Barn Door Gallery
NCFA’s dedicated art gallery at 33 Hawley
October 2025
Curiosities
Melissa McClung
October 8 - October 30
Opening Reception on Arts Night Out
Curiosities by Melissa McClung is an exhibit of collages, flipbooks, and moving images from the artist’s cabinet. Melissa made the work from 2020 - 2025, while she was otherwise occupied with teaching, animating for a feature documentary, resting, growing a human, laboring, breastfeeding, mothering, dreaming of her next film project, dreaming of a better world, walking in the woods, distance running, swimming in rivers and oceans, and connecting with creative friends.
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Melissa McClung (she/her) is a filmmaker, animator, and visual artist based in Hadley, MA. Melissa has above-the-line credits on films that have premiered at SXSW, CPH:DOX, Ann Arbor Film Festival, and Maryland Film Festival, among many others. Melissa began making collages during the pandemic while listening to Agatha Christie audiobooks. In her multidisciplinary work, she often finds herself gravitating towards themes of childhood, wonder, women/mothers, and nature, with imaginative retro-scifi motifs. She makes work in New England, solo and with regional collaborators.
In addition to her creative work, Melissa co-owns Ghost Hit Recording Studio in West Springfield with her husband, audio engineer Andrew Oedel. Melissa earned her MFA in Film from Vermont College of Fine Arts and her BA from Vassar College. Melissa is the recipient of Vassar’s 2024 W.K. Rose Fellowship. She has taught in the Department of Art at UMass Amherst, and she is currently a Professor of the Practice in the Film, Media, and Communications Department at Wheaton College in Norton, MA.
October Split Level Gallery 2025
Taking Care: Parenthood in a Political Climate
curated by Dara Herman Zierlein
October 3 - October 30
Opening Reception on Arts Night Out
The exhibition will forego the vernacular imagery of parenthood. It features an all-gender, inclusive group of artists who are parents, caregivers, or adult children caring for their own parents, partners, or loved ones during illness. As binary gender roles in American families evolve, these changes impact culture and are increasingly politicized. This exhibition highlights diverse artists who focus on modern perspectives of parenthood and caregiving. Each artist will provide a short statement to accompany their work.
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Dara Herman Zierlein was born in Brooklyn, NY and was raised in Manhattan. She is a graduate of Pratt Institute with a BFA in Sculpture and she earned a Master's Degree in Art Education from Teachers College, Columbia University. Dara currently lives in Western Massachusetts with her family working as a political illustrator. Dara’s paintings, illustrations and posters have been exhibited internationally. Her art is published in among others, Mom Egg Review, Resist Grab Back, The Earth Issue, Demeter Press, Lunch Ticket, and she is a contributor for OppArt in The Nation magazine.
Dara has received several grants to curate group exhibitions and create art programs for the community on themes such as equal rights, women's rights, parenthood and the climate crisis. Dara's most recent grant is the ArtEZ Grant from the Northampton Arts Council for an exhibition called "Parenthood in a Political Climate". She is a recipient of the Mass Cultural Council's Cultural Sector Recovery Grants 2022 and a recipient for the NY Rauschenberg Artists Grant 2023.
Dara is the author of her first children’s book ‘Don’t Eat the Plastic’, a playful tale of the consequences of plastic pollution on our environment published February 2021 with Olympi Publishers in London. She was celebrated this past April with a 40th Year Art Retrospective Exhibition at Springfield Tech Community College where she exhibited over a hundred and fifty illustrations.
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Having a child radicalized me in unexpected ways. Looking into my newborn infant’s face was a portal to incomprehensible mysteries of the universe, opening my heart to a kind of love I didn’t know was possible. All the usual mushy new mom stuff applied to my situation. New motherhood also exposed me to some of the failings of our societal system here in the U.S. Having to get a new job and leave my tiny infant in the care of others for most of the day broke my heart-and pissed me off. Why was it not possible to stay home with my baby? Why are so many parents forced to work multiple jobs with only a scant few weeks-if we’re lucky and/or privileged-for bonding and infant care? Why are the workers who care for some of society’s most precious and vulnerable members of our families-day care workers, preschool teachers, nursing home workers-paid the least? I learned to start asking these questions when I became a mom, and from then the focus of my work shifted from a pretty self-centered place to a more outward-facing practice. The pages in this show are from my graphic memoir, titled, Clutter: A Scatterbrained Sexual Assault Memoir (Fieldmouse Press, 2022). I share some of the painful stuff-or just human stuff-that has happened to me in hopes of starting conversations about things we need to talk about more openly.
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The three pieces exhibited in this show are part of a series titled The Dance of Dementia. It is about my eight-year journey as caregiver for my husband, who bravely struggled with Parkinson’s Disease and Parkinson’s Disease dementia as a result of massive exposure to Agent Orange when he was drafted in Vietnam. For the first five of those eight years I took care of my mother as well. She had both Vascular Dementia and Alzheimer’s Disease. The collection is also about their own personal journeys, as they danced between a distant light that periodically still glowed in their eyes and the demoralizing decline of both their cognitive and physical abilities. My mother’s glow was just a distant memory after she passed in December of 2020, my husband’s quickly dimmed to a filmy grey, masking the glory of all he once was, until he too passed away in October of 2022.
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I am Dara Herman-Zierlein, the curator of the exhibit, Taking Care: Parenthood in a Political Climate. As a political artist I am rigorously using my illustrations to advocate awareness in the world. I picked these pieces for the exhibition as inspiration of hope for humanity in dark times, uplifting our shared commonality in hopes to better understand one another.
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''I know that within the depth of my soul, the light of creativity prevails and orchestrates a symphony to the rhythm of our hearts. My strong interest in world travel, and my love for the environment compelled me to paint the story of climate change. My travels throughout the world have granted me a firsthand view of the melting glaciers and deforestation, which has served to underscore the importance of my work." -Ed Moret
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Motherhood is a mystery which is primal to our identity as a species, and central to our concept of the divine. It carries a thick overlay of sentimentality which must be stripped away to understand parenting as both human and divine. These images are part of a series of paintings representing the petals of a flower. The flower is meant to enclose a human body in the gentle and comforting embrace of the Mother. Each of the petals represents an aspect of the feminine divine, as experienced in my dreams. The purpose of the piece is to reclaim from the unconscious those aspects of spiritual life which have been forgotten, repressed, appropriated, or distorted due to misogyny.
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Jon Schluenz is a multimedia artist, architect, and builder currently residing in Northampton. Nature boy is an assemblage of inherited objects received after the illness and passing of his father. It is an attempt to acknowledge the quiet caregiver, and transfigure the mess of grief and the weight of a handed-down history.
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“Single mother and Sun” (a portrait of me and my mother) speaks to the journey, of raising a young boy with no father figure in a male dominated environment and society, how softness in the spirit of a child hardens over the years, dealing with the oppression of racism, classism, and a school system with no room for alternative learners. For young black men, needless to say, the political climate parallel with the state of being black in America can produce some of the most beautiful souls that shape the very fabric and foundations of our society on a daily basis.
IG@building_121
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In my role as a care-taker and parent I want to enjoy, preserve, instill and teach a set of core values that former US president Franklin D. Roosevelt called “The Four Freedoms”: Freedom of Speech, Freedom to Worship, Freedom from Want and Freedom form Fear, famously illustrated by Norman Rockwell. However as it is, these core values don’t seem to hold anymore in the face of a huge rise in antisemitic and religiously motivated crime, normalized hate speech, suppression of dissent, children suffering homelessness and food insecurity among the wealth right here in the Conneticut River Valley, people being disappeared by fully masked ICE agents and sent to foreign prisons or stateside concentration camps without due process, the US national guard and US army patrolling American cities, pointing their guns at protesting American citizens. I do my parenting, my teaching, and my taking care with the caveat that these freedoms will have to have to be fought for and claimed all over again.
Sincerely,
Peter O Zierlein
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Her art, both process and result, is a mining of observation. It is an exploration of symbol, color, form, shape, ideas She is an arbiter of spontaneity and control, always reaching for the edges of plasticity, playing at line, color and form. Using and combining mediums, she achieves a tactility and fluidity, layering between depth and two-dimensionality. In her visual art she will often start a curious mix of in and out that draws forth a deeper observation of the picture plane. From painting, monotype and collage to stained glass and poetry, her range of mediums portrays a path of exploration for both artist and observer. In the art displayed here, she reminds us of the rising waters of climate change. Children peek from what seems a safe distance as if looking into an aquarium, but on closer observation. we see that the waters are swirling out of control and fish are caught upside down in the current of climate change.
ROSALIND BRENNER-Painter, Poet, Stained Glass Artist
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I selected these two paintings for the show because they represent my journey as a caregiver. I am a teaching artist as well and find that my once abundant patience and energy in the classroom is a challenge to keep up most likely because of the energy I need as a caregiver. The balance of self care and responsibility is always in flux and I often am wondering about the future ahead. Smothered was painted sometime during the pandemic when I began my journey as a caregiver. The feeling of being inside the earth with a starless sky above, yet at rest, represents the numbness when receiving life-changing news. Buoyant reflects the feeling of bobbing in the waters of the unknown future ahead. This is a work that is part of an ongoing ocean series, capturing the depth of uncertainty.
IG@rco.art
November 2025
Tributary
Cassidy Clark
November 5 - November 22
Opening Reception on Arts Night Out
Probably somewhere between your outer ear and the location of the voice in your head as you read this is a chamber of fluid in your inner ear known as endolymph. That liquid is crucial for your sensations of hearing, balance, and orientation. It gives you an indescribable sensation of which way is up. It tells you whether you are upright, laying on the ground, or swimming in the ocean. If the world turned upside down, you’d be the first to know.
Tributary is my exploration of stillness, turbulence, and the tension that photography creates between the two. The spark for this project was Jeff Wall’s essay “Photography and Liquid Intelligence,” which explores how liquids used to create images are abstractly reflected in photography’s ability to capture complex, organic forms, such as liquid itself. In my work, this concept extends outward from the visual to the physical, represented not just in images but in the unique forms their prints take.
As such, Tributary has its own liquid origin, in the milk-white melted silver gelatin, or home-brewed blood-red bleach-fix bath sloshing nearly silently in its wide, shallow tray. Turbulence itself is expressed in the uncontrollable variables in my work. The steel subsurface of geography I, rusted by rainfall, acid etched, and stained with steel bluing, is one such example.
My goal is to explore this liquid turbulence through its contrasting and complimentary form, stillness. The species of stillness on display here range from the undisturbed morning air in geography II to the balanced tension of w/r/t. The moments rest between inhale and exhale. But what looks like a placid surface has a pulse underneath, waiting for the stillness to break. Probably somewhere between your outer ear and the location of the voice in your head as you read this is a chamber of fluid in your inner ear known as endolymph. That liquid is crucial for your sensations of hearing, balance, and orientation. It gives you an indescribable sensation of which way is up. It tells you whether you are upright, laying on the ground, or swimming in the ocean. If the world turned upside down, you’d be the first to know.
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Cassidy Clark (she/her) is an artist and photographer looking at circumstantial artifacts of images, such as (finger)prints. For her, the key to understanding images is to look around them at what isn't usually visible. Her work is usually based in portraiture and story, with an interest in how gaze and touch can be carried through physical media. More recently, Cassidy has been working to describe the various architectures of visual and visualized data that moderate the 21st century.
IG@carsicksadly
November Split Level Gallery 2025
Noho Art Club: A Third Space Project
curated by Paige Quinn-Vasic
November 5 - November 22
Opening Reception on Arts Night Out
After 2 1/2 years, Noho Art Club is a hidden gem, one that opens up space and community to artists in any stage of their creative journey. Don't be fooled by our casual and silly nature. It is exactly this that grows our roots deep into the life of this town.
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Paige (she/her) is an arts educator, community builder, and artist of whimsy who cannot pick just one hobby. Much of her inspiration comes from color harmonies, geometry in nature, and cats. Her art tends to reflect her ever-loving affair with ecology and the natural world while also experimenting with alternative materials and techniques. She's always seeking art processes with the element of surprise, or a trick expertly pulled off. She hopes to leave a bit of mystery in our midst.
IG@Paigesquinn
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Ananya (she/her) is a scientist, dancer, and artist who tries to find answers everywhere. She is inquisitive about the world and tries to understand it by questioning and exploring concepts through science, art, and dance. Her art is often a colorful concoction of these ideas, and her aim is to share these ideas with people who will revel in them.
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Arielle (she/they) is an Illustrator and Designer based in New England. Their work explores the intersection of magic and nature through whimsical portrayals of plants and animals. When they’re not painting, they can be found searching for fairies with their cat.
IG @arielle.szt
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Chelsea Counsell (she/her) is a writer, illustrator, and musician currently busting her butt for an MFA in Creative Writing for Children. Most of the time, her art skews cute, and her writing is aimed at middle grade audiences, but sometimes she likes to make spooky things. Her current work in progress, which you can see here, is a cozy fantasy anthology called The Cat Survives, which she plans on funding through Kickstarter.
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Chelsea Martel-White (she/they) started furiously into painting in plein air when the pandemic hit, and they've been at it ever since. They first took inspiration from James Gurney's YouTube channel, applying lessons from him and others when painting corners of their beloved Massachusetts. Following in the footsteps of the impressionists, they seek to learn how to transport a viewer with the fleeting glints of light and shadow that can make an ordinary corner of town feel alive, even when the brushstrokes show.
IG@barnlionart
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Ethan (he/him) is from Nashville, Tennessee and now currently resides in Northampton, Massachusetts
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Jacob (he/him) is an unlikely gem of a person whose mind is always on, for better or for worse. His art is made to pull people in using vivid color schemes—often involving food— and make them think using philosophical imagery and pen strokes that choose whether they care about the piece or not.
IG@belabedj.art
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James (he/him) began making marker portraits while decorating his classroom as a public school teacher. These ‘cheap’ materials bleach quickly with time in hot fluorescent light, draining both legibility and value from the work. Black lines go green, color washes out, and something that seemed so permanent when you marked it is now faded, pale.
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Jennifer (she/her) lives in Northampton with her husband and son. She started knitting in college, but it became a go to craft in 2020. Recently, she has been working on learning more colorwork techniques and on making garments.
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Julia Meslener (She/Her) is a photo editor and producer who turns to painting to unwind after long hours at the computer. Her paintings are all about nature and color; trying to capture that feeling of being outside, as well as the small details she notices while spending time outdoors. She now uses her own photographs as inspiration, turning the moments she captures on her camera into vibrant, expressive paintings that reflect how she sees the natural world.
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Julia Ryan (She/Her) is a multimedia artist with a preference for digital art, charcoal, and pastels. The majority of her work is in greyscale and she enjoys creating moody and whimsical pieces. She has been making art for over 15 years and loves experimenting with mediums.
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Julie (she/her) is a school psychologist and artist who makes gentle, painterly things for people who feel everything deeply — like hand-lettered reminders, wildflower prints, and paper collages for the hard days. Her work is a mix of watercolor, gouache, and torn paper that reflects her deep appreciation to mother nature and hope for the future.
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Kira (she/her) is a visual artist whose practice explores themes of identity, memory, and belonging. A process-oriented artist, she uses art to reexamine and work through memories, creating dream-like works that de-fragment past experiences and transform them into something new. Guided by curiosity and intuition, she approaches artistic practice as a meditative act and an opportunity to look inward.
IG@kira_blackberry -
Leah (she/her) is an artist who often wrestles with the nearly impossible task of impressing herself. With a focus on portraiture, she works with graphite, charcoal, and colored pencil to capture realistic facial features, and also enjoys drawing flowers and plants. After almost a decade of semi-consistent practice, Leah hopes to expand her style and create work that embraces uncertainty over perfection.
IG@leah.hask.art -
Mike (he/him) is a complete dilettante when it comes to art. He likes to try new mediums and materials, in an ongoing effort to capture some semblance of the world around him.
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Naomi (she/her) creates art that calms the mind and reminds us it is okay to rest. She loves the saplings on her porch, and watching the squirrels chase each other through the trees. Naomi relaxes with a slow, quiet tea ceremony on rainy days.
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Nicole (she/her) is a multi-passionate artist, ranging in fiber arts, costume/clothing construction, performing arts, photography, and more. She enjoys taking inspiration from history, as with these pieces created for the club's show. Her small business, Piccolo Stitchworks, offers doll clothing and patterns online and at local artisan market events.
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Saleem (he/him) is a freelance designer and retro geek who has recently rediscovered a passion for professional wrestling. He is exploring new techniques and experimenting with materials while still developing his signature artistic style. His work reflects his interests and ongoing journey as an artist.
IG@saleemnooralidesigns -
Syd (she/her) is a lover of creativity; she has done art as a hobby for years on and off. They hope art can become part of a career, one day in the future.
Bluesky@skthesomething.bsky.social -
Tim (he/him) is a tabletop game enthusiast turned painter, combining his love for storytelling with a tendency for tedious, detail-oriented work through the hobby of painting miniatures. Whether gritty realism or playful fantasy, Tim enjoys using bold color harmonies to bring the characters of the figures to life.
Main Street Banner Project 2025
Main Street Banner Project 2025
Jul 3 - TBD
The results are in! The inaugural Main Street Banner Project call has concluded, and finalists have been selected by a jury dedicated to showcasing a diverse array of works across various mediums and experiences. Fifty images were chosen for display on 25 vibrant banners along Main Street in Northampton this summer. This project serves as a fundraiser for the Barn Door Gallery at 33 Hawley, helping us fulfill our mission of supporting the local creative community.
A. L. R. Keaton
Allie Litera
Andrea Holland
Ann Cloutier
Arch MacInnes
Bridie Wolejko
Carolina Castro
Chang Yu
Charles Miller
Cheri Cross
Christine Mirabal
Cindy lutz kornet
David Andrews
Dean McKeever
Debra Courage
Debra Hoyle
Gail Fitzpatrick
Haley Jenner
Iris Dela
Jankaleishka Burgos Cruz
Jay Smith
Jennifer Ablard
Jennifer Lotstein
Jesse Merrick
Jill M Strait
Jodi Hoover
Julia McGlew
Kim Condon
Kit Pedraza
Laura Curran
Lauryn Winiarski
Linda Post
Mariana Cicerchia
Marlene Rye
Mary Witt
Meadow Meredith
Melissa Stratton Pandina
Natalie Goodale
Nona Hatay
Paige Quinn-Vasic
Pamela Marino
Ray Brod
Rebecca Herskovitz
Richard Swiatlowski
Robert Markey
Rosetta Marantz Cohen
Ruth LaGue
S.T. Gately
Savannah Grant
Will Johnston-Rutledge
The Main Street Banner Project is made possible through the generous support and vision of Craig Stevens of LandScapes Inc., a dedicated design/build landscape company working in Western Mass for the past 25 years. Craig has been a steadfast supporter of NCFA and our community, working with local residents and recovery clients to build sustainable landscaping projects. His contributions also include the collaboration with colleagues who donated the large River Birch downtown pots, support for Habitat for Humanity and Hairston Recovery House, and organizing community events throughout Northampton, including a free movie night at the Academy.
Financial support for the Main Street Banner Project is being provided by LandScapes and Paradise Copies, which provides full-service printing and design solutions for our community.
The Barn Door Gallery Mission and Values
The art gallery that the Northampton Center for the Arts (NCFA) stewards at 33 Hawley is a space which supports NCFA’s mission to foster community connections through the arts. The Barn Door Gallery provides dedicated space to cultivate constantly evolving and transformative conversations between and among artists and viewers. In managing this community resource, NCFA uses the following intentions as a guide:
To create an art space that is accessible and inclusive, with transparent criteria, that welcomes a wide variety of artists and art mediums
To steward the art gallery in such a way that it is available to as many artists and community members as possible
To provide space to learn more about how people with varying identities express themselves through art
To maintain a rotating curatorial committee of NCFA staff and board and community members that makes recommendations on curatorial decisions
To make financially sound decisions that will enable us to continue to provide opportunities for our community to experience the arts for years to come
Application Process for Exhibits
Next CALL FOR PROPOSALS: June 2026
NCFA will put out a call for exhibit proposals each June.
A new curatorial committee will meet each July to make decisions about the following year’s exhibits. More here!
Committee members will be asked to review images independently before coming together.
Applicants will be notified by early August.
Exhibit proposals may include:
individual shows
guest curation or group exhibits
submissions for the group show for emerging artists
all types of visual art, including 2D and 3D work
Please note that all artwork submitted must be available for sale (exceptions may apply), and NCFA retains a 20% commission on all artwork sold. NCFA will host an opening reception in coordination with Arts Night Out (the second Friday of the month) and ask that the selected artists participate in a facilitated artist talk.
The Barn Door Gallery is approximately 20’ x 26’ and has about 70-80 linear feet of wall space (depending on the kind of art being displayed). It has five pedestals, a movable wall, and tables may also be available for 3D work.
Submission Form for Solo Exhibits
Submission Form for Guest Curated and Small Group Exhibits
Submission Form for Emerging Artist Showcase
2026 SUBMISSIONS ARE DUE BY JUNE 30TH AT MIDNIGHT! (Early submissions are highly recommended to ease stress and ensure that materials are successfully submitted on time and according to the guidelines.)
NCFA’s Commitment to Representation
As the leaders of a small, local arts organization, we know the power of the arts to help us process, contextualize, and speak out. In good times and bad, we know the beauty of witnessing works of art coming into being. We also know the challenges of supporting the arts in the context of infrastructure impacted by racism, classism, gentrification, unnamed power dynamics, colonialism, elitism, and gatekeeping that is too often performed in the name of curation. At the Center, we believe that arts administration and curation offer an opportunity for care, inclusion, and challenging the status quo. As such, we are committed to an ongoing practice of dismantling patterns of white supremacy culture in ourselves and our organization. (From NCFA’s Antiracism and the Arts page)
Our goals for representation in the Barn Door Art Gallery over the first three years:
NCFA is committed to supporting artists who hold historically marginalized identities. Half of exhibiting artists will identify as BIPoC. In addition, half of all exhibitors will identify as LGBTQIA+ artists. (These identities may intersect.) Proposals for identity themed exhibits are encouraged.
NCFA is committed to supporting emerging artists. One exhibit per year will be a group show dedicated to emerging artists, with some prioritization for those who have never exhibited work in a gallery before.
NCFA is committed to supporting local artists. As such, the curatorial committee will prioritize artists both within a 30 mile radius of the Center, and will consider artists from farther away (up to 60 miles) as well as those with ties to the area.
NCFA is committed to supporting and welcoming low income and new/emerging artists, and to taking steps to mitigate any tendency for artists to feel intimidated. We offer resources such as a commitment to no artist application fees, providing refreshments for artists’ receptions, and marketing support (website, social media, email, newsblast). We are working towards securing discounts for printing and framing at specific local businesses, providing basic hardware for hanging as well as resources for artists regarding the hanging and presenting of work. The parameters for portfolio submissions and formatting will be as flexible as is feasible.
NCFA is committed to listening to and engaging with community members, and will continue to prioritize multiple mechanisms for feedback.
The Curatorial Committee
Any community member may apply to be on a curatorial committee.
The application form is open and applications are accepted on a rolling basis.
Applicants will be contacted in the spring of each year to join that year’s committee.
Applicants will remain on the list unless they ask to be removed.
All eligible applicants will eventually be invited to serve on the committee.
NCFA will strive for each committee to have the same representation as our exhibiting artists: half BIPOC, half LGBTQIA+, and a mix of emerging and experienced artists. We understand these identities may intersect.
Each curatorial committee has the option to curate a group show for the January exhibit, either with their own art or an artist they would like to amplify.
In addition, the gallery curatorial committee will be guided by a three-year vision which will ensure that the mission and values established initially are consistently incorporated into the operation of the space.
Past Barn Door Gallery Exhibits
Barn Door Gallery
Past Split Level Gallery Exhibits
Barn Door Gallery
