Material Matters
Vermont Supreme Court Gallery, Montpelier, VT • vermontjudiciary.org • Through June 28, 2024
Form meets fantasy in Material Matters—Victoria Blewer’s solo exhibition at the Vermont Supreme Court Gallery. This exhibition, delayed first by the pandemic and then the 2023 flood in Montpelier, is worth the wait. Blewer, originally from New York City, moved to Vermont in the late 1980s. She is an acclaimed artist—receiving quite a few national and regional awards. One of her muses is the celebrated author Chris Bohjalian, her husband.
Inspired by a glance at a bumper sticker, “‘Change is inevitable. Growth is optional.’ And isn’t that what every artist strives for?” Blewer shows in two distinct bodies of work that she is pushing the boundaries of her medium with a bold visual vocabulary.
Her series of barns show her depth of photographic study in analog techniques. In this series Blewer is using silver print black and white barns, hand-colored with oil paint. In the work New Barn (2024), the architectural lines and symmetry create a beautiful formality while the play of color in the work vibrates with the push/pull of what is in the foreground and what is behind the barn. Blewer masterfully creates geometric shapes within the barns to break up the shapes with color. As a group, the barns are a delight of color theory meeting the lovely texture made by Kodak’s 35mm infrared film.
Lining the halls of the gallery are Blewer’s collages. Leading the eye back and forth in time using faded photography, newspaper clippings with antique adds, geometric patterns and wildlife. The collages are whimsical while making a statement on society—women’s roles ever-changing, how we govern, how we decide. Characters in stilettos wearing helmets prepare for battle. Street photography beckons the viewer to “Question everything, Leave your baggage here” with an all-knowing eye and flying UFO objects in the sky with a comic book character urging “C’mon son! Use your common sense! Think it through!,” bring the viewer on a time-travel journey. One favorite features a dark, grainy painted background with organic circular forms which almost feel like printmaking. A collaged bird floats upside down withing and old tinted landscape, the bird’s eyes are glancing up at a sign that reads “HOPE.”
— Kelly Holt