MIDDLEBURY — Karla Van Vliet’s exhibit of “Scored Paintings” will be on view at the Jackson Gallery from June 21-Aug. 4. An opening reception will be held on Friday, June 21, from 5-7 p.m. 
Van Vliet uses a technique that she created to have the look and feel of an etching. The process incorporates aspects of both painting and drawing. She scores the surface of the painting and then applies and removes paint, over and over, as the paint fills in the scoring to create line and form. She works with several recurring patterns and images that resonate in her.  
As a writer and visual artist, Van Vliet’s creativity flows naturally through these various genres, informed by her sensitivity, curiosity and passion for all of life’s experiences and interconnections. From the careful crafting of words in poetry through the gesture of wordless writing, or asemic writing, in a series of her paintings, and to the marking of the blank canvas of her beautifully textured scored paintings, her creations display a unique and thoughtful perspective.  
“As both an artist and poet I am intrigued with this transitory realm,” she said. “The act of making the gesture of writing, generating marks on the page, be it letter or character, dendritic form or simple line and shape, keeps me engaged in the practice of expression and in conversation with what is emerging from my unconscious to be communicated.”
Van Vliet’s art has been shown in several galleries including Helen Day Art Center, Still Point Art Gallery, Women in the Arts at the Chaffee Art Center co-sponsored with the National Museum of Women in the Arts and Champlain’s Lake Rediscovered, which toured the northeast. She studied painting and sculpture at Bennington College. She holds a BA from Goddard College and an MFA in poetry from Vermont College of Fine Arts. She is a co-founder and editor of deLuge Journal.  Her books “From the Book of Remembrance” (Shanti Arts, 2015) and “The River From My Mouth” (Shanti Arts, 2016) are collections of poems and paintings. A collection of her asemic writing is forthcoming from Shanti Arts in 2020.
The Jackson Gallery is located in the lower level of Town Hall Theater in Middlebury. Gallery hours are Monday through Saturday 12-5 p.m., and an hour before any public events in the building. For more info call (802) 382-9222 or visit townhalltheater.org.