SEPTEMBER BARN DOOR GALLERY 2026

Please Return To:

Sophia Jakobson

September 5 - September 26

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Opening Reception on Arts Night Out

In Please Return To:, I draw from landscapes that have shaped me, using the body and landscape as orientation devices to explore my experience occupying a queer body. The work serves as an archive– of the ever evolving effort to find home in my body, of the people and places that have held me, and the grief and joy of growing more fully into myself. In queering the landscape, the work asks for the viewer to engage their own body in space, drawing attention to how we construct naturalness and how these embedded assumptions construct possibilities for how bodies should appear and behave.

• Sophia Jakobson

  Sophia Jakobson (they/them) is an interdisciplinary artist based in Holyoke, Massachusetts. Their artwork is shaped by the landscapes they’ve lived in: Western Massachusetts, suburban New York, and the Swedish archipelago. Through mixed media paintings, sculpture, and textiles, Sophia explores themes of inhabitance: in a place, a body, in community, and queerness. In 2025, Sophia graduated from Mount Holyoke College as a Frances Perkins Scholar, where they double majored in art studio and sociology. Jakobson’s work has been shown throughout the Northeast. They have been awarded the 2025 Ruth E. Warfel Art Prize, The 2025 Leonard DeLonga Prize, and the 2024 Quabbin Arts Association Emerging Artist Scholarship. 

  IG@fiajak

  www.sophiajakobson.com

AUGUST BARN DOOR GALLERY 2026

Emerging Artist Showcase

Local emerging artists

August 5 - August 22

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Opening Reception on Arts Night Out

"Emerging" isn't a caterpillar finally becoming a butterfly - a "real” artist. "Emerging" might be the effort to move beyond the Ego, driven by the past and by worries about how people may judge the artist behind the art. Instead, it is embracing the process of expressing one's true nature. "Emerging," rather, is the internal journeys we take as we spend time with ourselves and the processes we engage in and modify as we create. We can only hope that our emerging artistic work helps others find a piece of their own true selves, their spirit, when viewing the art.

• Christine Mirabal

  Christine (she/her) is a Latina improv actor, poet, and multimedia visual artist. She is an emerging acrylic painter with a little over three years of experience, learning through online tutorials and experimentation. She also creates a variety of paper art, including handmade journals, mini-zines, bookmarks, and more! Throughout her work, Christine’s primary focus is on depicting the natural world, expressing strong feminist views, and giving voice to underrepresented groups. 

  Her series of The Crimson Women, represents a mysterious but powerful woman. She represents strength, courage, and self-confidence, but also vulnerability. She reveals herself, but by putting herself out there, she's putting herself at risk and exposing herself to criticism and attacks. Christine paints this figure with a palette knife to distinguish her from the rest of the scene, which is painted with brushstrokes. It is more difficult to control a palette knife than a paintbrush, and the artist cannot easily render a recognizable figure. The palette knife gives her an undefined, raw energy that cannot be contained. The Crimson Women in Christine's paintings cannot be contained either. They are independent individuals, providing their own power and light.

  quirkyartchris.wordpress.com

  IG@quirky.artist.chris

• Elena Watson

  Elena (she/her) was born and raised in western Massachusetts and is currently based in Brooklyn, NY. Her work is influenced by Art Nouveau masters, early Byzantine and Islamic design, Russian iconography, and the Golden Age of children's illustration. Elena draws inspiration from myths, fairy tales, and the underground sci-fi and fantasy novels of her youth.

  IG@sladostrasnik

• Kira Yan

  Kira (she/her) is a Korean-descent, Uzbekistan-born and currently Northampton-based artist and multidisciplinary creator. Through her practice, she explores notions of memory, belonging, and self-concept, and the points at which they intersect. In her work, Kira seeks to capture and blend the internal landscapes of consciousness while also reflecting on the broader human condition. Curiosity, dreams, and observations of everyday life are the foundations from which Kira’s ideas and artistic process emerge.

  IG@kira_blackberry

• Maddie McDougall

  Maddie (she/they) is an artist, educator, and community organizer currently living and working in Western Massachusetts. Alongside teaching art in public schools and serving as a director of Resilient Community Arts, her visual artwork spans between painting, performance, video, and sculptural installations. Their work strives to worship queerdom and matriarchs, to hold witness to plant life and survivorship. They ask the viewer to look through the rubble of memory alongside her to see if we can rebuild a future where we can all be tenderly cared for.

  maddiemcdougall.com

  IG@maddie_mcdoodle

• Paul Jablon

  (he/him)

  I have spent most of my adult life as an educator creating and teaching in successful public high schools for students who were previously disengaged from school. Much of this successful work that engaged the students and allowed them to graduate was through interdisciplinary programs that connected students creating art, music, and theater pieces to the science, technology, social studies and language arts classes.

  One of the ways that I re-engaged those students with learning and themselves was to teach them to express themselves through black and white photography and to take pride in making fine art darkroom prints. All of these hundreds of students had dropped out of other high schools, but once in our school and program 84% graduated. Over half of them exhibited their photographs in shows in New York City. I spent my time in photography with them; more important than me exhibiting.

  At the same time I tried to fit in my own photography creations, as well as writing and performing music. Needless to say, there was very little space to do this, but I kept a working black and white darkroom at home and practiced my craft as much as possible. Whenever I could I studied. I studied briefly with John Sexton, who printed for Ansel Adams. I also learned multiple enlarger techniques and manipulation from Jerry Uelsmann. I worked as a media tech for the

  Maine Photographic Workshops for 3 months. I then worked as a university professor for another 24 years training new teachers and working collaboratively with teachers and administrators across the country on how to implement this interdisciplinary, inquiry-based STEAM approach, along with publishing books on how to do it.

  When I retired I began in earnest working passionately with other local progressives on social justice work in Greenfield. Friends and family who saw my photographs in the Recorder or at my home suggested that I should put a show together. Last year I sat down and seriously looked at the thousands of images I had produced over the years seeking a theme or focus to my photography. What emerged is something I always knew was a thought when taking photographs, but never until then realized how central it was to my work. It is CLOUDS.

  Since then I have had a local show in the library and sold a few photographs, but have just begun to take myself seriously as an artist. I have spent countless hours taking new photographs and reutilizing older images, all in black and white as this allows the viewer to focus on the the amazing range of texture, contrast, motion, form, emotions, and ratios of size perspectives rather than the often distracting blasts of eye-catching color. It is a most humbling and learning experience for me to live within the process of artistic creation, and to lessen the importance of the final product.

  The creation of the work is me and my interaction with existence, and I hope to be able to share that vision with others.

  deviantart.com/pjablon