BOB BOEMIG

BOB BOEMIG has been creating outdoor landscape installations across New England for over fifty years, including ‘Landlift’ at the Brattleboro Museum, and ‘The Fiddlehead’ at the Retreat Farm. This current exhibition shows a collection of Boemig’s interior works over two decades. Boemig’s sculptural reliefs use construction materials and debris, cardboard, house paint, wood, stone, twigs and branches. The series ‘Ashes to Ashes and Dust to Dust,’ makes use of fire, except in certain works - tracing paper with urethane. In the ‘Nebula’ series, Boemig uses chiffon fabric covering over the sculptural reliefs. These two series represent contrasting themes that are ultimately intertwined.

“In the ’60s they were building I-91 and I-89. For me, it was such an eye-opening experience to see them contour the land and that little green stripe that goes up between north and south, crossing the state. If you look at that median strip, it kind of explains everything about my artwork—the curves in the median strip, the dips and the hollows. I have a feeling that there’s not much that affected me as a very small child more than that construction. 

“I had no money when I was going to school, and one day in the art studio, I looked over and saw a shovel in the ground. I said, “That’s my carving chisel from now on. I can go out and carve something in the earth, and it won’t cost me any money.” That’s how I started doing these landscape projects. So the green of Vermont has truly influenced my artwork. 

“What gives me a lot of joy with many of my projects is that we usually employ construction workers to drive excavators, backhoes, dump trucks. They’re usually not too thrilled about joining in at first. They think it’s a bunch of nonsense. Once we start working on the project, though, their attitude usually changes. When we have openings, they’re the first people there. They spend the whole day, they have their family with them, they’re very proud of it.

“I want to bring the common New Englander into the art world in a different way. Sometimes people are sitting on my work and they don’t even realize it’s a piece of sculpture, and to me that’s great. What I try to do is to gather people and make them feel a little better when they leave. That’s what I think public art is all about: trying to reestablish a space that somebody can find some comfort in. “ - Bob Boemig

from an Interview conducted by Brattleboro Museum and Art Center: https://www.artlovescompany.org/home/a-space-that-somebody-can-find-some-comfort-in

NEBULA SERIES

Boemig reflects: “The destruction and deterioration are not only in the landscape but in our own bodies. As I turned 50 I examined my existence as many of us do as we age, looking back at our beginnings, but also forward to the unknown. I used fire in creating the ‘Ashes to Ashes, Dust to Dust’ pieces because the fire is burning away whatever it is that is eating away at ourselves and our landscape. The success of the sculpture depends on how and when to stop the burn. ‘Nebula ', the subsequent series, was the hopeful and optimistic response to that examination, representing a new outlook and the possibilities of what our lives can be in the reimagined outside world, and beyond. The ‘Nebula’ series with their chiffon membranes are a future womb of existence full of mist, haze and hope towards new beginnings.”

‘ASHES TO ASHES AND DUST TO DUST’ SERIES

Two recent large works in Gallery 2 are part of a new series featuring an ongoing collaboration between Bob Boemig and Cai Xi. These works began with hosta leaves and house paints, and were completed with little or no verbal communication or specific plans, a free-flowing, open embrace of the creative process.

COLLABORATIONS