Art Gallery
About
RVCC Projects is a gallery and project space that serves as a platform for art exhibitions, special projects and public programs which complement RVCC’s curriculum, foster connections, and enrich the cultural landscape of the community. The gallery hosts three exhibitions per year, highlighting the artistic achievements of artists working across media, with a special emphasis on critically engaged, rigorous art from the region.
History
In Fall 2022, President Alfred Williams assembled a taskforce comprised of RVCC employees to evaluate the college’s underutilized spaces and make recommendations as to how these spaces might be reimagined to better support students. Through walkthroughs, conversations with college leadership, and extensive research into the value of arts programming, it was determined that converting the college’s reception area (formerly known as the “One Stop”) to a gallery space would enhance the overall college experience for students, support a culture of belonging, and contribute to the vitality of the neighborhood and the community.
Stay in Touch
If you’d like updates about shows and events, click the button below to join our mailing list.
Location
River Valley Community College Claremont Campus – Main Entrance 1 College Place Claremont, NH 03743
Hours
Monday – Friday: 9:00am – 4:00pm
Current Exhibit
Summer Group Show
June 16 - September 19, 2025
RVCC Projects is excited to host its second open-call exhibit for students, community members, and artists living or working in the Sugar River and Upper Valley regions of New Hampshire and Vermont. The open call model aligns with the college’s mission of access and inclusivity and creates a space in which emerging and underrepresented artists can exhibit their work alongside established working artists. The goal of this exhibit is to celebrate the diverse artistry of our region.
In the spirit of community and collaboration, artists with diverse backgrounds and experience levels unite in a visual celebration of color, texture, and form. A variety of media are on view including quilting, photography, ceramics, oil painting, drawing and printmaking. This rich selection creates a dynamic exhibit that explores subject matter from the figure to the landscape to abstraction.
Exhibiting Artists
Seth Brooks
Joe Carton
Linda Diak
Tammi Defelice
Christine Hawkins
Georgia Kahn
Ernie Lange
Nick Paradis
Ian Stacey
Finn Williamson
Lilly Wolfinger
Past Exhibits
Zachary DeWitt: A Brief Reprieve
March 4-June 6, 2025
Image: Zachary DeWitt, the riverbank ii, acrylic on paper, 2024
RVCC Projects is pleased to present “A Brief Reprieve,” a selection of recent acrylic on paper paintings by Goffstown-based artists Zachary DeWitt. DeWitt thinks of his process as visual journaling in which he explores memories both personal and collective. Landscapes recalled from early childhood emerge with heighted color and expressive brushwork–the scenes are rendered both mysterious yet familiar through the mediation of memory and paint.
Recognizable images appear amidst seemingly abstract expanses of energetic brushwork creating a dynamic tension between image and surface. Throughout his work, DeWitt draws upon his career as a mental health counselor as a source of inspiration. The title of the exhibit is borrowed from one of the paintings in the exhibit and suggests how art can offer both the artist and the viewer a moment of quiet contemplation, a pause–a brief reprieve—from the unpredictability and challenges of everyday life.
The practice of journaling—whether linguistic or visual—can be a helpful tool in processing feelings and emotions. This exhibit intends to draw the viewer’s attention to art’s capacity to provide solace, comfort and joy. As discussed in his artist statement, Dewitt’s work is intended to “hold space for and allow viewers to reflect on their own senses of home, nature, and nostalgia.”
A Sense of Place: Community Art Show
October 14, 2024 – January 31, 2025
Hours: M-F, 9am-4pm
To compliment the Smithsonian’s Crossroads exhibit in RVCC’s library, RVCC Projects is hosting an open-call exhibit for community members.
A Sense of Place is a visual essay that tells the story of a community in transition. In this exhibit, community members were invited to submit art, objects and reflections that respond in some way to these questions: What does “rural America” mean? How is your community unique? What aspect of your community are you most proud of? What do you think needs to change? The Claremont Makerspace and Claremont Opera House will present a series of historic photographs that show the evolution of these two creative pillars of the community. For a full calendar of public events, visit this link: www.nhhumanities.org/programs
Participants Include:
Jo Ann Clifford
Linda Diak
Shawna Gibbs
Christine Hawkins
Cindy Heath
Claremont Opera House
Lauren Hurlburt
Claremont Makerspace
Jennifer Meade of Sepia Sisters Photography
Crossroads: Change in Rural America is part of Museum on Main Street, a collaboration between the Smithsonian Institution and New Hampshire Humanities. Support for Museum on Main Street has been provided by the United States Congress.
Biological Realms
May 20 – August 16, 2024
Opening reception Wednesday, June 5, 12-1pm
Artists:
Angie Follensbee-Hall
Jon Krasner
Kerry St. Laurent
Heather Stearns
From botanical drawings to sculpture made from fungi, for centuries artists have looked to the biological realm for inspiration and materials. Mutualism is a term used in biology to describe a relationship between two living organisms that both benefit from one another. In an abstract sense, the reciprocity between art and nature can be interpreted as a kind of mutualism. The four contemporary artists in this exhibition each demonstrate how their relationship to nature has shaped their art practice.
Angie Follensbee-Hall uses paper pulp and found materials to create richly textured sculptures that reference botanical forms. Jon Krasner works across media to interrogate natural systems and translates them in art that celebrates the complexity of nature and biology. Kerry St. Laurent takes microbiology as her springboard, often incorporating cellular structures and other microscopic elements as a point of departure for her multi-media work. Heather Stearns explores the human form in found-object assemblages that reference the body’s respiratory system. Each artist in their own way embraces the natural world as a source of inspiration, and in doing so, reminds the viewer of the preciousness of natural resources, the fragility of life and the wonders and joy of discovery.
Artist's Statement: Emmett Donlon holds a BFA from Carnegie Mellon University. His work mostly explores the intersections between personal and shared histories, gathering references from pop culture, historical archives, and personal collections. The absurdity of life and death often consumes his time.
Emmett Donlon: Recent Work
January 16 through May 17, 2024
Opening Reception: Wednesday, January 24, 2024 (free and open to the public)
RVCC Projects is pleased to announce a solo exhibition by Manchester-based artist Emmett Donlon (b. 1997). Donlon’s artistic practice includes painting, video, multimedia and fiber art, and through his work he explores themes of queer identity, politics, celebrity, and mortality. In his paintings, Donlon frequently appropriates images from newspapers and magazines and uses them as the basis of his figurative work. At times, the characters he chooses take on subtle distortions and exaggerated features that occur as the result of translating the photographic image into its painted counterpart.
Shifts in perspective and proportion sometimes add a feeling of fragility to the portraits or heighten their mystery. Donlon’s lushly painted surfaces prompt the viewer to look more closely at the formal qualities of the painting like brushstroke, color, and paint application. The initial flash of recognition one might experience in a portrait of Judy Garland, Pat Nixon or Mia Farrow gives way to a sense of uncanniness that makes Donlon’s work resonate whether you are familiar with the subject in the painting or not.
Also on view is a selection of landscapes done on-site, from life. Like the portraits, there’s a familiarity inherent to these locales: a crisp pool of water, a field, a forest glen. However, the swiftness of brushstroke and fleeting quality of the scenes imparts an abstract element to the images: they evince the rift between the thing itself and its re-presentation. This sense of immediacy and familiarity link these two distinct, yet interconnected series.
