BRATTLEBORO — A question lies at the center of the successful new mixed-media show, “A Few of Our Favorite Things...” at the Hooker-Dunham Theater and Gallery on Main Street: Can a community that has almost stopped seeing itself as a community - at least in Windham County - become a community again through art?
The show, with 60 pieces of art by 30 local gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgendered and questioning artists - the so-called “alphabet soup” that is often shortened to “LGBTQ” - opened on June 4 and will run until July 31. On June 18, the Kopkind Colony's “CineSlam,” a LGBT festival of new independent films, will open at the theater before moving to Tree Frog Farm in Guilford.
Oddly enough, according to playwright, Hooker-Dunham director, and curator Suzanne d'Corsey, this kind of an art show is new to Brattleboro.
There have been area shows on specific gay themes such as AIDS and Pride Month, she said, but never a general show of work by the LGBT arts community. In fact, not many people knew there was a LGBT arts community.
“I put out a call, and this is what I got back,” d'Corsey said. “Parts of the community are organized and parts are strangely unorganized. What we're doing now is creating a sense of community with the artwork.”
The show - paintings, photographs, fabric art, sculpture and collage - is not inherently homosexual. Or even sexual.
Yes, there are sexual subtleties in some of the images, such as three photographs of flowers by Michael Gigante: a pink lady slipper, an iris and a hibiscus, openly waving their reproductive attractiveness into the face of the camera. There are some male nudes and some S&M photographs of women done by d'Corsey herself.
But that's not what the show is about.
“If the artist wanted something to be suggestive and erotic, that was wonderful, and if it was something they were feeling passionate about but had nothing to do with it, that's equally wonderful,” d'Corsey said.
The show offers some powerful images. One of the strongest is Cynthia Roderick's “How hard...” which combines a photograph of a tiny - and very feminine - dress which Roderick wore as a toddler with the words “How hard did you try” arranged in various ways across a black background.
“Like so many, she was forced to be something that she was not,” d'Corsey said. “And she tried because it was expected of her. Until, I guess, she stopped trying.”
“This piece has a lot of passion behind it,” she said. “A lot of people have found this disturbing because it speaks to their experience. It's about a cultural more - if how to be is not what you really are, at what point do you change? And how do you change?”
“The good news is we have this piece on the wall now, which proves that things did change,” she said.
Not every piece represents struggle or oppression.
Some are quite lighthearted, like Kris Alden's “Brighton Beach,” with its red sequin border, sequined striped beach chair, and 1920 bathing beauties - one of whom Alden has turned into a mermaid with the use of blue sequined fabric.
And Donald McIntyre's “Brattleboro LGBT Recreation Center” is a photo montage of the Latchis Theater with what appears to be a French cathedral looming behind it.
But there are also seascapes, landscapes, abstracts, bridges, Brianna Harris's photograph of three fox kits, and photographs of unexpected places in Brattleboro.
'Strangely unorganized'
What does d'Corsey mean when she says the LGBT community in Windham County is “strangely unorganized”?
“Oppression and homophobia united the gay community once upon a time, and gave it the impetus to work for change, for acceptance, for equal rights,” d'Corsey said.
“There was a high-energy excitement in the air. It was a difficult, dangerous, heady, sexy time - sexy as in being perceived as sexual outlaws, deviants, even risking breaking the law in the privacy of the bedroom, all of which often conveyed an edgy exhilaration,” she said.
“A dynamic expression in the arts, sexuality, theater, political and spiritual theory, and all the rest, grew over the decades,” d'Corsey said.
While homophobia is alive and well across the country, here in Vermont many of those efforts have paid off, she explained.
“The wider LGBT community is so integrated into the culture that its basic identity has changed,” d'Corsey said. “The common energy does not have to go into activism to the degree it once did.”
“This means that LGBT individuals are now free to live in ways forbidden to them only a few years ago, yes, to marry and raise children in peace, to be 'out' and find themselves supported instead of condemned and ostracized.
“For the most part, gay artists can place artwork in a show like this and not fear for their livelihoods and reputations.”
Subtle homophobia still exists here, d'Corsey warned.
“I was a little bit surprised when I found out there were more than a couple of artists who felt they couldn't put something in the show lest they be outed and put their careers in jeopardy,” d'Corsey said. “That's how they feel.”
However, for d'Corsey, who came here four years ago from Oklahoma, the area is a “magical little bubble.”
“This is a wonderful place, and I'm so happy to be living here, especially after the open and inherent homophobia in Oklahoma,” she said. “It's like night and day. There you risk all. People still get beat up.”
“Nobody wants to return to the bad old days of overt homophobia - and if anyone does miss it, I can suggest a few places to go and revisit what it was like!” she said.
“But from what I see and know here in Brattleboro, many people are simply in the business of living their lives,” d'Corsey said.
The tradeoff is the paradox, she said.
“Do equality and respect result in the loss of that dynamic energy, that sense of united purpose and bloody-minded insistence on the right to love whom we choose?” she said.
“Or are we experiencing a lull here in southern Vermont an incubating time for new expressions of community in the LGBT world?”
“I wonder if this art show is an indicator of the direction things are moving, perhaps an holistic integration of the gay community which parallels the integration of its individual souls, who are able now to live their lives as they would wish,” d'Corsey said. “The most amazing thing about this art show is that it is not much unlike any other group show.”