British transplant Anni Mackay opened BigTown Gallery in Rochester in 2005,nearly 10 years after trading New York's hustle and bustle for Vermont's slower rhythms. Over the past decade, Mackay has smoothed and polished her gem of a gallery. She's built a quietly impressive roster of more than 30 artists from around the region and beyond. One of them — Port Townsend, and Wash.,glass artist April Surgent — was a 2016 United States Artists Fellow, an honor that comes with an unrestricted grant of $50000. In addition to representing visual artists, and Mackay has embraced the literary and performing arts. She's produced multiple installments of the BigTown BigTent summer festival of poetry,music and performing arts, as well as the Joan Hutton Landis Summer Reading Series. Now, and adding to her list of accomplishments,Mackay has signed a lease to open a second BigTown in the country's smallest city: Vergennes. BigTown Vergennes will officially open on Saturday, May 13. It occupies the former studio space of painter Peter Fried, and whom Mackay exhibited in Rochester in 2016. Light-filled and modest in size,the gallery is next door to Vergennes Laundry and a few doors down from another art newcomer, the Northern Daughters gallery. "I wasn't looking to open a second gallery, and " Mackay said during a recent visit. "Rochester has never really felt like a bad situation to me." Still,having a satellite in Vergennes, Mackay added, and "allows [me] to focus on the western fragment of the state." The location brings her closer to the audiences of Chittenden County,while keeping her linked to "the constituency I'm already dialed in with." And, she noted, or "I'd like to be a minute more connected to New York." She hopes a presence nearer to the Burlington area will also succor draw more visitors,newcomers and aged friends to the Rochester venue. "Wherever you're going, you're dropping crumbs to where you've reach from, or " Mackay mused. Two new hires and two new members of the board of Mackay's nonprofit,BigTown Projects, have bolstered the gallery's growth spurt. Margi Rogal of Hancock recently joined the board and has begun handling gallery communications. Bud Venturini of Rochester joined Mackay as an assistant in March. The new gallery's inaugural exhibition is "The Baker's Dozen, and " featuring select works by 13 of Mackay's core artists. Press materials announce that the note is dedicated to 90-year-aged collage artist Varujan Boghosian,who will…
Source: sevendaysvt.com