Barn Door Gallery
NCFA’s dedicated art gallery at 33 Hawley
February 2025
Headspace
February 5 - February 28
Opening Reception on Arts Night Out
HeadSpace is an immersive installation of over one hundred large scale, mixed-media, dimensional illustrations. These “heads” are made of recycled cardboard, paint, hot glue, crafting scraps and trash! This space is meant to be a reminder of just how good it feels to make art for yourself and what it really means to share that feeling with others.
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Connor ORourke (he/they) is a line cook for money and an artist for fun! Their work is often cartoonish and silly but considerate in a way that makes you at least hope there’s more to it than bold lines and bright colors. They use recycled materials as well as traditional illustration methods to create an uncanny variety of tangible things.
March 2025
El Telar De Un Sueño
March 5 - March 28
Opening Reception on Arts Night Out
Pamela Acosta often finds inspiration in literature and nature. She draws on dreams of flourishing inner lives and creates visual narratives that explore a myriad of beings, quests, and the symbiotic relationships formed between these beings and their environments. Her work investigates how we construct, transform, and are transformed by our surroundings. Characterized by figurative narratives, her art embraces elements of visual poetry and magical realism. Currently, she is developing a body of work that focuses more closely on the poetics of flora, fauna, and the connections within the natural world.
"El Telar De Un Sueño" or “Looming Dreams” is a comprehensive exhibition featuring works created over the past decade. It includes a variety of mediums, such as drawing, painting, and analog collage. A key highlight of the exhibit is one of Acosta's most recent pieces, "Fuegos Fatuos," her first tapestry.
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Pamela Acosta (she/her) is a Mexican painter, illustrator, and occasional animator from the borderlands along the Rio Grande Valley, currently living and working in Northampton, Massachusetts. She received her BFA from the University of Texas at Rio Grande Valley in 2013 and pursued studies in traditional animation at the School of Visual Arts throughout 2014 and 2015.
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: May 2025
NCFA will put out a call for exhibit proposals each May.
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 shared 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. We try to keep this as low as possible to aid our mission.
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
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.
The curatorial committee will solicit feedback after the first year to help revise and improve practices.
(For the first cycle, the steering committee became the first curatorial committee. This group, who worked closely together in the fall of 2023, will choose the February through August 2024 exhibits, and will exhibit their own work in January 2024.)
Past Barn Door Gallery Exhibits
Barn Door Gallery
Past Split Level Gallery Exhibits
Barn Door Gallery
