Art and War gallery and discussions this week in Cambridge

(Received via email.)


Donald Shambroom’s
“Recruits”


an emergency exhibition

April 11-15
Pierre Menard Gallery

Opening reception, Saturday, April 14, 6-9 pm
“Art and War” discussion, Sunday, April 15, 3-5 pm
with Kevin Bowen (poet), Kermit Dunkelberg (actor), Donald Shambroom (sculptor) & Chip Troiano (photographer)

(Cambridge, MA) Pierre Menard Gallery presents Donald Shambroom’s “Recruits” : an emergency exhibition. Wednesday-Sunday, April 11-15, with opening reception, Saturday, April 14, 6-9 pm, and “Art and War’ discussion, Sunday, April 15, 3-5 pm. Pierre Menard Gallery, 10 Arrow Street, Cambridge. Regular gallery hours: Wednesday-Sunday, 11 am-7 pm. Free and open to the public. For more information, 617-868-2033 or www.pierremenardgallery.com.

All of Donald Shambroom’s recent sculptures address the tragedy of war. Each piece represents a point in time, a random instant when the lives of a small group of soldiers are transformed. His sculptures range in height from five to nine feet, are made of clay, various kinds of wood, and sign paint – and are each frozen in a tragic moment.

In 2005, Shambroom first began to explore war as a theme and installed his work in storefronts to jar the passersby. He would stress that his pieces were not anti-war, but rather a detached reminder of the violent loss of life in wartime. But with “Recruits”, Shambroom has taken a stand. Detachment is not an option.

Background information:

Donald Shambroom is a painter and sculptor whose works have been shown in New York, Los Angeles, and Boston. After completing his first three years of undergraduate study in philosophy at Yale University, Shambroom was chosen as Scholar of the House in art for his senior year. His paintings and drawings have been acquired by the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, the DeCordova Museum, and the Metropolitan Museum in New York. Some of his better-known pieces involve imaginary construction sites based on real-world scenes. His "Flying Dream" series show a single figure against a golden sky, hurtling through, or suspended in, space. Shambroom began creating sculpture in 2000 after the death of his wife of 22 years, when his deep interest in the works and writings of French painter and sculptor Marcel Duchamp inspired him to make objects that stand on the floor. For the past several years, Shambroom’s public art project “Fatalities” has appeared in storefronts throughout the greater Boston area. He terms them as modest ciphers of the sudden termination of life in war, and they are meant to be displayed in busy retail locations. His work can be seen at www.donaldshambroom.com.

Discussion participants:

Poet Kevin Bowen was drafted and served in the 1st Air Cavalry Division in Vietnam from 1968-1969. A graduate of the UMass Boston, Bowen is a former Danforth Fellow and Fulbright Fellow at New College, Oxford and earned his Ph.D. in English Literature from the SUNY Buffalo. He worked as an aide and speechwriter for Lt. Governor Thomas P. O'Neill, III prior to becoming director of the Veterans' Upward Bound Program at UMass Boston in 1984. He was appointed co-director of the Joiner Center in 1984 and has been the director since 1993. Since 1987, he has returned to Vietnam many times, initiating cultural, educational, and humanitarian exchanges. He is an adjunct Associate Professor in the English Department where he teaches courses in creative writing, literature and war, and the literature of the Vietnam War. His poetry has been published by Curbstone Press and has also appeared in Agni, American Poetry Review, Boston Review, Ploughshares, among others. He has edited a special feature on contemporary Vietnamese poetry and with Bruce Weigl, is co-editor of Writing Between the Lines: Writings on War and Its Consequences.

Actor Kermit Dunkelberg, a co-founder and Core Actor of Pilgrim Theatre, has created ground-breaking roles for the company for twenty years. A student of Jerzy Grotowski’s at Irvine, CA, and a company member of Drugie Studio Wroclawskie (Second Studio of Wroclaw Poland, under Zbigniew Cynkutis), Dunkelberg has explored the sonic and physical textures of performance, pushing the envelope with each new artistic journey. He has just completed a run of Pilgrim Theatre's Kafka’s The Trial: “An Extraordinary Rendition which he developed as a performative exploration of Franz Kafka’s tale of domestic surveillance and undisclosed charges. The performance invites the audience, without judgment, into a dialogue about their role in today’s “theatre” of war.

Photographer Chip Troiano served with the Sixth Armored Cavalry in Vietnam, from 1966-1967, first in an infantry platoon as a machine gunner, and then later as a door gunner on a helicopter gunship. In 1999, he took his first trip back to Vietnam, using it as an opportunity to take pictures of a country and its people, who still live as they did decades earlier despite the ravages of war. Recently he returned to Vietnam, this time working with filmmaker Ed Nef, who is creating a documentary for PBS about Vietnam veterans who have gone back. A native of Staten Island, Troiano has lived in Vermont since the early 70’s and has been a participant in many Bread and Puppet Theater events. He is also a justice of the peace and works as an investigator for a public defender.

The Pierre Menard Gallery opened in Harvard Square in the fall of 2006, in a brick building that previously housed an antique shop. The removal of the second floor resulted in a tall, striking space, accompanied by two smaller exhibition rooms below. The gallery features contemporary art, and visual art by writers. Pierre Menard, the gallery’s namesake, is a fictional character from a story by Jorge Luis Borges, whose inventive spirit helps set the tone for the enterprise. For more Information, log onto www.pierremenardgallery.com.