Corn and the Connecticut River:
A Paper Odyssey/Art Installation by Sheryl Jaffe
August 7th to October 15th
Papermaking Extravaganza
September 24
The Porter-Phelps-Huntington Museum is hosting "Corn and the Connecticut River: A Paper Odyssey/ Art Installation" by Ludlow artist Sheryl Jaffe. The installation features a series of interrelated works exploring perception of the local landscape in a striking combination of sculpture, prints, and assemblage, employing hand-made paper and fibrous materials found in the local environment. The installation will be on display August 7th through October 15th, Saturday through Wednesday, from 1:00-4:30 PM, in the museum's com barn. There is no fee for admission; the museum grounds are a smoke-free site.
"Corn and the Connecticut River" explores the complex relationship between the inhabitants of the valley-past and present, native and colonist-and the diverse landscape on which they worked and lived. Eighteenth century life at Forty Acres, as the 1752 museum was originally named, involved harvesting the year's grain, shipping goods down the river, and catching and smoking fish for the winter. The farm's inhabitants had a close, constant relationship with the natural world, with its seasonal ebbs and flows. Jaffe's installation draws together these sites-the river, the com fields, the forest-with the inhabitants' perspectives in ways that are historical as well as timeless.
Jaffe's installation will transform the 1799 com barn into a multifuceted reflection of the Western Massachusetts landscape. Sculptures and prints will fill the space nearly from floor to ceiling. Six-foot tall paper, printed with what Jaffe describes as what she might see "if I were a great blue heron and could fly over Hadley," will stand between the barn's posts, a kind of window affording a view of the fields, river, and sky beyond. Finally, above visitors' heads will hang Jaffe's striking catfish sculptures, plunging the audience deep into an underwater river scene.
"One's perspective is a critical piece of one's understanding," Jaffe notes. 'The works in this exhibit require more than one point of view to fully appreciate. Alter your position, alter the lighting, make a joyful sound, come back in different weather, savoring what you have just read or eaten."
The installation is constructed primarily from natural materials, including com and flax fibers, vines, stems, and tree branches. This use of local materials-com, in particular-is central to Jaffe's work, connecting the art to the installation site as well as to the history embedded in the landscape. Com and flax, for example, were each grown in the 40-acre meadow adjacent to the museum, the latter spun into linen by the many needle-workers who often worked at the house. ''The relationship between com and the Connecticut River is personal, historical, fascinating," says Jaffe. "It goes back thousands of years."
Jaffe's handmade paper, too, employs a centuries-old paper-making process, converting flax, cotton, com husks and stalks into a beautiful and natural product of the land. She, like the many generations of workers at Forty Acres, takes advantage of the bounty of the valley, synthesizing history, landscape, and labor into a compelling and diverse installation. In an age of mechanical production, her unique and intricate papers are a reminder of age-old processes, of the way "folks made do with what was available from their back porch."
Jaffe has been making paper for over fifteen years, but she did not begin using com until relatively recently, when a neighbor generously donated some of his crop. She then began beating the com stalks and leaves into a paper pulp. She has been exploring com and its uses-as a Native American food source, as well as the foundation of many modem-day processed foods and, more recently, as an energy source-ever since. "I see time as an accordion, folding up on itself to create threads of contact that have more to do with sensory experience," says Jaffe.
"Corn and the Connecticut River" is funded, in part, by the Hadley Cultural Council, a local agency, supported by the Massachusetts Cultural Council, a state agency. The Porter- Phelps-Huntington Museum is an historic house museum located at 130 River Drive (Route 47) in Hadley, two miles north of the junction of Routes 9 and 47 North. For further information about the exhibition and the museum, call (413) 584-4699, visit us online at www.pphmuseum.org, or email the artist at sherylannjaffe@gmail.com