Barn Door Gallery
NCFA’s dedicated art gallery at 33 Hawley
Main Street Banner Project 2025
Main Street Banner Project 2025
Jul 3 - TBD
The results are in! The inaugural Main Street Banner Project call has concluded, and finalists have been selected by a jury dedicated to showcasing a diverse array of works across various mediums and experiences. Fifty images were chosen for display on 25 vibrant banners along Main Street in Northampton this summer. This project serves as a fundraiser for the Barn Door Gallery at 33 Hawley, helping us fulfill our mission of supporting the local creative community.
A. L. R. Keaton
Allie Litera
Andrea Holland
Ann Cloutier
Arch MacInnes
Bridie Wolejko
Carolina Castro
Chang Yu
Charles Miller
Cheri Cross
Christine Mirabal
Cindy lutz kornet
David Andrews
Dean McKeever
Debra Courage
Debra Hoyle
Gail Fitzpatrick
Haley Jenner
Iris Dela
Jankaleishka Burgos Cruz
Jay Smith
Jennifer Ablard
Jennifer Lotstein
Jesse Merrick
Jill M Strait
Jodi Hoover
Julia McGlew
Kim Condon
Kit Pedraza
Laura Curran
Lauryn Winiarski
Linda Post
Mariana Cicerchia
Marlene Rye
Mary Witt
Meadow Meredith
Melissa Stratton Pandina
Natalie Goodale
Nona Hatay
Paige Quinn-Vasic
Pamela Marino
Ray Brod
Rebecca Herskovitz
Richard Swiatlowski
Robert Markey
Rosetta Marantz Cohen
Ruth LaGue
S.T. Gately
Savannah Grant
Will Johnston-Rutledge
The Main Street Banner Project is made possible through the generous support and vision of Craig Stevens of LandScapes Inc., a dedicated design/build landscape company working in Western Mass for the past 25 years. Craig has been a steadfast supporter of NCFA and our community, working with local residents and recovery clients to build sustainable landscaping projects. His contributions also include the collaboration with colleagues who donated the large River Birch downtown pots, support for Habitat for Humanity and Hairston Recovery House, and organizing community events throughout Northampton, including a free movie night at the Academy.
Financial support for the Main Street Banner Project is being provided by LandScapes and Paradise Copies, which provides full-service printing and design solutions for our community.
September 2025
Circo
Mariana Cicerchia
September 5 - September 26
Opening Reception on Arts Night Out
The performer stands alone, removed from the crowd, in the darkened spaces of the show. They leap, hurling themselves into the unknown. The crowd cheers as the performer is suspended in air, fully aware of the uncertainty of the outcome. What appears to be a joyous performance is an act of sacrifice, a death-defying act emphasizing the solitude and inherent risks faced by performers who seek validation from an audience to which they may never fully belong.
The circus is an itinerant place for loners and outcasts who belong nowhere but in the world of the transient. They are faceless, inhabiting the peripheries of society. Their ability to entertain is their perceived worth, their identity. Performers, often marginalized, engage in acts that entertain while risking their identity and safety, reflecting deeper themes of loneliness and the human psyche's complexities.
Circo by Mariana Cicerchia serves as a framework to examine societal contracts and the dynamics of power within familial and communal contexts, uncovering themes of belonging and otherness, questioning who holds power and who is deemed "other" in society. A circus is about occupying space but not being of that space. A removable object which leaves no imprint, no trace. As if it never existed
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Mariana (b.1977, she/her) Born amid the turmoil of a brutal dictatorship in Buenos Aires, Argentina, the artist channels her experiences of isolation and outsider identity into her visual art. Her work explores themes of solitude, belonging, and the search for a timeless language that transcends cultural boundaries. Through her practice, Cicerchia examines fundamental truths and critically addresses the micro and macro dynamics of societal structures.
Circo offers a framework for critically examining social contracts and the dynamics of power inherent within familial and communal environments. It addresses concepts of belonging and exclusion by probing issues related to authority and the pursuit of validation. The circus setting serves as a metaphor for impermanence, where performers inhabit spaces temporarily, underscoring the fleeting nature of identity and acceptance.
October Split Level Gallery 2025
Taking Care: Parenthood in a Political Climate
curated by Dara Herman Zierlein
October 3 - October 30
Opening Reception on Arts Night Out
The exhibition will forego the vernacular imagery of parenthood. It features an all-gender, inclusive group of artists who are parents, caregivers, or adult children caring for their own parents, partners, or loved ones during illness. As binary gender roles in American families evolve, these changes impact culture and are increasingly politicized. This exhibition highlights diverse artists who focus on modern perspectives of parenthood and caregiving. Each artist will provide a short statement to accompany their work.
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Dara Herman Zierlein was born in Brooklyn, NY and was raised in Manhattan. She is a graduate of Pratt Institute with a BFA in Sculpture and she earned a Master's Degree in Art Education from Teachers College, Columbia University. Dara currently lives in Western Massachusetts with her family working as a political illustrator. Dara’s paintings, illustrations and posters have been exhibited internationally. Her art is published in among others, Mom Egg Review, Resist Grab Back, The Earth Issue, Demeter Press, Lunch Ticket, and she is a contributor for OppArt in The Nation magazine.
Dara has received several grants to curate group exhibitions and create art programs for the community on themes such as equal rights, women's rights, parenthood and the climate crisis. Dara's most recent grant is the ArtEZ Grant from the Northampton Arts Council for an exhibition called "Parenthood in a Political Climate". She is a recipient of the Mass Cultural Council's Cultural Sector Recovery Grants 2022 and a recipient for the NY Rauschenberg Artists Grant 2023.
Dara is the author of her first children’s book ‘Don’t Eat the Plastic’, a playful tale of the consequences of plastic pollution on our environment published February 2021 with Olympi Publishers in London. She was celebrated this past April with a 40th Year Art Retrospective Exhibition at Springfield Tech Community College where she exhibited over a hundred and fifty illustrations.
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Having a child radicalized me in unexpected ways. Looking into my newborn infant’s face was a portal to incomprehensible mysteries of the universe, opening my heart to a kind of love I didn’t know was possible. All the usual mushy new mom stuff applied to my situation. New motherhood also exposed me to some of the failings of our societal system here in the U.S. Having to get a new job and leave my tiny infant in the care of others for most of the day broke my heart-and pissed me off. Why was it not possible to stay home with my baby? Why are so many parents forced to work multiple jobs with only a scant few weeks-if we’re lucky and/or privileged-for bonding and infant care? Why are the workers who care for some of society’s most precious and vulnerable members of our families-day care workers, preschool teachers, nursing home workers-paid the least? I learned to start asking these questions when I became a mom, and from then the focus of my work shifted from a pretty self-centered place to a more outward-facing practice. The pages in this show are from my graphic memoir, titled, Clutter: A Scatterbrained Sexual Assault Memoir (Fieldmouse Press, 2022). I share some of the painful stuff-or just human stuff-that has happened to me in hopes of starting conversations about things we need to talk about more openly.
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The three pieces exhibited in this show are part of a series titled The Dance of Dementia. It is about my eight-year journey as caregiver for my husband, who bravely struggled with Parkinson’s Disease and Parkinson’s Disease dementia as a result of massive exposure to Agent Orange when he was drafted in Vietnam. For the first five of those eight years I took care of my mother as well. She had both Vascular Dementia and Alzheimer’s Disease. The collection is also about their own personal journeys, as they danced between a distant light that periodically still glowed in their eyes and the demoralizing decline of both their cognitive and physical abilities. My mother’s glow was just a distant memory after she passed in December of 2020, my husband’s quickly dimmed to a filmy grey, masking the glory of all he once was, until he too passed away in October of 2022.
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I am Dara Herman-Zierlein, the curator of the exhibit, Taking Care: Parenthood in a Political Climate. As a political artist I am rigorously using my illustrations to advocate awareness in the world. I picked these pieces for the exhibition as inspiration of hope for humanity in dark times, uplifting our shared commonality in hopes to better understand one another.
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''I know that within the depth of my soul, the light of creativity prevails and orchestrates a symphony to the rhythm of our hearts. My strong interest in world travel, and my love for the environment compelled me to paint the story of climate change. My travels throughout the world have granted me a firsthand view of the melting glaciers and deforestation, which has served to underscore the importance of my work." -Ed Moret
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Motherhood is a mystery which is primal to our identity as a species, and central to our concept of the divine. It carries a thick overlay of sentimentality which must be stripped away to understand parenting as both human and divine. These images are part of a series of paintings representing the petals of a flower. The flower is meant to enclose a human body in the gentle and comforting embrace of the Mother. Each of the petals represents an aspect of the feminine divine, as experienced in my dreams. The purpose of the piece is to reclaim from the unconscious those aspects of spiritual life which have been forgotten, repressed, appropriated, or distorted due to misogyny.
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Jon Schluenz is a multimedia artist, architect and builder currently residing in Northampton. Nature boy is an assemblage of inherited objects received after the illness and passing of his father. It is a attempt to acknowledge the quiet caregiver, and transfigure the mess of grief and the weight of a handed down history.
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“Single mother and Sun” (a portrait of me and my mother) speaks to the journey, of raising a young boy with no father figure in a male dominated environment and society, how softness in the spirit of a child hardens over the years, dealing with the oppression of racism, classism, and a school system with no room for alternative learners. For young black men, needless to say, the political climate parallel with the state of being black in America can produce some of the most beautiful souls that shape the very fabric and foundations of our society on a daily basis.
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In my role as a care-taker and parent I want to enjoy, preserve, instill and teach a set of core values that former US president Franklin D. Roosevelt called “The Four Freedoms”: Freedom of Speech, Freedom to Worship, Freedom from Want and Freedom form Fear, famously illustrated by Norman Rockwell. However as it is, these core values don’t seem to hold anymore in the face of a huge rise in antisemitic and religiously motivated crime, normalized hate speech, suppression of dissent, children suffering homelessness and food insecurity among the wealth right here in the Conneticut River Valley, people being disappeared by fully masked ICE agents and sent to foreign prisons or stateside concentration camps without due process, the US national guard and US army patrolling American cities, pointing their guns at protesting American citizens. I do my parenting, my teaching, and my taking care with the caveat that these freedoms will have to have to be fought for and claimed all over again.
Sincerely,
Peter O Zierlein
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Her art, both process and result, is a mining of observation. It is an exploration of symbol, color, form, shape, ideas She is an arbiter of spontaneity and control, always reaching for the edges of plasticity, playing at line, color and form. Using and combining mediums, she achieves a tactility and fluidity, layering between depth and two-dimensionality. In her visual art she will often start a curious mix of in and out that draws forth a deeper observation of the picture plane. From painting, monotype and collage to stained glass and poetry, her range of mediums portrays a path of exploration for both artist and observer. In the art displayed here, she reminds us of the rising waters of climate change. Children peek from what seems a safe distance as if looking into an aquarium, but on closer observation. we see that the waters are swirling out of control and fish are caught upside down in the current of climate change.
ROSALIND BRENNER-Painter, Poet, Stained Glass Artist
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I selected these two paintings for the show because they represent my journey as a caregiver. I am a teaching artist as well and find that my once abundant patience and energy in the classroom is a challenge to keep up most likely because of the energy I need as a caregiver. The balance of self care and responsibility is always in flux and I often am wondering about the future ahead. Smothered was painted sometime during the pandemic when I began my journey as a caregiver. The feeling of being inside the earth with a starless sky above yet at rest represents the numbness when receiving life changing news. Buoyant reflects the feeling of bobbing in the waters of the unknown future ahead. This is a work that is part of an ongoing ocean series that captures the depth of uncertainty.
The Barn Door Gallery Mission and Values
The art gallery that the Northampton Center for the Arts (NCFA) stewards at 33 Hawley is a space which supports NCFA’s mission to foster community connections through the arts. The Barn Door Gallery provides dedicated space to cultivate constantly evolving and transformative conversations between and among artists and viewers. In managing this community resource, NCFA uses the following intentions as a guide:
To create an art space that is accessible and inclusive, with transparent criteria, that welcomes a wide variety of artists and art mediums
To steward the art gallery in such a way that it is available to as many artists and community members as possible
To provide space to learn more about how people with varying identities express themselves through art
To maintain a rotating curatorial committee of NCFA staff and board and community members that makes recommendations on curatorial decisions
To make financially sound decisions that will enable us to continue to provide opportunities for our community to experience the arts for years to come
Application Process for Exhibits
Next CALL FOR PROPOSALS: June 2026
NCFA will put out a call for exhibit proposals each June.
A new curatorial committee will meet each July to make decisions about the following year’s exhibits. More here!
Committee members will be asked to review images independently before coming together.
Applicants will be notified by early August.
Exhibit proposals may include:
individual shows
guest curation or group exhibits
submissions for the group show for emerging artists
all types of visual art, including 2D and 3D work
Please note that all artwork submitted must be available for sale (exceptions may apply), and NCFA retains a 20% commission on all artwork sold. NCFA will host an opening reception in coordination with Arts Night Out (the second Friday of the month) and ask that the selected artists participate in a facilitated artist talk.
The Barn Door Gallery is approximately 20’ x 26’ and has about 70-80 linear feet of wall space (depending on the kind of art being displayed). It has five pedestals, a movable wall, and tables may also be available for 3D work.
Submission Form for Solo Exhibits
Submission Form for Guest Curated and Small Group Exhibits
Submission Form for Emerging Artist Showcase
2026 SUBMISSIONS ARE DUE BY JUNE 30TH AT MIDNIGHT! (Early submissions are highly recommended to ease stress and ensure that materials are successfully submitted on time and according to the guidelines.)
NCFA’s Commitment to Representation
As the leaders of a small, local arts organization, we know the power of the arts to help us process, contextualize, and speak out. In good times and bad, we know the beauty of witnessing works of art coming into being. We also know the challenges of supporting the arts in the context of infrastructure impacted by racism, classism, gentrification, unnamed power dynamics, colonialism, elitism, and gatekeeping that is too often performed in the name of curation. At the Center, we believe that arts administration and curation offer an opportunity for care, inclusion, and challenging the status quo. As such, we are committed to an ongoing practice of dismantling patterns of white supremacy culture in ourselves and our organization. (From NCFA’s Antiracism and the Arts page)
Our goals for representation in the Barn Door Art Gallery over the first three years:
NCFA is committed to supporting artists who hold historically marginalized identities. Half of exhibiting artists will identify as BIPoC. In addition, half of all exhibitors will identify as LGBTQIA+ artists. (These identities may intersect.) Proposals for identity themed exhibits are encouraged.
NCFA is committed to supporting emerging artists. One exhibit per year will be a group show dedicated to emerging artists, with some prioritization for those who have never exhibited work in a gallery before.
NCFA is committed to supporting local artists. As such, the curatorial committee will prioritize artists both within a 30 mile radius of the Center, and will consider artists from farther away (up to 60 miles) as well as those with ties to the area.
NCFA is committed to supporting and welcoming low income and new/emerging artists, and to taking steps to mitigate any tendency for artists to feel intimidated. We offer resources such as a commitment to no artist application fees, providing refreshments for artists’ receptions, and marketing support (website, social media, email, newsblast). We are working towards securing discounts for printing and framing at specific local businesses, providing basic hardware for hanging as well as resources for artists regarding the hanging and presenting of work. The parameters for portfolio submissions and formatting will be as flexible as is feasible.
NCFA is committed to listening to and engaging with community members, and will continue to prioritize multiple mechanisms for feedback.
The Curatorial Committee
Any community member may apply to be on a curatorial committee.
The application form is open and applications are accepted on a rolling basis.
Applicants will be contacted in the spring of each year to join that year’s committee.
Applicants will remain on the list unless they ask to be removed.
All eligible applicants will eventually be invited to serve on the committee.
NCFA will strive for each committee to have the same representation as our exhibiting artists: half BIPOC, half LGBTQIA+, and a mix of emerging and experienced artists. We understand these identities may intersect.
Each curatorial committee has the option to curate a group show for the January exhibit, either with their own art or an artist they would like to amplify.
In addition, the gallery curatorial committee will be guided by a three-year vision which will ensure that the mission and values established initially are consistently incorporated into the operation of the space.
Past Barn Door Gallery Exhibits
Barn Door Gallery
Past Split Level Gallery Exhibits
Barn Door Gallery
August 2025
Emerging Artist Showcase
local emerging artists
august 2 - august 23
Opening Reception on Arts Night Out
The Self is an integral part of art, serving as a mirror to the complexities of human identity - from the personal, political and cultural. Coming from various backgrounds and identities, each artist in this exhibit connects to the world uniquely. Together they create a melting pot of socio-political art that spans across mediums. They show that our identities matter, as they not only reflect upon the viewers lives, but what the artists wish others understood about themselves. Freed from societal constraints, artists mold, capture, and share their identities through their artworks. Allowing space for emerging artists to just be, is one step towards radical acceptance.
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Acadia (she/her) has always been interested in the natural cycles of the world. Her wandering brain was never meant for the structure of science, but her interest in it never waivered, now she bridges the gap between science and art. Currently, she’s interested in sustainability in artmaking. Her recent work features wood salvaged from burn bins, logged forests, and roadsides which she reassembles, paints, and allows to grow into something new, similar to how the process of decomposition allows for new life and growth.
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For Amy (she/they), art has always been a salvation, a means of relaxing her nervous system, and a way to express both her dreams and her discomfort. While she did attend art high school in NY and started college as an art major, she has spent most of her adult life career vacillating between dance, puppetry, fine art, fitness and teaching. Since becoming a mom 14 years ago, fine art has taken the front seat again, where she creates in vivid color, magical land/dreamscapes, and utilizes small shapes to create larger images.
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Chanel (she/they) has had a love for art since she was young, but during the pandemic, she discovered a passion for bringing pictures to life using pencil, ink, and acrylic. Over the years, she has found ways to incorporate her favorite holiday, Halloween, into upcycled prints and lithographs that had been left behind and forgotten. She reimagines these pieces with the spirit of core memories and lost loved ones who never truly leave us, capturing that happy, peaceful feeling we experience in our favorite places. The ghosts in her work symbolize the idea that our energy has a significant impact on all aspects of life and highlight just how powerful it can be.
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Claudia (she/her) is a multifaceted artist: musician, dancer, and photographer. Claudia es una immigrante Mexicana, raised in Los Angeles, CA, Claudia uses the lens to showcase places in time that once seemed inaccessible to her. Raised in a working-class community, once undocumented, Claudia never thought she’d see, visit, and experience places that she once imagined. She photographs and showcases experiences for others who have traversed nations for a better life.
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Jamie(she/her) is a painter and papermaker with a background in ceramics, raised in the Connecticut River Valley in Massachusetts. Influenced by her parents, she developed an appreciation for the brilliance and healing properties of plants.
Her work often tackles challenging themes, such as the impact of absence, white supremacy, misogyny, and the complexities of borders and private property. Recently, she has focused on the materials in her art, exploring papermaking with plant materials that she harvests and processes herself.
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Jacob (he/him) is a local, self-taught artist who uses visual media as means to communicate his experience living for decades as a closeted transgender man in America. A recent transplant to the Pioneer Valley, his black and white photo series Paradise City POV focuses on the intangible imprint that the glaring public display of acceptance in Northampton, Massachusetts, will have on those navigating a difficult path in life.
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Kendall (she/they) is an oil painter and mixed media artist who explores the intersections of femininity, identity, and queerness. Working from personal experiences, studies of mythology and historical references, they embody an interest in symbolism and the ways in which the past informs the present. They recently received their Bachelor of Arts in Art Studio at Mount Holyoke College.
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Robin (she/her), unsatisfied with most social conventions, sought authenticity in a place she'd never find it--in Fresno, CA. One day, while swimming in a pool, she ruminated to the sky and wished for an interesting life. This wish led her to escape via Naval Intelligence, ultimately arriving in western Massachusetts in 1985. She knew immediately that she had come home.
In June 2023, Robin began her visual migraine journal. Although the pain can be intense, it does get the pen/pencil/brush in her hand, and the blessing is that it allows Robin to step outside of the pain and befuddlement for a few minutes. As she worked on this project, visually documenting her chronic migraines over the course of the year, her relationship with them began to shift. She discovered a growing gratitude for them, since they presented themselves in a language she understood, set her on this path, and, like it or not, they walk with her, so she has learned to make peace with them.
Robin can usually be found in her studio, which is the room formerly known as the living room, with her lucky studio gremlin at her feet. Upstairs, her roommate, also named Robin, is dancing. -
Paige (she/her) is an arts educator, community builder, and artist of whimsy who cannot pick just one hobby. She grapples with her reality of making too much art about cats and is always plotting her next formal execution of a new recipe. Her art tends to reflect her ever-loving affair with ecology and the natural world while also experimenting with alternative materials and techniques.
IG@Paigesquinn