BRECE HONEYCUTT
CRAFT AND DESIGN | Western Massachusetts, 2020
CULTURE HUB
Hancock Shaker Village is a landmark destination of 750 acres, 20 historic Shaker buildings, and over 22,000 artifacts. The world’s most comprehensively interpreted Shaker site and oldest working farm in the Berkshires, its mission is to bring the Shaker story to life and preserve it for future generations through multifaceted programming in art, music, food, and thought.
ARTIST
PHOTO: Monika Sosnowski
Brece Honeycutt makes nature-based and history-based drawings, sculptures and installations. Her installations have been placed in university campuses, historic houses, inner-city parks and in office buildings, libraries, urban markets and galleries. She enthusiastically collaborates with artists, students, historians, gardeners, poets, and dancers.
SOCIAL IMPACT INITIATIVE
Camphill Village is housed on 615 acres of wooded hills, gardens, and pastures in rural upstate New York. It hosts adults with special needs and long- and short-term service volunteers to live and work together as equals in extended family homes—an integrated community where people with developmental differences are living a life of dignity, equality, and purpose.
Brece Honeycutt will engage the farm, garden, and forest landscape of Hancock Shaker Village as the materials for her multifaceted creative practice, which includes work in fiber, natural dying, printmaking, sculpture, and bookbinding. As a researcher, she is eager to explore the museum's collection of predominantly 19th century Shaker manuscripts and publications, particularly those that describe the processes of Shaker craft and its relationship to wild and cultivated landscapes. In addition to an open studio on the Hancock campus, the project will culminate in a series of public workshops and an exhibition in partnership with Camphill Village in the Hancock Shaker Village’s Poultry House Gallery.
Camphill Village’s values align with those of the Shakers—harmony, sustainability, biodynamic farming, and craftsmanship. Workshops will be held in their studios as well as at the Village, and will culminate in an exhibition of artwork created by Brece during her residency, alongside the members of the community organization, which will open on the Hancock campus and travel to a public space at the community organization.
Follow along with Brece’s work and project on her AAW blog.