A few weeks ago, Calico Gallery (67 West Street #203) opened Field For Ballads, an exhibition of works by two Brooklyn women originally from Alabama, painter Hannah Hill and writer Hannah Aizenman (who is Poetry Coordinator for The New Yorker). The exhibit, curated by artist Frank Schellace, pairs several of Hill’s beautiful color changing (!) paintings with Aizenman’s words running down the wall and onto the floor. The room, with a few earth-toned fabric covered stools and a stag fern from Dobbin Street shop Feng Sway, feels like a reading room, with copies of a limited-run book of poetry and images. Shellace’s goal was to give viewers an intimate storytelling experience, transporting them deep into the backwoods and folklore of Alabama from the confines of a small, hip Brooklyn gallery. “The show was conceived with the notion of what it means to be a Southern transplant in Brooklyn,” Hill says.
This Thursday night (March 22nd) at 7pm, the gallery is hosting a reading and artist/curator walkthrough. The show is elegant, philosophical and powerful, and though the work gives impressions of the past the show feels modern and fresh. Thursday’s reading is a fantastic way to fully experience the work at its full intention.
