“I grew up in the area. I’ve been driving past it since I was a little kid, and I’ve always been fascinated by it. It’s such a special site.” So said Mary Zompetti in describing the Sand Bar Inn, a derelict motel located where the Route 2 causeway meets South Hero Island. During the last weekend in July, the motel housed “From Away,” a site-specific installation curated by
Overnight Projects, which describes itself as “a nomadic, artist-run exhibition initiative whose mission is to expand the contemporary art conversation in Vermont ...”
Zompetti was one of five artists from Vermont and New York who filled the rooms of the motel – which closed in 2005 – with “voices from elsewhere.”
“I live here on the islands,” said Zompetti, “and I drive by [the motel] every day. I’ve always been really excited about this site and so I proposed it to Abbey.”
Abbey Meaker, director of Overnights Projects, chose the artists, who also included Angus McCullough, Sarah O Donnell, Charmaine Wheatley, and Wren Kitz. “Like any curatorial process,” explained Zompetti, the artists “have made work in the past that fit in with our central idea that we came up with based on the site – themes of space and time, memory and loss, and transitional spaces.”
“This is my project,” said Zompetti, as we entered a room in which overhead projectors cast images of found objects onto the walls. “Everything in here comes from the area.”
“It’s such a beautiful site,” said Bruce Duncan, a visitor to the installation. “On one side you have this beautiful, pastoral Lake Champlain, and on the other, the remnants of the Sand Bar Inn. It seems like in every installation, we’re being asked to look at the relationship between something projected and intended and something left, or a residue of something else. So it’s a very cool choice, I think, that they made by using the Sand Bar Inn.”
As the installation was open to the public for only three days, “From Away” was even more ephemeral than the life of the Sand Bar Inn.
For more information on Overnight Projects, visit their website, http://overnightprojects.com/.
David Gunn, Editor, VLCT News