Public Art on Main Street

Hosted by Project Art, 54 Main Street

mixed media, mosaic installation, made with ceramic shards

82 x 64 x 22"

The mosaic sculpture Miss Comet landed at Project Art in summer of 2022. Designed by Sergei Isupov, the 9′ sculpture was fabricated and completed in collaboration with artist Kadri Pärnamets. Now a permanent installation in front of their studio at Project Art on Main Street in Cummington, MA, the artists engaged with the local community throughout the process. 

Miss Comet was proposed for Reflections, a grant funded public art project to create new works reflecting on the land and history of the area. Working in late spring of 2022, the couple received donations, excavated shard piles at nearby pottery studios, and produced fabricated elements to articulate the figure’s features. Throughout the process, unwanted, forgotten, chipped, broken plates and other treasures, including “mudsharked” river shards were left at the sculpture’s base to be incorporated. Donations came with tales of family histories, prior ownership, unfortunate demise or abandonment. Ceramic shards include fragments of work by Michael McCarthy, Paul Scott, Mark Shapiro, Eric Smith, Mara Superior, and Connie Talbot. Part archaeology, part commemoration, each object tells a story and provides an opportunity to reflect on the present and history in this small but deeply connected Western Massachusetts community.

Hosted by Project Art, 54 Main Street

repurposed maple tree, paint, wooden base

In Spring 2024, Sergei Isupov completed a carved wooden sculpture now on view at 54 Main Street. He was invited to use the trunk of a sugar maple tree left behind after the top half was removed due to storm damage in the winter of 2024. With an approved design presented to the Cummington Cultural District, Isupov was awarded an honorarium through the 2024 Arts Activation Project which partially funded the proposal. Work took place over three weeks engaging many members of the community as they watched the progress. When completed, volunteers from the community and additional support from CCD provided funds and equipment to remove the tree from its roots. It was re-installed on a newly fabricated base pedestal at Project Art. Now facing the street, it can be enjoyed by passers by along with other public art along Main Street. 

Hosted by the Old Parsonage, 38 Main Street

This installation was created as part of a juried outdoor sculpture exhibition titled Reflections on Main Street in the Cultural District of Cummington, Massachusetts. The piece is a “Human Sundial” in which the shadow of a person standing on an in-ground date path keyed to a specific latitude and longitude points to vertical hour markers set on an ellipse around the date path. In this case, the sundial tells both the time and local history, as it is set on the lawn of the Kingman Tavern Museum, the museum of the Historical Commission of Cummington. Each hour marker tells an episode of Cummington history, using ceramic sculpture and signage. The installation also includes ceramic and wooden tiles created in community workshops, and the plan is for the piece to be an ongoing, and on-growing, public art installation with community input in preparation for Cummington’s 250th Anniversary in 2029. 

For 2024, Time to Reflect had winter repair, enhancements and routine maintenance and winter repair completed for the Historic Cummington and Reflections 2024. 

Hosted by the Cummington Community House, 33 Main Street

Our outdoor sculpture titled ‘A Conversation’ is made from burnt and treated wood and wood-fired ceramic elements. The wood elements consist of five large and three smaller crosscuts from very old trees cut down on Brickhouse Road a year and a half ago.* These slices, or “cookies”, are stacked and connected by hidden steel rebar for stabilization, and secured to a heavy wood slab base sitting on stone gravel and which can be placed anywhere. Each slice varies in thickness but the sculpture’s total dimensions including the base are approximately 73” h x 35” x 35”. 

The sculpture abstractly represents the beauty and history of the trees, their types, and the life 

they hosted. It reflects the intersection of the natural, human, and animal worlds, and the artistic choices made in response to the recent cutting of the old maple trees. The ceramic animal components symbolize the creatures that lived around, in, and on these trees, embodying imagined conversations among the critters and trees themselves. 

*This event, dubbed locally the “Brickyard Tree Massacre”, led to the organization of the Cummington Tree Alliance,  a nascent force formed to envision a future that is rich in greenery and public trees.    The alliance has been appointed an official town ad hoc committee that presents community education and action programs in the cultural district. See https://cummingtonculture.art/cummington-tree-alliance 

Hosted by the Cummington Village Church, 32 Main Street

The Village Homeschool Cooperative is a group of Hilltown families whose children meet at the Village Church on Mondays lead by Susan Warner and Molly Smith of Worthington, Cynthia Jirak of Cummington and Sadie Stull of Plainfield. We gather around 20 kids each week on Mondays to play and make. We participate in the neighborhood of the Cultural District, having taken field trips to Cummington Supply and the Post Office, as well as contributing to the community by expanding the pollinator 

garden at Pettingill Park. Our homeschool group bonds over creative endeavors and as our kids age up into middle childhood, we wish to offer them a sophisticated and challenging creative opportunity. 

For 2024 applied for a grant to support a class for our older kids to work with local Cummington ceramic artist Kadri Parnamets in her studio at Project Art on Main Street. The 

students will make functional and decorative things, ending the lessons with a set of 

finished works, which will be displayed in our Little Gallery. 

Hosted by the Gail Roberge, 26 Main Street

I’m excited to have another opportunity to participate in the Art Activation on Main Street.  My project proposal gives a nod to farms and agriculture in Cummington.  At one time there were 170 farms here and now we have only five.   

There are small farms are starting to pop up in the area now, with some nice roadside stands.  Because I am mainly a doll artist, I chose to work up a project with a bit of whimsy.  This should appeal to young and young at heart! 

The vision is a rustic barn with Peter Rabbit’s garden in the foreground.  I will sculpt vegetables, a frustrated farmer, and of course Peter, who has taken over the garden.  This is placed on the tree belt in front of my house at 26 Main Street.

Hosted by the Cummington Supply, 18 Main Street

I would like to create a whimsical figurative sculpture celebrating our local farmers. This friendly-faced guy will sit on an existing tree-stump in the small park on the west side of Cummington Supply. The sculpture was revealed during the public Cummington Supply 50th Anniversary Celebration on August 11th at the Pettingill Park Pavillion.

The head is high-fire ceramic. The body has been fabricated from rigid foam covered in a weatherproof skim-coat, painted and sealed. The figure has a total height of approximately 60” (the head is about 20”).

Hosted by the Pettingill Park, 14 Main Street

This community pollinator garden reflects the rural character of Cummington and engages community members across ages in a public educational project while increasing local access to food for pollinator species and painting the park with the beautiful colors of nature.

Hosted by the former Berkshire Trail Elementary School, 14 Main Street

Beckie received grants from the National Education Association and two Massachusetts Local Cultural Councils to be an artist in residence for several months, working with students and teachers from the 3rd, 4th and 5th grades at Berkshire Trail. The project included visits to the Cummington and Windsor history museums, a walk down Main Street narrated by a local historian.  We used our research to create tile murals illustrating local history, local natural history, and what was happing in other parts of the world when our towns were founded (late 1770’s).

The school has been de-commissioned, but this mural is a lasting reminder of the history and the people that made it a vibrant learning space for many years.