ARC
2025

activate, research, create

ARC (activate, research, create), A.P.E.'s curated summer residency program, is in its eighth season, continuing the investigation of a contemporary art gallery as an active space within the community. From JUNE 2 thru JULY 13, 2025, A.P.E. will host five projects including explorations of queer creation myths, tales of times of togetherness, creative upcycling and repurposing, the relationship between ancient ritual and power, and the body as a site of experience and relationship to deep time. During each residency, the gallery will be open to the public through a variety of workshops, performances, showings, and interactive installations. Each project maintains a central inquiry into the relationship between the public, the work, and the space in which it is made.

The ARC 2025 projects are:

Purrmetheus by Pearl Shread
Within the Glow by Human Agenda Theater
Creating Care by Justin Landry and Haley Kean

Devotions: a reflective practice by River Aragon
Primordial + Touch Library by Meg Foley and Carmichael Jones

ARC 2025 EXHIBITIONS

PURRMETHEUS

Pearl Shread
June 2-8

GALLERY OPEN HOURS
TUES June 3 - SAT June 7; 12-5pm

For the week of June 2nd-8th, Pearl Shread will enact queer creation myths in a process-based performance. For several hours a day, they will be forming clay bodies that act as ritual figurines and projections of the queer body. Visitors are invited to enter the gallery to view the performance and accept the gift of a figurine, or to form their own. The performance will also feature a collaborative soundscape created by the artist and queer DJ Barb Abulashvili. For this week of their ARC program, A.P.E. Gallery will be transformed into the locus of a new creation myth: the creation of community, spread to all who accept the gift of protection and a reminder that our bodies are our own to shape.

ARTIST BIOS

Pearl Shread (he/they/she) is a multi-disciplinary sculpture artist based in Massachusetts, currently pursuing a BFA at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts at Tufts University. They work in textiles, ceramic, wood, found objects, and a variety of other sculptural mediums and forms. Shread has been exhibited in various galleries across the Northeast and Midwest, including shows at the Art Center Highland Park, Bromfield Gallery, the Rochester Erotic Arts Festival, and Tufts Art Galleries. His artwork exists at the intersection of the body and the environment, the future and the present. Thinking through concepts of futurity and identity in a world that is rapidly shifting, they find freedom and potentiality in constant evolution and adaptation. Drawing from maximalist aesthetics and an interest in tactility, her sculptures are often interactive, forcing the audience into a confrontation with their own mutability and impermanence.

Barb Abulashvili is a multidisciplinary artist based in Boston, currently in her fifth year at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, studying interdisciplinary art and Child Study Human Development at Tufts University, through a Dual Degree program. She also recently spent a semester abroad at Central Saint Martins in London, enriching her artistic perspective. Abulashvili's artistic practice spans multiple mediums, including: painting, photography, air-brushing, sound, 3D digital fabrications, and graphic design. She self-published an artist book, showcased at multiple annual art fairs, including at the Tate Museum in London, as well as annual book fairs in Vienna and Boston. Drawing inspiration from the history of surrealism and contemporary techniques, Abulashvili's work explores narrative storylines through symbolic imagery. Central to her current work are themes of queerness, immigrant motherhood, child development within the lens of trauma and healing, and interpersonal relationships. Abulashvili's approach brings figurative language to life in her surreal pieces, inviting viewers to deeply engage with the narratives she constructs.

WITHIN THE GLOW

Human Agenda Theater
June 13 + 14

PERFORMANCES
FRI June 13 at 7pm
SAT June 14 at 2pm + 7pm
TICKETS and INFO HERE

Join Human Agenda Theater on June 13th and 14th for a show about gatherings. This troupe of traveling troubadours tells tales of times of togetherness, the challenges that make it hard to find community, and why our gatherings are still so important. Our show was made through a collaborative theater process, and is the culmination of two years of work. We were drawn towards this topic due to the ways COVID lockdowns and pressures from life in our modern day in this country have impacted our ability to find and form community. Our show explores the difficulties with gathering, the weird quirks humans have when it comes to those times together, and why it is so important that we do gather. Come join our tent for a weird, funny, and joyous time together.

Event Page + Instagram

ARTIST BIOS

Kevin Van Develde (they/them): Kevin is a co-founder of H.A.T. and serves as the director for Within the Glow. They graduated from Allegheny College with a degree in theater and currently work as a transfer counselor with UMass Amherst in addition to their work with the company.

Steph Reyes (She/Her): As a Puerto Rican-born actress, mover, and theatre maker, Steph’s artistic journey is rooted in movement and storytelling. She holds an MFA in Devised Theatre Performance from Columbia College, Chicago, and has worked with companies and artists like Serious Play Theatre, Yanira Castro, Human Agenda Theatre, Ballet de Cámara de Madrid, and Andanza. Her work explores the intersection of narrative, movement, and visual art, with a focus on multimedia projects that foster cultural liberation within the Latine community. Steph is a co-founder of H.A.T.

Kelly Tierney (She/Her) - Kelly is a co-founder of HAT who enjoys wearing many a hat--in this production she is writer, actor, and lighting designer. She has previously worn her lighting designer cap for Gorgons by Megan E. Tripaldi, and actor cap as Mira in Mira and the Liminal Dimension (a HAT original). Her creative passions are varied and ever-multiplying, so she is mostly known for having so many ideas and so little time.

Collette (She/Her) - I’m a 42 year old disabled US Navy veteran. I grew up in the Pioneer Valley and joined the military right out of high school. In the past I have worked with at-risk youth and in sales/customer service and I have a bachelors degree in psychology. I live with my wife and dogs in Chicopee. I’ve always loved art and making people laugh. So in my 40’s I became an artist and then a stand up comedian and now a theater actor.

CREATING CARE: AN EXAMINATION OF THE LABOR AND LOVE IN GARMET CONSTRUCTION

Justin Landry + Haley Kean
June 16-21

GALLERY OPEN HOURS
TUES June 17 - THURS June 19; 2-6pm*
Donate your non-knit clothing to the project!

FRI June 20; 2-8pm
RECEPTION from 6-8pm

SAT June 21; 12-6pm
Garment pick-up

Creating Care is a collaborative performance piece driven by creative upcycling and repurposing of donated and discarded goods. The team of two artists will experiment with the possibilities of creating clothing as performance. This project aims to examine how exposure to the labor-intensive nature of garment assembly may affect the observer's perceived value when faced with the opportunity to engage in an honor-based exchange system. This week-long, interactive performance piece aims to challenge established norms in clothing consumption while providing community members the chance to acquire unique garments and accessories.

***Viewers are welcome and encouraged to come in and engage throughout the week. There will be a small changing room installed in the gallery for folks who would like to try on garments. Trading for garments can commence as soon as items are created and hung. However, they will remain in the gallery until after Friday’s reception. Garments can be picked up anytime from 8PM Friday to closing on Saturday.***

ARTIST BIOS

Haley Kean is a Printmaker born in Newtown CT, and based in Northampton, MA. She received her MFA in Printmaking from Ohio University and BFA in Studio Art from Keene State College. Haley's
artistic practice utilizes printmaking processes combined with the subject of the hyper-local, and narrative tools to visually interpret the radical compassion of attachment and human experience. She has exhibited both nationally and internationally, and her work resides in private collections across the U.S.

Justin Landry is a clothing maker and sewing machine enthusiast based in Northampton, MA. He uses antique foot-powered sewing machines and techniques accessible to mid-century domestic seamstresses to assemble hard-wearing clothing heavily inspired by vintage workwear. Through his meticulous assembly of carefully considered clothing, he aims to inspire a connection between garment and wearer, leading to a lifetime of regular use and continuous repair.

DEVOTIONS: A REFLECTIVE PRACTICE

River Aragon
June 25-27

GALLERY OPEN HOURS
WED • 5pm: Ritual + Workshop (BIPOC only)

THURS June 26 • 3-5pm
5pm: Ritual + Workshop

FRI June 27 • 4-9pm
7-8:30pm: Closing Ritual

Devotions: a reflective practice will explore the relationship between ancient ritual and power, inspired/influenced by the Obsidian Mirror/Smoking Mirror. This practice aims to recontextualize objects and bring them back into their indigenous and mythological context.

Throughout the project, River will be exploring the use of reflection, both material and talismanic, and investigating how mirrors are used as portals in their ancestral practice of curanderismo.

How does our devotion to these rituals influence and change our perception of reality and our belief in time and systems of power? How do we move forward through and while returning to ancient ritual?

Participants can both observe and take part in these devotional practices of reflecting in water, earth (body)*, mirrors, and soundscapes. This immersive project is both an extension of River’s ritual and earth work.

*earth (body) is an installation and tribute to Ana Mendieta's work of the same title.

ARTIST BIO

River Aragon is a practicing artist, healer, and land tender whose work is influenced by the earth, their ancestors and the sacred knowledge of Curanderismx. These verbal teachings are transformed and re-remembered through texture, shape and sound. This work lives at the intersection of human rights and borders which influence and continue to affect their ancestral inheritance and cultural practices. Their work as an artist bridges the ecological and social through land and water based performance and ritual.

They use textiles and other sculptural materials to recontextualise and investigate everyday objects as a source of healing, as tools of access. They create forms that they then invite participants to help evolve and shape into objects of everyday use and ritual. This earthly connection creates a wholeness and fills the gaps in histories that did not have a chance of being told by their original peoples.

By reclaiming these ancestral practices and performing/sharing them with reverence, they reestablish and reclaim their relationship to their lineage, the universe, the earth, community and home.

PRIMORDIAL + TOUCH LIBRARY

Meg Foley + Carmichael Jones
Jun 30-July 5

GALLERY OPEN HOURS
WED - SUN; 12-5pm

Primordial is a video and sound installation co-created by choreographer Meg Foley and her partner and co-parent, visual artist Carmichael Jones. It’s Meg’s engagement with the intersection of her 43 years on this planet with the creation story of the 300 million year-old rocks that can be found in places like Red Rock Canyon or the Flatirons at the base of the Rocky Mountains, captured and translated visually by Carmichael. A devotional practice, she learns the deep time history of each Primordial site and attempts to embody the geological processes that formed the current land.

Touch Library is a living archive of the creation of the Blood Baby project where your body is the site of the experience. Featuring some of the prompts, objects, materials, and exercises that formed the body of the project itself, Touch Library traces questions of being a self/body in immediate sensorial relation and how that shapes our sense of time and feeling through viewer activation. You are invited to engage with the lineage of the project and your own experience at your own pace and for your own discovery. To enjoy softness. To be held, be squished, feel weight. Be immersed in sound. Play. To slow down. To connect to viscera in order to connect to the earth.

Primordial and Touch Library are two parts of a larger project called Blood Baby, which includes site-responsive dance performance and Queer Parent Convenings, in addition to Communion, a gently participatory exploration of our bodies and embodied identities in deep time, being performed July 6 as part of A.P.E.’s Making Ground dialogues. Blood Baby uses multiple mediums to explore the interconnected experiences of queer and gender non-conforming parenting and family-building, highlighting gender, sexuality, community, and Earthly lineage.

ARTIST BIOS

Meg Foley is a queer dance artist, educator, and parent who creates performances and somatic-based events as self-affirming practices. She currently researches queer time, gender-nonconforming community & family, geology and how we are formed. Her improvisational practice builds detailed movement vocabularies out of scientifically engaged research and lived experience.

Carmichael Jones is a Philadelphia based artist who creates installations, sculptures, films, photographs and performative objects to rupture the presumed parameters of encountering and address political concerns of representation. Jones explores social dynamics through light, tension, orientation and scale with an attention to edges, contradictions and relationships between materials. Jones’ work is often playful and slightly irreverent, blending the everyday and the never-seen-before, the meticulous and the reckless, the readymade and the handcrafted. Jones is creative co-director of The Whole Shebang and a former fellow at the Creative Glass Center of America. They hold an MFA in Sculpture from Cranbrook Academy of Art.