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ArtsWorcester College Show looks different this year

Nicole Nelson

Special to Worcester Magazine USA TODAY NETWORK

ArtsWorcester’s Annual College Show looks a little different than in its previous 16 years. The 17th edition of this juried exhibition — for which students of any major attending a Worcester-area college can submit works in a wide range of artistic media — is entirely virtual and viewable online anywhere, anytime.

The show opened Jan. 28 and will not be closing any time soon.

Aprile Gallant, associate director of curatorial affairs and senior curator of prints, drawings, and photographs at the Smith College Museum of Art, served as this year’s juror. She selected 51 works by 44 artists from nearly 180 submissions.

“I had actually never heard of ArtsWorcester before and was really happy to learn about the organization,” explains Gallant, who chose three winners and awarded two honorable mentions.

“It was hard to pick winners,” Gallant admits. “And it’s hard choosing art when there are so many different mediums. I tried to be conscious of that and make sure I was including a range of mediums in my selection.”

Alice Dillon of ArtsWorcester, who helped prepare the exhibition, points to the continuing progress of the student artists.

“Every year the art is getting better, and we’re seeing people try new skills. One thing that’s good about the exhibition being online is that artists can include photos showcasing their process,” Dillon says.

Each of the artworks also appears alongside a written statement by the creator, another advantage of an event built on Web pages.

Of course, this year’s winter tradition for ArtsWorcester and the surrounding college community was anything but traditional. Gone was the festive and crowded opening night, with student artists discussing their works with visitors and each other, and even making a sale or two.

Gallant also missed the hands-on experience.

“They asked about a year in advance; before COVID. I was looking forward to seeing the works in person and I was sad that I wasn’t able to,” she said. “I view pieces of art as individual objects, and it’s not the same viewing them through a (computer) screen.”

One of three top winners, Tayla Cormier, a Clark University senior and biology major, included two in-progress photos with her artist statement. “My goal as an artist is to communicate, through many different types of mediums, the beauty of what it means to be human,” Cormier writes.

Cormier’s winning mixed-media piece, “It’s Just a Skull,” depicts musician Frank Ocean with lyrics from his song “White Ferrari.” The piece is both simple and immersive, with Ocean shown in half color and half grayscale combined with a collaged landscape dripping onto the white background. Ocean has “it’s just a skull” written on the palm of his hand.

“Collage is new to me recently. I took a nature art class and we made different types of stained paper. One was acorn paper. I decided I’d use it someday, and I did with this piece. I wanted it to be experimental,” Cormier says.

Winner Yekaterina Martin, a senior studio art major at the College of the Holy Cross, did not include an artist statement with her piece and let the work speak for itself. The asymmetrical composition of woven papers with a dangling rainbow of yarn in “Woven” has a deeply personal meaning that can be uncovered by looking closely at the piece, she pointed out.

Martin explains that the papers she used to create this work are her own religious documents. “I classify my art as ex-Mormon art. I like making art about being raised in the Mormon religion and bringing issues up to the surface. This is an LGBTQ+ piece,” Martin says. “I crossed out every he/his/him in my patriarchal blessing when I was 16 and changed it to more gender-neutral language and included photocopies of it.”

Another winner, Dana Mendes, a Secondary Education in Visual Arts major at Assumption University who grad-

“It’s Just a Skull” by Tayla Cormier of Clark University. ARTSWORCESTER “Corona Nightmare” digital art by Assumption University junior Nicholas Sposato.

ARTSWORCESTER

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uated in 2020, also documented a personal journey. Mendes has participated in the last three college shows.

“I do mostly self-portraits. I’m like Frida Kahlo,” she says, referring to the Mexican portraitist. “I paint my own reality and I know myself best.” This year, she entered with a three-part series depicting strength during her cancer journey.

Mendes’ oil paintings exhibit great detail and movement. Her winning piece, “Translating Cancer: Sister Koi,” features a yellow koi fish, which represents her eldest sister, Tania, on a black background. In Mendes’ artist statement she explains, “Within the four walls of my impatient room, she instilled joy and encouraged adventure.”

Her piece “Translating Cancer: 5 Years Post-Transplant” was also featured in the exhibition. This piece is a self-portrait of Mendes and her central medical line on a black background. Her body is overtaken by a wave that splashes over her face with koi fish dancing on the wave. “Not many people understand the intensity behind cancer and people experience what it is that you went through without having to actually go through it with art,” Mendes says.

Honorable mentions went to recent Assumption University graduate Sydney LaQue and Nicholas Sposato, a junior at the same school.

Ben Correa-Goldberg, a Clark University Psychology and Media, Culture, and the Arts major, offered one of the four videos in the exhibition. His twominute fish-eyed iPhone video, “Saturday Afternoon,” is a hail to Sweet Baby Ray’s barbecue sauce. It begins with honest, mundane tasks with upbeat music that only stops for the iconic open of the “Law and Order” television series. The tone shifts during a sudden fight and murder in a parking lot. The main character nevertheless returns home to enjoy more barbecue sauce.

“I feel like other people make more serious things, so I was pleased to be accepted. I wanted to see how much I could get away with,” Correa-Goldberg says. “The idea came to me while I was walking home from class listening to BLACCMASS’s remix. It wasn’t until the final hour of editing that it became a cohesive story, though.”

These works will remain on ArtsWorcester’s Web site, artsworcester.org.

“Elephant Skull” by recent Assumption graduate Sydney Laque. ARTSWORCESTER

‘American Pickers’ brings spotlight closer

Interest is renewed in Thibault’s Country Store

Stephanie Jarvis Campbell

Special to Worcester Magazine USA TODAY NETWORK

Since being featured on the TV show “American Pickers,” Jim Ingalls has had a number of visitors, from near and far, curious to see up close all the antiques that have been collected throughout the years in the buildings encompassing his Spencer property, Thibault’s Country Store and Thibault’s Poultry.

It was one of the reasons Ingalls decided to go on the popular History Channel show — to bring recognition to his family’s history, which dates back nearly a century.

“I wanted to honor my mother and grandparents and their hard work,” Ingalls said. “I think it shows in the episode.”

That episode, which aired Feb. 15, took creator and picker Mike Wolfe and Jersey Jon, a motorcycle antiques expert who appears in the show, on a tour through the five-acre property and buildings, located on North Spencer Road (Route 31).

Ingalls’ great-grandfather had purchased the house and property, which had previously served as a carriage stop, for $700 in the 1920s. Later, his grandparents, Edward and Grace Thibault, developed a passion for raising chickens, and in the early 1940s, they started construction on the buildings, which are still there today.

“By 1945, they were really growing the chicken business with hatching and selling chickens all over the world,” Ingalls said, noting that they were selling eggs to the U.S. military during World War II, and at one point in the 1950s, there were 50,000 chickens on the property.

Eventually his grandfather began selling animal feed — a business still in operation today as Thibault’s Poultry, which Ingalls now runs. That was followed in 1962 by the opening of Thibault’s Country Store, after a conversation his grandmother had with some workers who were paving the road in front of the property. She would make sandwiches for them each day, and one

Jim Ingalls is shown at the counter of Thibault’s Country Store in Spencer.

Thibault’s Country Store and Thibault’s Poultry was featured on “American Pickers” on Feb. 15.

PHOTOS BY CHRISTINE PETERSON/ T&G STAFF

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of the workers suggested she open a store. The Thibaults turned an incubator building into the store, and even used some of the incubator boxes to make the countertops. Thibault’s Country Store was open until 1999, when Ingalls’ grandmother died. By then, his mother, Rosanne Thibault, was helping run the businesses.

“Her favorite thing was to sit and talk to the customers and tell them the history of this place and the history of Spencer,” Ingalls recalled.

In June 2016, Rosanne was diagnosed with cancer and was told she had three months to live. But she lived 30 months, still working in the feed store as much as she could. About a week prior to her passing, Ingalls and his mother watched an episode of “American Pickers” that featured another local business from Spencer.

“That was pretty much the last bit of time I spent with her. That was a pretty special half-hour,” Ingalls said.

Ironically, that “American Pickers” Spencer episode could very well have been about Thibault’s — the show had contacted Rosanne, who was in hospice care at the time, earlier in 2018 and had wanted to come tour the property, Ingalls said. Although she had declined at the time, Ingalls said she would have loved the episode that just aired about her family’s farm. “She would’ve loved telling the stories,” he said.

Instead, Ingalls had the opportunity to tell those stories, when he heard “American Pickers” would be returning to the area. He contacted the show, and when they came to film in late September, he brought Wolfe and Jersey Jon on a tour of the property, telling them about the farm’s history and stories about all the antiques that had been stored in the buildings through the years. Ingalls said some of the pieces had come from his grandmother’s grandfather, who owned a successful furniture store, M. Lamoureux & Co., at 17 Mechanic St.; when it closed in the 1960s, he believes that much of the remaining inventory was stored at the farm. Other pieces were Depression-era stockpiling — Ingalls said his grandparents were reluctant to throw anything away because they had experienced that time in history. And later, people would just drop off their unwanted items, and Rosanne, who had hoped to turn one of the buildings into an indoor flea market and museum, would take the donations.

“I was fortunate that I had hung around with my mother in the store and I know most of the stories,” Ingalls said about the antiques on the property. “There really are stories about everything in there.”

Today, Ingalls and his girlfriend and partner, Doreen Krajewski, are moving forward with plans to make the property a “destination,” he said. He has been trying to work on fixing the buildings, and on Labor Day weekend of 2019, they reopened the country store, which had been closed for 20 years and used for storage during that time.

“We’ve really turned it into a beautiful, artistic, museum kind of atmosphere,” Ingalls said, crediting Krajewski, who curates all the products in the store.

This past summer, they sold hot dogs and snow cones, and families with kids would often stop by to ride the mini carousel. The store also carries a lot of local products and items from area artisans, and Ingalls and Krajewski held a series of COVID-compliant festivals to showcase their work.

And to make sure history is represented, they brought back items like the eggs and penny candy. In fact, that first weekend they opened, a man visited, recalling that in his younger years he had ridden his bike to the store every day to buy the penny candy. That opening weekend, he was bringing his grandson to buy the candy.

“We’ve had a lot of experiences like that,” Ingalls said.

Although Ingalls plans on keeping any antiques related to Spencer history or to the farm, he did make some other deals with the “Pickers.” In addition to the items sold on the show, Wolfe and Jersey Jon bought a few other items — a claw-foot bathtub and a coal bag — that didn’t make the aired footage.

“The crew was awesome. Everyone was helpful and friendly. It was a great experience,” Ingalls said.

Since the episode aired, Ingalls has had quite a few inquiries about the store and property. One night, he received a call from a former Connecticut resident, now living in Florida, who had watched the show and said he really enjoyed it. Another couple called to make sure of the address and hours — they were traveling to Rhode Island and wanted to take a side trip to the store, after seeing it on “Pickers.” Ingalls said the couple came and stayed for four hours and had planned to stop by again on their way back home to New York. People have visited from all over Massachusetts, and he’s given more than a few private tours.

He certainly doesn’t mind, and although he enjoyed being on the show, “I didn’t care if I sold one thing, or nothing,” Ingalls said. “It wasn’t about that. It was honoring what my family had done in the past with this property.”

Treats and toys line a shelf in Thibault’s Country Store in Spencer.

PHOTOS BY CHRISTINE PETERSON/T&G STAFF

Jim Ingalls and Doreen Krajewski are moving forward with plans to make Thibault’s Country Store a “destination.”