‘Truth Telling’ exhibit enacts Canal Street Art Gallery’s Reconciliation Action Plan

Canal Street Art Gallery presents: Truth Telling, finding reconciliation through art. The Truth Telling show opens January 19th and is on view through March 2nd. Join the gallery for 3rd Friday Gallery Night in Historic Downtown Bellows Falls, Vermont, from 5-7pm on January 19th to experience the show and meet the artists. All gallery events are free and open to the public, for wheelchair accessibility call 802-289-0104. 

Truth Telling aims to offer many ways to interact with and learn from the exhibit. Artists opening the show include Clare Adams, Carolyn Albracht, Kim Grall, Corinne Greenhalgh, Marilyn Hunt, Su Lin Mangan, MC Noyes, and Jeanette Staley. Artists joining the show after the opening include Benjamin West. New artwork and input will be accepted throughout the show to provide an organic community space surrounding the topic. To build a conversation throughout the show, a Writing Table along with the Free Community Art Studio both provide ways for visitors to express their thoughts and feelings, and ask questions. Visitor writing and artwork are displayed on a wall of the gallery as part of the exhibit. 

The Truth Telling exhibit supports community well-being and resiliency by providing a safe and accepting space to use art as a way to interact with difficult subject matter. To include all artists, Truth Telling is curated through an open call for entry, and firstly reaches out to Abenaki, Pennacook and Wabanaki Peoples. Upon announcing the Truth Telling show Canal Street Art Gallery enacts its Reconciliation Action Plan (RAP). RAP’s are created to help steer organizations’ visions, missions and actions with respect to relationships, advocacy and opportunity for Indigenous communities. 

Along with the Truth Telling exhibit the gallery shares its land acknowledgment: Canal Street Art Gallery is located on N’dakinna, the traditional ancestral homeland of the Abenaki, Pennacook and Wabanaki Peoples past and present. The gallery, sitting along the Kwanitekw, or Long River (Connecticut River), next to the Kitchee Pontegu, or Great Falls (Bellows Falls, Vermont) gives gratitude to the land and waterways and the alnobak (people) who have stewarded N’dakinna throughout the generations.

Artworks in the Show