Dye & Bleach House Community Gallery
SUMMER HOURS:
Tuesday: 10:00am - 4:00pm
Thursday: 10:00am - 4:00pm
EXHIBIT:
"Portals"
by Allison Pillari
Allison Pillari
Allison Pillari is a lover of color and an appreciator of black & white. She loves visual and interior design, it has always been a theme in her hobbies and interests.
Growing up in a rural area, always drawing as a kid, she would fill sketchbooks and experiment in grade school art classes. Her love for abandoned buildings and derelict architecture bloomed as she would pass by the old buildings of New England on long car rides( exploring a small handful of them as well).
Before her current focus Pillari studied painting and drawing by attending Lyme Academy in Old Lyme, CT. Currently, she teaches lessons to artists looking to push their creativity. Her work is both a homage to buildings left to crumble and her way of processing complicated feelings like grief, vanity, and isolation.
Artist Statement
My work focuses on depicting structures that have been left. I have been interested in exploring abandoned places for as long as I can remember. These places stand out of view and just out of reach but we rarely admire them because of the social norm to demolish them. While they might be useless to us- you can imagine so much has taken place there. Even now, the place might be inhabited by small creatures and the structure continues to provide protection.
I view these buildings with a sense of poetry. I imagine what might have taken place before it became vacant. There is also a sense of longing I feel when I step into these paintings, a feeling of being unwanted but to be understood or admired. We tend to want to get rid of the evidence of a fallen home. These paintings are not just portraits of dilapidated homes, they tell stories.
The Dye & Bleach House Community Gallery represents a platform for local and regional visual artists to display their original works for public viewing at no cost to the artist. This unique collaborative model allows for artist participation in show design, installation, and supervision.
The Community Gallery derived its name from its historical roots. The physical space that houses the Gallery was once the ground floor of the Dye & Bleach House for the Gardiner Hall Jr Company from 1916 to 1954.
It was here where millions of yards of cotton thread were processed and colored before being spooled for domestic and international distribution.
Each show in the Dye & Bleach House Community Gallery will be on view for the duration of 4 to 8-weeks. Artists are chosen by EC-CHAP and curated to pair with the work of other artists or groups of artists whose work complements one another. We welcome submissions by students or community groups and encourage everyone to visit the gallery. We hope for this Community Gallery will bring awareness to the talent within our regional communities.
If you are interested in learning more about the Dye & Bleach House Gallery, and opportunities to display your work, please contact Gallery Director, Kathleen Zimmerman. Email: kathleenz@ec-chap.org. The Dye & Bleach House Community Gallery is located at The Mill Works, 156 River Road, Willington, CT.