Trajectory

"Above the Cloud," moku-hanga print by COSP exhibitor Seb Bak

New Hampshire, with its North Country mountains called "the Whites", is a special place. The "Quiet Corner" is the southwest part of the state, its largest community is the city of Keene where I have settled after decades of travel and relocation. Keene is known as "conveniently-inconvenient" for there is no interstate accessing our little city. It's where, finally, I feel at home.

When Matt and I envisioned our Calling on Special Places exhibit we hoped to highlight identity of place as a restorative for the effects of pandemic isolation. Zoom interactions and digital technologies have helped many of us to continue to function, but we've missed IRL (in real life) encounters, and our idea was that sense of place might make for a good focus for an exhibit we hoped might straddle re-adjustments to IRL experiences. We hatched "Calling on Special Places", an exhibit that would start online and evolve, through an online voting process, to a real in-the-flesh exhibit. At the time we had no idea that the first location for that exhibit would be an entire new gallery location for our business effort.

Fate intervened and The New Leaf Gallery at 11 Roxbury Street in Keene, NH, opens for real this Friday, June 4, oh wow! As we have been renovating these past six weeks (the space had been a former hair salon and its interior had become quite shabby) folks have dropped in for look-sees. We can tell people are aching to walk about and interact. My sense of it? With our new gallery location, nestled right there off Keene's Central Square, we might have not only found the right place but also the right time. I am super pleased and hopeful.

Taryn Fisher, 06.2.2021