Palette-ing around

A couple weekends ago on my drive to New Hampshire from Ohio, I passed through Bennington, Vermont and wondered what this apparent laggard from last year’s MooseFest was doing on Main Street. A closer look revealed that Mister Moose isn’t advertising last year’s community art event but this year’s equivalent: the Bennington PaletteFest 2006, a local incarnation of the statewide Palettes of Vermont.

Many cities and towns around the country have had community art events featuring colorful objects displayed on downtown streets and then auctioned for charity. Last year, I blogged Bennington’s painted moose and Findlay’s artful stars, and elsewhere Toledo, Ohio has had frogs; Columbus, Ohio has had corn; and Brandon, Vermont has had pigs. Not to be outdone, Boston will be hosting this summer a parade of cows, which raises the inevitable question, “Why cows?” Both Chicago and Houston have hosted herds of art cows, and both cities have justifiable reason to celebrate bovines with their respective histories of meat-packing and cowboys…but Boston? Had someone asked me to plan a community art event for Beantown, I would have chosen something other than cows to represent the Hub of the Universe: how about painted beans, or lobsters, or Make-Way-for-Ducklings-style quackers?

Although Boston’s been more than a bit derivative in their choice of art-walk material, Bennington yet again has proven to be both creative and original in its thematic choice. There’s nothing more quintessentially Vermont than a gangly, antlered quadruped…and there’s nothing more quintessentially arty than a simple painter’s palette. Like blank canvasses, palettes lend themselves to just about anything you want to put upon them, and their rounding curves and curious thumb-hole provide just enough whimsy to allow for even the craziest inspirations.

By now, art-cows have attained a status of “been there, done that”: what can even the most creative Boston artist do with the bovine form that hasn’t already been done by artists in Chicago and Houston? A bare palette, on the other hand, is blank, but it is not bland; instead, a bare palette provides a deceptively simple and evocatively empty expanse upon which an artist’s imagination can run wild.

Already impressed with the creative minds who envisioned the notion of palettes to parade on the heels of last year’s moose, I was even more amazed to learn about Vermont’s state-wide palette project. The large, professionally sponsored palettes on display in downtown Bennington are only part of a larger community art endeavor. Sponsored by the Vermont Arts Council, the Palettes of Vermont is distributing free maple palettes to Vermont artists and free paper palettes for Vermont school-children in an attempt to compile the world’s largest art exhibition with more than 30,000 Vermont artists contributing works to be displayed across the state’s 3,900 square miles. Both cows and moose are big, but the Palettes of Vermont promise to be huge: a community art event that not only encourages people to get out and mingle amongst artworks but also to contribute a work or two of their own.

And in case you’re wondering what a creative mind might do with a blank palette, check out these whimsical creations:

And in case this glimpse of some of the palettes of Vermont piques your acquisitive fancy, don’t think you can breeze into Bennington and help yourself to one: as this sign explains, at least some of these artworks are under 24-hour video surveillance, so you’ll have to paint your own palette if you want live with art on a permanent basis. As much as I loved last year’s moose, I’m just as enchanted with this year’s palettes…and who knows what the town of Bennington and the state of Vermont has up their artful sleeves for next year.