There’s no place like home. That’s why, while sporting a blue gingham dress and red heels, artist Danielle Lucier decided to dedicate her first solo gallery exhibition to the city of Greenfield.
“It feels amazing. The first time I exhibited work in my life was here at Artspace when I was 16 years old as part of the teen show,” Lucier said. “So I had one painting here when I was much younger, and it feels very full circle to be coming back here as an adult and being able to show my work about this place that I love so much.”
“Green Light – A Love Letter to Greenfield” will be on display at the Artspace Community Arts Center on Mill Street through July 17. The exhibit features ceramic pieces, such as sculpted lamps modeled after the Poet’s Seat Tower and the Franklin County Fairgrounds Roundhouse, alongside paintings showing various scenes of downtown — like Energy Park during Pride — and businesses such as the Garden Cinemas, Sofia’s Pizza and Ice Cream Alley.
“It’s bonkers good,” said Artspace Director Madeline Miller. “I took this job at Artspace because after the pandemic, I fell in love with downtown Greenfield and Danielle’s show perfectly captures that love we all feel about this place.”
Lucier teaches ceramics and visual arts classes at Artspace, leads art programs at Greenfield Public Library, and leads the Greenfield Plein Air Club. Through the Plein Air Club, which meets bimonthly to paint different scenes of the area, she said she’s accumulated a massive collection of local art; ultimately, she decided to lean into the momentum and create an exhibit entirely dedicated to her home.
“I run the Plein Air painting club, so naturally, I have so many paintings in the town of Greenfield, and I was just trying to find a place that I could put them all together,” Lucier said. “But, I’ve been making art about Greenfield my entire life. It’s nice to be able to put all of that love into one room and see it all at once.”
She noted that some of her favorite pieces in the show include paintings of her sister and brother-in-law walking down Main Street toward Ice Cream Alley, as well as a depiction of her neighbor’s garden.
“Our street is just this beautiful rainbow kaleidoscope of flowers, and I made that painting to gift to her after the show,” Lucier said.
“She’s just done a fabulous job,” Miller said. “It’s amazing to see the talents of our faculty on display.”
Lucier said that Greenfield has always supported her, and she hopes the exhibit inspires people to find the beauty in where they live and to “get out and make art more often.”
“It’s just this place that has always held me, no matter what place I’m at in life. There’s always a place for me to be that feels so warm and accepting. I feel like Greenfield gets a little bit of a bad rep sometimes; it’s easy for people to find things that are negative when all it takes is just seeing the light one time to start noticing it everywhere,” Lucier said. “Seeing those little glimmers of light all over the city, once you start seeing them, you see them all over the place, and it starts being ‘look at all this beautiful stuff in this place.’
“We need to look at the world through a creative perspective,” she continued. “Try to see a little more color, there’s so much of it to be seen we just need to look.”
The exhibit will be on display at Artspace until July 17, after which the gallery room will transition to house a solo exhibition by another instructor, Wade Boswell. For more information and gallery hours, visit artspacegreenfield.org.
