Exhibition and Closed Bid Auction benefiting Bennington Museum and Regional Artists

November 26 through December 31 (bidding ends on December 20)
Parmelee and Limric Galleries

“Under the microscope, I found that snowflakes were miracles of beauty; and it seemed a shame that this beauty should not be seen and appreciated by others. Every crystal was a masterpiece of design and no one design was ever repeated., When a snowflake melted, that design was forever lost. Just that much beauty was gone, without leaving any record behind.” Wilson Bentley (1925)

Transient Beauty: Responding to “Snowflake” Bentley will feature 25 contemporary artists responding to the magical photomicrographs of Wilson “Snowflake” Bentley. Completely self-taught, Bentley started creating photomicrographs of snowflakes and frost in 1885 and continued making them, almost obsessively, until his death in 1931, having caught pneumonia while photographing snowflakes in a snowstorm. He captured more than 5,000 images of crystals in his lifetime and proved that, indeed, no two snowflakes are identical.

The contemporary responses will range from subject and formal affinity, including imagery of snowflakes, snow, frost/ice, with their intricate, delicate designs and mandala-like symmetry, to more conceptual links to Bentley’s larger project including taxonomies, revealing the invisible, and capturing the transient or ephemeral. Many of the exhibiting artists are photographers whose work uses historic photographic technologies and/or pushes at the possibilities of the photographic image.