The Great Hall is a nonprofit gallery in Springfield, Vermont, located alongside the Black River. It’s part of the 100 River Street mixed-use development, formerly Fellows Gear Shapers factory, that also features a medical center, a brewery, and other businesses. The Great Hall occupies the old “Mills and Drills” department and reminds me of a post-industrial cathedral, a huge space with a soaring ceiling of whitewashed girders, illuminated by a double row of skylights running the length of the room. (Full disclosure: my mom Nina Jamison is the Great Hall’s curator, and I’ve been enlisted to provide promotional and information materials for just about every show since its founding in 2012.)
As I write this under the looming shadow of the Covid-19 pandemic, a new show has opened, Beauty and the Soul, featuring the vivid paintings of Chester, VT watercolorist Jeanne Carbonetti. Unfortunately far fewer people will view it than past exhibits, though as the Great Hall acts as an atrium for the Springfield Medical Center, it makes me happy to think Jeanne’s paintings will perhaps provide some comfort to its patients.
