As the school year draws to a close, a group of six Hartford High School students prepare to display their work in a month-long exhibit at the Main Street Museum in White River Junction.

“Deface the Ordinary,” which opens with a reception at 6 p.m. this Friday, is the brainchild of Hartford senior Sondji Owens, who approached the museum a couple months ago about putting on an exhibit of student work. “It’s really important for young people to have space to express themselves…,” Owens said in an interview. “We really need the youth right now because we’re not just the future, we’re part of the change that’s happening right now.”

Rather than centering around a specific theme, the exhibit showcases a range of work that students have made in art classes and in their free time.

“I just told them to go crazy,” said Owens, who lives in White River Junction. “I didn’t want any boundaries with this gallery, I just wanted it to be colorful…I wanted freedom with it.”

Inspired by the psychedelic imagery of the ‘60s, Owens described her own work as “out there” and “eccentric.” “The Body,” one of Owens’ pieces that will feature in the exhibit, depicts a human torso broken up into blue segments with flesh-toned squares layered on top.

Rendered in acrylic, Owens made the piece in her painting class last semester. “I love that complete muted cubism… mixed with that pop of humanoid,” she said of the piece.

Another student with work in the show, Nicola Husmann, takes inspiration from the storybooks of her childhood and the natural setting of her hometown of Hartland. One of her hand-built ceramic wall hangings bares the name “Silly Stories Without Endings,” which is etched into the piece’s cream surface.

“I liked the idea of making art that didn’t have an ending,” she said.

Her sketch of a snail with a baby doll’s head, entitled “Gretel,” is named after the song “Handsome and Gretel” by the female-fronted rock band Babes in Toyland.

“...I guess I was feeling very angsty at the time,” Husmann said.

“Deface the Ordinary” opens with a reception at 6 p.m. on Friday, May 23 at the Main Street Museum in White River Junction. The exhibit will stay up through June 27. Admission is free. For more information, visit mainstreetmuseum.org.

Music for mud season

A bout of rainy days in the Upper Valley has caused mud season to stretch into late spring. In Woodstock, Pentangle Arts has chosen to embrace this fact with Mudstock, an upcoming concert celebrating New England’s fifth season.

“People are always looking for something to do in mud season,” said Pentangle’s executive director Deborah Greene.

Thursday’s festivities will center around a performance from Boston-based folk and Americana band Cold Chocolate, which will take place at Pentangle’s main stage in the Woodstock Town Hall Theatre.

Before the concert, Woodstock Union Middle School student Agnes Derrendinger will give a solo performance on guitar, cello and violin in the town hall lobby where refreshments and the chocolate dessert known as mud pie will be served.

Concert-goers are encouraged to don mud boots as well as flower crowns, which they can enter into the event’s Seasonal Crown Contest to win a one-year pass to Pentangle’s movie theater.

Mudstock is not just a celebration of spring, it also marks Pentangle’s first official annual fundraiser.

“A lot of fundraisers are cost-limiting to people,” said Greene, who hopes to make Mudstock a yearly event.

To that end, ticket prices are based on a sliding scale so that “everyone could afford to attend,” said Greene.

Mudstock will take place from 6:30 to 10:30 p.m. on Thursday, May 22. For tickets (sliding scale) or more information, go to pentanglearts.org or call 802-457-3981.

Synths central

This Friday, Upper Valley native Hannah Hoffman will perform her one-woman electronic synthesizer project Dutch Experts at the Randolph music venue the Underground. Originating out of the pandemic, Dutch Experts’ sound takes inspiration from the Gothic atmosphere of bands like Depeche Mode and the Cure and the soaring melodies of Kate Bush. Friday’s audience can expect to hear tracks from Hoffman’s 2023 EP “Bound By This” alongside new unreleased music with a dance-heavy undercurrent.

Brattleboro-based musician and performance artist Haitlin and Thetford solo artist Wicked Louder will play opening sets. Both bands differ from Dutch Experts in terms of sound, said Hoffman, but they all use synths as a starting point.

“It just kind of showcases what you can do with that kind of music and how you can stretch it to all different corners of synth-based music,” she said.

Dutch Experts will perform at the Underground in Randolph at 7:30 p.m. on Friday, May 23. For tickets ($14 if purchased in advance; $17 at the door) or more information, go to theundergroundshows.com.

Etchings in Bridgewater

The Bridgewater Historical Society’s retrospective “Alice Standish Buell: At Home Among the Hills of Bridgewater” opens this Sunday at the Old Brick School House at 12 North Bridgewater Road with a special reception from 4 to 6 p.m.

Born in Illinois, from 1926-1958, Buell spent her summers in West Woodstock and North Bridgewater. Over the course of that time, she amassed a collection of etchings and maps depicting houses and landscape scenes in her neighborhood as well as in Hanover, New Orleans, Florida and New York. 

An assortment of those works will be on display in the upcoming exhibit. The show will be up through Columbus Day weekend. For more information, visit bridgewaterhistory.org.

Marion Umpleby can be reached at mumpleby@ vnews.com or 603-727-3306.