April 4 – February 22, 2026
Unbound from traditional gallery walls, Art on the Barns is a bold, large-scale outdoor exhibition where contemporary abstract works engage in dialogue with history. Installed across the buildings of this working dairy farm, the exhibition explores the contrasts between old and new, historic and contemporary.
Featuring Vermont artists Elise Whittemore and Will Gebhard in collaboration with Soapbox Arts, each piece is thoughtfully crafted, seamlessly integrated into the farm’s landscape, and evolves with the seasons and the rhythms of daily farm life.
Wander the farm, discover striking contemporary works around every corner, and experience the interplay of color, form, and texture against a historic backdrop. With each visit, the ever-changing environment offers fresh perspectives, inviting you to see both the art and the farmstead in a new light.
About the Artists
Elise Whittemore, a printmaker from Grand Isle, Vermont, draws inspiration from her family’s quilting history, transforming functional patterns into purely aesthetic forms through ink and stitching on paper. Grounded in memory, her work reconstructs meaningful places and objects, exploring their significance through form and texture. She embraces the physical labor of creating printmaking plates, exploring the different ways the hand and the materials can create meaning together.
“My recent work has explored how quilters have used pattern and design to articulate ideas about home, identity, and politics. My patterns reference mapping, movement, and figures interacting and working within these sewn-together environments. They have come to evoke the way I think about the created world — the space and boundaries we lay claim to.”
– Elise Whittemore
Will Gebhard is an American Artist currently based in Hanoi, Vietnam. His work explores concepts like change, constancy, pause, silence, and peripheral vision. Drawing from everyday worries and mundane moments, he transforms the ordinary into grand, abstract expressions. With a strong affinity for primary hues, he embraces the power of a limited palette to create bold, striking compositions.
“This series considers the tradition of “barn quilts” as a visual language for labeling places and creating landmarks. I used the surrounding architectural elements to inform the shape of the art, with the goal of having the pieces become a part of the structure rather than sit on the walls.”
-Will Gebhard