This story by Alex Hanson was first published by the Valley News on June 29.
Around 40 years or so ago, Charlet Davenport was serving on the Vermont Arts Council.
She was still a new resident, having moved to the state with her husband, Peter, in 1962. (She’s still a newcomer even now, she said.) At the time, AVA Gallery in Lebanon, New Hampshire, was still a minnow, and Ellison Lieberman’s Gallery 2, in Woodstock, was one of the only commercial galleries in Vermont.
For sculptors, particularly those who wanted to work in larger and natural forms better suited to the outdoors, options were even more limited. The Arts Council provided awards to one painter and one sculptor a year, which didn’t seem sufficient to Davenport.
So she started an event at the Davenports’ home on Prosper Road in Woodstock. It was part sculpture show and part fundraiser for the Arts Council.
“This was something I decided Peter and I could do,” Charlet said in an interview Tuesday. They had horses at the time, so they told artists, “It has to be horse-friendly and winter-worthy.” One of Peter’s own sculptures, a series of circular metal forms still standing in what used to be a pasture, served as a kind of equine neck-scratcher.
That was the start of what might be the longest-running art show in the Upper Valley. Sculpturefest opens Sunday for its 35th year. Visitors can meet the artists at 3 p.m., and jazz pianist Sonny Saul and singer Grace Marie Wallace will perform at 4:30 p.m.
It might be best known among the art-viewing public as a place to stroll and picnic, but Sculpturefest has served artists as a place to show work unlikely to find a home anywhere else. The Davenports’ pastures have also been a launch pad for sculptors. Someone who wants to learn to draw can find paper anywhere, but a blank sheet for a massive stone sculpture by Hector Santos is harder to find.
Santos, a stonemason and my neighbor when I lived in Woodstock, visited the Davenports and said he wanted to make art. His first piece at Sculpturefest, “Earth’s Crust,” three stone columns planted at an angle and filled in with smaller stones, isn’t going anywhere. There are now three more Santos works on the grounds.
This is a repeating pattern. Burlington artist Melanie Brotz, who works in driftwood, “came up to my studio and asked, ‘Can I have a residency here?’ ” Yes, it turned out, she could.
Sculpturefest is the most open art venue in the Upper Valley, available for viewing dawn to dusk almost year-round. Artists recognize that openness, too. Charlet talked about uniting “the Yalies and the Barres,” bringing together conceptual and abstract artists and traditional carvers working with Barre granite.
This year’s featured artist, Stefania Urist, sought the Davenports out. Urist, who lives in Londonderry, makes sculptures out of phragmites, or common reeds, an invasive plant. A piece she’s still installing supports the reeds with rebar and chicken wire. The resulting work, at least as it looked Tuesday, was spare and graceful and also embracing.
Urist also will have work on view this year at Socrates Sculpture Park, in Queens, New York. Founded in 1986 by artist Mark di Suvero, the park was one of the inspirations for Sculpturefest, as was Storm King Art Center, in New York’s Hudson River Valley.
While both of the New York venues often host work on a larger scale, particularly Storm King, which sits on 500 acres, Sculpturefest is true to its Vermont home, with works that fit the state’s more intimate landscape.
In a way, the Davenports’ move to Vermont centers on the same sense of scale and community. They’re both from the North Shore of Massachusetts but adopted their new close-knit town, first in an apartment overlooking Francis Mooney’s garage in Woodstock village and, within a few years, in the house on Prosper Road. They paid $12,500 for the house and another $8,000 for an adjacent parcel of land, Peter said. (That’s a little over $200,000 today.) He also purchased Roy Oil, a local fuel oil company.
Early on, Charlet attended a weekly play reading session in Woodstock’s Little Theater held by Bill Tyson, who’d taught drama at Yale. They got to know people in the village and as their children grew up, in the schools.
Sculpturefest is an example of the same spirit. “This place,” Charlet said, “it really depends on a community.”
Sculpturefest opens Sunday with a reception starting at 3 p.m. Picnics are encouraged if the weather cooperates. The art will remain on view at least until the end of foliage season. Admission is free.
