased national and international artists and organized art pop-ups accompanied by hip-hop performances. During the pandemic, Sargent launched a graphic design business. Last year, she reached out to Other Half owners Boudee Luangrath and Adrian Sackheim about designing a logo for the bar. They already had one, they told her, but the chat led to her current position.

Sargent is passionate about bringing youth and diversity to art, and she wants to do just that in downtown Burlington. Her mission, she said, “is to bring underground art that deals with local community issues to the downtown scene.”

So far, so good. Sargent said the February 9 opening of “Blossoms” was well attended — and the most lucrative night in the bar’s three-month existence. Sackheim told Seven Days that several pieces of art sold that evening. He and Luangrath previously owned Half Lounge, a tiny Church Street bar that closed in March 2020. Supporting local artists was a big part of Half Lounge’s mission, Sackheim said, and its walls were always full of local art.

“We wanted to keep that tradition alive with the Other Half, since it develops a sense of community within the walls and, in my opinion, looks better than a neon beer advertisement,” he said.

Some of the works now on display at the Other Half were created in the midst of a painful experience. Sargent pointed to Sarah-Catherine Paschall’s “Bold Contrast,” featuring architecture in Montréal’s Old Port, and “Unreal Beauty,” a Virginia sunset. “[During] the time in which the artist took those photographs, she was moving through intense grief,” Sargent noted.

An artist who goes by the name Twisted Tentacles created a more literal rendering of the exhibition’s theme. Her acrylic painting “Ebbs and Flows” portrays a woman with a river of tears streaming from her eyes.

“It was a self-portrait of her moving through depression,” Sargent said. “She was drowning in it but also utilizing her strength of being an artist to get through it.”

Jason Gorcoff‘s oil paintings “The Mountain” and “The Red Tower” both feature lone figures — a tower under a supernaturally red sky and a cloaked Grim Reaper-esque figure with claws and a glowing eye reminiscent of the Terminator —to depict the terror and loneliness of grief. Yvonna Stewart also took on the mythical in her India ink-and-graphite “King Cobra,” a Black rendition of Medusa, whose curse is associated with suffering and isolation.

Alexana Wolf’s “Blooms Eventually” directly resonates with the title of the exhibition. With acrylics, she painted a blue sky filled with snowflakes. Pieces of tall grass covered in ice, created with plaster, protrude from the canvas.

“If I were to equate it to humans in this town,” Sargent said of Wolf’s mixed-media canvas, “it’s us holding on to our inner fire until springtime.”

This article appears in Mar 13-19, 2024.

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