MIDDLEBURY — Zone Three Gallery, in Middlebury’s Marble Works, will celebrate the 100th anniversary of the Middlebury Language School with a special art and poetry event during the Middlebury Arts Walk on Friday, July 10.
A reception for the gallery’s current exhibit, “Celestial Verses,” will run from 5-7 p.m. The exhibit features works in paint and ink on paper and fabric by Rachel Baird. A circular poem, “Celestial Verses,” written by Baird, has been embedded into abstract depictions of the heavens and translated into the languages taught at the Middlebury Language Schools.
In the Main Gallery, paintings of a celestial canopy have been made into books, with the poem “Celestial Verses” embedded in them.
And in the Great Room Gallery is an installation: strips of fabric that are tied, folded, sewn and/or fastened together, holding the multiple-language versions of the “Celestial Verses” poem, in continuous, five-story high streams that flow through the gallery, out a window and down into the parking lot below, twisting and blending the languages together.
At 6 p.m., these translations of Celestial Verses will be read aloud in unison in the parking lot, then the language school readers will come into the gallery, and a simultaneous reading will be performed.
For more information about the exhibit or the gallery,
Zone Three Gallery is at 152 Maple St., third floor, in the Marble Works. For more information, call 800-249-3562.