BRATTLEBORO — The mixed media artist and author Phoebe Sparrow Wagner, who spent years of her life in psychiatric hospitals, will be July's featured artist, exhibiting “art from the asylum” at the Harmony Collective Artist Gallery, on 49 Elliot St. Because of her experience with poverty and homelessness, all sales of Wagner's art in July will benefit Brattleboro's Groundworks Collaborative.
An award-winning writer and artist, Wagner started making art at age 55 when a voice inside her head instructed her to “build a human” and in response she constructed a life-size woman in papier-mâché.
Now 69, she has been making art almost nonstop ever since. Her colored pencil paintings represent what she calls Mad Art, a “phantasmagoria of real and surreal images.” Her 3D art, also for sale to benefit Groundworks, runs the gamut from lifelike figurines to bowls to intricately beaded animals.
The opening and reception for “Mad Art” will take place during Gallery Walk on Friday, July 1, from 5 to 7 p.m., at the Harmony Collective Artist Gallery.
For more information, contact the Harmony Collective at 802-579-1501 or Phoebe Wagner at 802-380-9847. Wagner's art may also be viewed at artfolie365.com.