“The position was to teach painting,” he recalls, “and I had never painted before.”
A quarter-century later, the Saxtons River resident whose brushwork is now acclaimed returned to campus to receive the Governor’s Award for Excellence in the Arts.
“What I can tell you about Eric is he has an extraordinary sense of color, of landscape and of light,” Gov. Peter Shumlin said upon presenting the prize Tuesday night. “He, I believe, is the world’s best modern landscape artist.”
The Vermont Arts Council program was billed as a celebration of the accomplishments of Aho and five fellow Windham County artists. But coming a week after a split nation elected Donald Trump president, it sparked plenty of other creative expression.
“Last week’s election changed things for our country,” Brattleboro Union High School music teacher Stephen Rice said upon receiving the Arthur Williams Award for Meritorious Service. “Our president-elect gained his office by sowing seeds of division, exploiting distrust and tapping into fear, anger and even hatred. Artists and arts educators have a tremendous role to play in what happens over the next four — and hopefully only four — years. Because art is a uniting force.”
Self-described “theater director, teacher, clown and Shakespeare consultant” Peter Gould, of Brattleboro, accepted the Ellen McCulloch-Lovell Award in Arts Education by reading a poem he titled “The Slow School Movement” that sought to upend everything from “cardboard food” to “violent speech” and “unequal power relations.”
“So many students are hooked by other bait, phones and screens and social networks and carried with them, a huge commercial influence upon their desires, their styles and habits of speech and dress and thought,” Gould said. “We artists are some of the only people in the state who are both poised and equipped to make and bait the hook that will pull all children in.”
The event featured a few lighter moments. Elsie Smith and Serenity Smith Forchion, the identical-twin founders of Brattleboro’s New England Center for Circus Arts, drew smiles when they received individual Walter Cerf Medals for Outstanding Achievement.
“We’re so used to having to share,” Elsie Smith said before recalling wearing an animal costume at a past ceremony. “You can get from the back end of a camel to being the recipient of an award.”
Rockingham Arts and Museum Project Director Robert McBride spoke of creativity’s impact on community development when he accepted the Margaret L. “Peggy” Kannenstine Award for Arts Advocacy.
“The scale of Vermont allows and encourages us to connect and meet other people,” McBride said. “You can roll up your sleeves, get involved and make a difference in our communities.”
But the program kept returning to politics. Vermont Arts Council Executive Director Alex Aldrich spoke of his daughter’s fears about society’s current divisiveness.
“Now it is time,” Aldrich said, “for her and me and all of us to roll up our sleeves and create more allies.”
Added Shumlin: “We need more than ever what this organization represents — inclusiveness, love, celebration, fun, creativity, diversity. Let’s take everything we’re celebrating tonight and put it on steroids. Because of, and not despite, diversity, that’s what enriches our lives.”