Anne Armentrout in front of her art work for Transition Staunton Augusta.
Today we installed phase one of Transition Staunton Augusta’s contribution to the Staunton Downtown Development Association‘s Filling the Half-Empty Glass storefront art initiative. Part of the Virginia Commission for the Arts’ “Minds Wide Open: Virginia Celebrates Women in the Arts” project, the empty storefront initiative helps to make local organizations and their missions more accessible to the public, both locals and tourists, during the summer months.
The first of our two artists, Anne Armentrout, installed her Triptych to the Third Power, Plus, in the “fishbowl window” at 107 West Beverley Street, the space directly next to Minuteman Copies. In conceptual collaboration with Transition Staunton Augusta, Armentrout devised three panels, each a triptych, depicting the three pillars of the TSA mission: Clean Energy, Local Food, and Rail.
Calling this a project that required entirely new research on her part, Armentrout pulled off an amazingly rich and complex collage depiction of our mission in record time. Just three weeks from initial discussion to finished piece, Armentrout came up with a design that exhibits the heart of our local mission–a relationship with our immediate community–with the broader aims of the transition movement–to effectively move localities off of the the fossil fuel economy while downshifting in a way that makes economic and socio-cultural sense.
In a final nod to our unique place in the transition movment, Armentrout added one more triptych, effectively making the piece a quadrupletych, (though I like calling it a Triple Triptych to the Third Power, Plus.) That little triptych, set at the very front of the piece, depicts Staunton’s humble yet gracious train station as a place for growth in a world that is within our hands. We are the force for change, should we choose to take up the challenge as a community.
Will we?
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beautiful work, Anne!