BELLOWS FALLS — The Newbury Gallery at the Vermont Pretzel & Cookie Co. presents “Barnstorming: Explorations Along the Connecticut River Valley” by photographer Lowell Fewster during the months of April and May.
In this exhibition, Fewster explores barns' simplicity, vernacular design, beauty, and utility. He is preserving on film their presence as barns decay or are torn down. Fewster's photographs also celebrate our agrarian roots and the way of life they represent. His images will be shown along with notes on styles, history, and barn use. His work invites viewers to remember their own barn stories.
The Connecticut River Watershed has been the primary locus of his barn photography, in the broad alluvial plain of rich farmland in Connecticut and Massachusetts and among the scenic hills and valleys of Vermont and New Hampshire.
Photography and barns were a part of Fewster's upbringing in upstate New York. Growing up in a “Kodak family,” he was taking pictures at the age of 6 with a hand-me-down Kodak box camera. At about this age, he was also exploring the family farm, hiding and creating forts in the hayloft in the large post and beam gambrel-roofed barn his father built in 1942. Some of his earliest photographs were of the barns and Angus cattle.
At a Maine Photographic Workshop five years ago, he created a photo essay on “disappearing barns,” and began to focus his efforts on the classic barns that have sheltered livestock and hay on family farms.
This exhibit, his sixth solo exhibition, consists of more than 30 images. It will be on display at the Newberry Gallery, 24 Rockingham St., until May 29. An open house will be held on Friday, April 20, from 5 to 8 p.m., as part of Bellows Falls Third Friday. The gallery is open Monday to Friday from 7 a.m. to 5 p.m., and Saturday from 8 a.m. to 3 p.m.