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The Net Works
May 10 - May 27
The Net Works. a multi-sensory installation built upon the narrative of Gloucester’s fishing community, opening May 10th and running through May 27th. The exhibition was envisioned by artist Erika Senft Miller during the pandemic and her consequent virtual residency with the Manship Artists Residency in 2020. The installation at 52 Commercial Street, is located in the heart of Gloucester’s working waterfront in a building that was a former seafood processing plant. The fishing net serves as a literal and metaphorical symbol in an immersive exhibit that includes scents, sounds, and tactile experiences, where visitors, like fish, move through a passage of netting. The Net Works honors Gloucester’s iconic working waterfront and its generations of fisherman with the net symbolizing the interconnectedness of man and sea and the community itself.
Multi-sensory artist Erika Senft Miller, who has coordinated other community-based, site-specific productions explains, “No matter where we are, we’re all connected. Whatever happens in the fishing community in Gloucester affects us all. The Net Works plunges us into this experience at a crucial moment in the life of America’s oldest fishing port.”
Senft Miller describes her vision for the exhibition as: “My team and I wanted to make something that you can touch, smell, hear, move through, and contemplate. We imagined an experience that entails walking through a full-scale fishing net and engaging with a mixed-media composition that incorporates the creaking of a boat, the voices of the fishermen, the sounds of blocks, lines and the sea, and scents of fishing life that have lingered for so many generations.”
Senft Miller’s team consists of the founder of Alice & the Magician Sensory Design, Aaron Wisniewski, to incorporate scent; media technologist and composer Miles Dean Ewell for sound as well as musician Neha Ewell; video by Menghan Wang; photographer Paul Cary Goldberg; glass blower Rich Arentzen; and Peter Waxdal of SenovvA, Inc., a designer and installer of interactive generative experiential features. Many members of the local fishing community contributed to this project, especially Gloucester native and former fisherman James Tarrantino, and commercial fisherman Captain Joseph Sanfilippo.
Research for the project was supported by Prometheus Circle of the Manship Artists Residency, and a learning grant from the New England Foundation for the Arts. The project has also received grants from The Vermont Arts Council, The Bruce J. Anderson Foundation, and Awesome Gloucester. Support and contributions were also provided by Burlington City Arts, The Cape Ann Museum, and Maritime Gloucester. Owner of Intershell, Monte Rome, also donated the exhibition space.
The exhibition will run from May 10th through Memorial Day, opening Friday, May 10 at 5:30 pm. The exhibit will be open to the public Thursday through Sunday, 4:30 – 7:30 pm and by appointment. Register for your ticketed-entry time at tinyurl/TheNetWorks24.
Access detailed press release here.
