Take the road to I-Park, an artists residency center in rural Connecticut, the narrow, antique Hopyard Road twists and turns; it runs up and downhill, laying lightly over a forested landscape that seems ready to engulf it. This is the northeast corner of East Haddam, in the southeast corner of the state. It feels like “the interior.” It’s a gorgeous five-mile drive, with narrow bridges, low-banking creeks, and towering pines. You pass by Devil’s Hopyard State Park and many trailheads.
Then suddenly, a meadow appears; you turn into the 450-acre campus of I-Park. There’s a restored colonial house, a barn-turned-office, and a beehive of studios of various shapes and sizes behind them. Deeper in, there’s an amphitheater and a large pond; 27 trails crisscross the property. On this generous footprint of land, a cohort of artists gather, about a month at a time, from various artistic disciplines. I-Park offers unlimited time and resources to the individual artists, and one directive: “Do what you need to do. We’ll help you do it.”
I-Park is the vision of Joanne Paradis and Ralph Crispino, who in 1993 began conceptualizing a “garden park-like space” where they could create a memorial site and a small arts center. They were interested in gathering artists, philosophers, and scientists to discuss the art, memory and loss, and other issues of the day. Paradis remembers,
“We were idyllic thinkers, young, full of energy and our hope was that we could impact, change the world in some way…The artists-in-residence concept came later — somewhat as an afterthought. I-Park began offering artists’ residencies in 2001.”
Twenty-four years later, artist residency programs are going strong, and the vision continues to evolve. I arrived at I-Park for a new exhibit, “Memory Reconsidered – A Modest Proposition,” on a sparkling Sunday in May.
I-Park opens up its campus for Open Studios, Open Trails and Open Music days and other special events four to eight times a year. In this exhibit, a particular founding impetus resurfaces: memorializing, or processing grief. It proposes that a hike in the woods — in the company of natural fauna, flora , and art —- can be a good way to reflect on the recent loss of a loved one.
Crispino says,
“Combining the powers of nature, art, architecture, and multi-sensory stimulation, we aspire to create an atmosphere conducive to enhanced memory recall, reflection, and the achievement of moments of solace. We also hope to evolve into a creative laboratory for new ways of approaching memorialization and ritual — in a manner befitting our generation.”
The exhibit was mounted in the remote “Netherlands” part of I-Park — a mile-long hike from the residency buildings and studios. Visitors were driven to the starting point and then picked up at the end, which lent a feel of pilgrimage. Sent out with a topographical map along well-marked and groomed trails — with some stiff bug-spray to keep critters away — we journeyed into our own interiors.
It is a brave, beautiful exhibit. Some of the most powerful pieces are on a trail that winds its way up to tiny Foxton Cemetery. Karin van der Molen’s Hope is the thing with feathers is a bamboo and steel structure fashioned as a giant set of wings hovering over a vernal pool. A miniature ladder climbs through the center — an escape from the muck below, or a graceful metaphor of the spine. This work is angelic, biblical, poetic — after all, it is named with an Emily Dickinson line — and above all, it is hopeful.
Further uphill towards the cemetery and set back from the trail is Kathryn Kelley’s Opening to the unbidden. This piece, large enough to visually announce itself from 50 feet away, features two mushrooming protrusions — like tuba horns or gramophone bells. In getting closer, you see that the entire piece is wrapped around a massive rock, made out of roofing rubber and tire tubes stretched over a framework of rebar. Kelly has laboriously stitched and pleated the installation, like a 1900s-era lady’s corset in steampunk. There’s primal scream and delicacy to this work.
It was six weeks of in the making, Kelley said.
“I got here in April, so I got to watch it go from winter to a green haze to the big leaves. It was very fun to see — especially since I’m from West Texas…This piece is that stuff that wells up in you, that you have no control over. You can’t make it tidy — because grief is not tidy.”
The work is inspired by Kelley’s caretaking for her father, who passed away in 2020.
“I was fortunate enough to get to walk with my dad for his last year. He had Parkinson’s and Lewy Body Dementia. You really are grieving through the entire process of that. Watching the suffering is the painful part — and the gnarly part — and then there’s these precious moments.”
There’s a crumbling stone ruin in “The Netherlands” called Willey’s Foundation. Two very different exhibit pieces cluster around it; they each seem to address it in oblique ways. Chris Nelson’s A Reflection Of brings architecture and ritual together. A tall wooden tower, like a church steeple, rises starkly from the trail, with a suspended plank leading up to it. Visitors are invited to fill a ceramic cup of water from a small nearby well and bring it to the tower — where “they walk the plank,” open the small door in the tower, and pour the water into a light-reflecting well inside. This ritual evokes multiple cultural and religious traditions — and it gives time for each visitor to slow down, to be intentional.
Across the trail from A Reflection Of is Margaret Meejung Gerhart’s After Bloom. Here, a garden has been sown right into the forest landscape — so seamlessly with the existing flora that you could walk right by it without seeing it. But then you notice that the landscape has been gently nudged and shaped into a topsy-turvy garden: Gerhart has “planted” uprooted tree trunks, their roots spreading in the air like gnarled bouquet of flowers. Gerhart calls these “mother logs — fallen trees that nurture new life.” Planted in and amongst are a variety of perennials, like Solomon’s Seal and Bleeding Hearts, that, as Gerhart says, “vanish after blooming, yet return each spring. Their quiet cycles remind us: absence is not the same as loss. Beneath the surface, life continues unseen.”
Kelley, in Opening to the Unbidden, spoke to this idea in another way. On the last day of working on this rock-wrapping installation, she built an intentional “mouse condominium” deep inside it. The mice’s presence there — seen and unseen — continually does and undoes the work.
“Memory Reconsidered – A Modest Proposition” also includes work by Pat van Boeckel, Sarah E. Brook, Dana Levy, David Madasci, Mary Mattingly, John McGarity, Maryam Turkey, and Hans Tursack.
Upcoming Open Studios, Open Trails, and Open Music at I-Park:
Open Studios: Sunday June 29 and Sunday August 3, 2:00 pm – 5:00 pm
Open Trails + Music: Saturday, August 9, 9:30 am – 3:30 pm