The Hale Street Gang at The Great Hall starting May 20th

The exhibit highlights the work of a dozen 80 and 90 year-olds who have been meeting regularly since 2008 to write down their life stories. Photographer Jack Rowell’s 12 larger-than-life black-and-white portraits are the focal point of the exhibit.
http://www.vermontjournal.com/content/hale-street-gang-great-hall-starting-may-20th

The Hale Street Gang at The Great Hall Starting May 20th Submitted by admin on Tue, 05/13/2014 - 1:33pm SPRINGFIELD, VT—Memory and longevity are illuminated in The Hale Street Gang: Portraits in Writing, a multimedia exhibit opening at The Great Hall in Springfield, Vermont on May 20 through October 10, 2014. The exhibit highlights the work of a dozen 80 and 90 year-olds who have been meeting regularly since 2008 to write down their life stories. Photographer Jack Rowell’s 12 larger-than-life black-and-white portraits are the focal point of the exhibit. Rowell’s portraits capture the vitality of these amateur storytellers, whose reminiscences span the twentieth century. It is the emotional expressiveness of their faces that holds the eye, inviting the viewer to linger. The photographer became interested in the memoir-writing project when he attended a reading in Randolph in the fall of 2009. “These folks were telling stories about people and places I remembered from my own childhood,” says Rowell, who lives in neighboring Braintree, “places like the Randolph playground and Tunbridge, Vermont, where my grandmother lived.” “This project began with the writers’ stories,” says project leader Sara Tucker, who researches stories and writes for Condé Nast Traveler, and facilitates the weekly writers circle in Randolph, Vermont. “They wanted to preserve a few cherished memories for children and grandchildren.” The exchange of stories within the group proved stimulating, bringing long-buried memories to the fore. “The role of memory in aging is seldom discussed except in terms of loss. In writing about our lives, we focus on those memories that are sharp and clear and vivid. Often they stem from sensory and emotional experience, much of it based in childhood. Our project presents age as the creative and cultural ally of memory—the older the memory, the more valuable it is. The writers I work with witnessed events that happened before most of us were born.” Tucker, herself a 57-year-old baby boomer, observes that these children of the Great Depression show a marked tendency to emphasize positive experiences in their writing. “I don’t tell them what portions of their lives to write about; they decide that for themselves.” Painful experiences, when they do surface, are often handled with humor. “I’m not a psychologist, and I don’t know exactly what to make of this tendency to look on the bright side, but I suspect there’s something instructive going on, something the rest of us might learn from.” Complementing the Hale Street Show is the Cartoon Imagery and Interactive Sculpture as social and political commentary by Phil Godenschwager. Phillip Godenschwager grew up in a military family, moving often and traveling around the world for the first quarter of his life. Art, particularly drawing, was the one constant in his life. He graduated from Ohio University with a degree in Graphic Design and later received an MFA as a member of the inaugural class at Vermont College of Fine Arts. After settling in Vermont in the mid 70's Phil has spent the last 35 years working in illustration, packaging architectural drawing, sculpting and stained glass fabrication. While his eclectic and broad creative base informs his current art-making, his work has always been centered on social and political commentary. He lives in Randolph, Vermont. The Great Hall is located at 100 Hundred River Street, Springfield, Vermont. FOR THE MAY 24 EVENT USE PEARL STREET ENTRANCE ONLY. The Great Hall is located in the former Fellows Gear Shaper, now the Springfield Health Center. - See more at: http://www.vermontjournal.com/content/hale-street-gang-great-hall-starting-may-20th#sthash.qlioPX2R.dpuf