COLONIE — The Shaker Heritage Society has taken a vacant building and transformed its eastern exterior with murals to demonstrate the divinely inspired work of Shaker women in the 19th century.
The 18 panels created by artist Phoebe Rotter are fitted into the windows of the eastern side of the 1858 Shaker Washhouse at the nation’s first Shaker settlement turning it into a living canvas.
“The imagery is drawn from Shaker handworks, largely tools, women’s hands working. There are also other objects and images related to Shaker gift drawings,” Johanna Batman, executive director of the Shaker Heritage Society, said.
The Shaker gift drawings are considered to be a remarkable American folk art created almost exclusively by women.
“They didn’t permit art or anything ornamental. They were divinely inspired. Women received their inspiration that they called the gifts. They were gifted and exchanged,” Batman said.
Assemblyman Phil Steck, D-Colonie, obtained $25,000 that was used to underwrite the mural project and to publish a new edition of “Recapturing Wisdom’s Valley: The Watervliet Shaker Heritage, 1775-1975” by Dorothy M. Filley, which will be available for free later this summer on the society website shakerheritage.org.
Describing the view of Rotter’s murals, Batman said, “I find contemporary relevance in Shaker history, values and culture writ large across the building. I’m thrilled by it. It’s beautiful.”
“My hope is to bridge the careful, effortful precision of Shaker craft with my own contemporary practice, which centers meticulous hand-drawn installation,” Rotter said of the mural project.
“My hands show up in the work in both process and product, painted alongside the hands of Shaker women who labored at the Watervliet Washhouse. This mural occupies a space between nature and a built environment, borrowing images…
Read the full article here