Alexandra Bottinelli

"Do stuff. Be clenched, curious. 

Not waiting for inspirations shine or society's kiss on your forehead. 

Pay attention. It's all about paying attention. 

Attention is vitality. It connects you with others. It makes you eager. Stay eager." 

Susan Sontag

I do not listen to the news yet I know from my community that their is trouble in the air...in our blessed country...."land of the free and the brave".... no longer so true.

"Move a muscle, change a thought" is a mantra that keeps me healthy. Making art is playful, poetic, mysterious, holy, difficult, easy; it's mostly about telling the TRUTH , and since I 'm an artist "moving a muscle", I have made I.C.E. (blessed be the immigrants); making art is political..

from Sun House , David James Duncan, 2023

Magic words are the difficult to get hold of, but they are also the strongest...

Magic words or magic prayers are fragments of old songs

or apparently meaningless sentences heard ind the days when animals could talk, 

and remembered ever since by being passed from one generation to the next. 

In the very earliest time... when  all spoke the same language, 

words were potent and the mind had mysterious powers. 

A word might suddenly come alive, and what people needed to happen would happen. 

Nobody could explain it. That's just the way it was.

[opening of Book One]

the Lord of Love said, Let Me be born, Let Me be many!

And in the depths of His concentration He entered everything.

He the formless assumed myriad forms.

He the All-Knowing became ignorance.

He the Infinite became finite.

He the Real became the illusory.

He the Unseen became the universe. 

The Lord of Love, unmanifest, became manifest,

drawing Himself out of Himself.

Therefore is He called "the Self-Existent."

Were He not here, who would breathe?

      page 16

Wall-mount at solo show at The Front in Montpelier, March, 2024

art is process

beeswax and encaustic in 3- & 2- dimensions

Influences:

My mother’s family are multi-generational Vermonters who farmed and worked in the clothing industry.

My father’s parents immigrated here from Italy through Ellis Island, and went directly to Hurricane Island, Maine where they lived and worked in the granite quarries.

I was born during WWII in 1942.

Except if sick, I played outdoors every day of my childhood in Connecticut; all the kids in our rural neighborhood “lived” in the woods and on, in or around the saltwater river.

Catholic grammar school, Catholic High School, and one year of a Jesuit college was my early education, forever imprinting on me the images of saints, burning incense, and Latin chants.

I lived close to New York City. Had an older brother who loved jazz and a beloved sister who lived in Italy.  Knew a granite worker who made modern sculptures. Loved the music of Joan Baez and Dylan.

With the campaign for nuclear disarmament, freedom rides, and pro Castro demonstrations I became an activist.

In the 80s, I returned to college and felt at home in the art department.

The adventurous life of being with my very large family.

All the artists, known and unknown, who have gone before me.

In making art I do what I did as a child – get out doors, collect things, cut up magazines, visit museums, spend a lot of time alone, and live in community.

Art principles I stand by: drawing upon iconic memories, not always needing to know what I am doing, finding enough of nothingness in the work, ceating serenity amidst chaos.

Kurt Vonnegut

Practice any art, music, singing, dancing, acting, drawing, painting, 

sculpting, poetry, fiction, essays, reportage, no matter how  good or badly,

 not to get money or fame, but to experience becoming, to find out what's inside you, 

to make your soul grow. Seriously! I mean starting right now, do art and do it for the rest of your lives.

Shows 2025 - 1997

The Front, Montpelier, 6 Barre St., Vermont (artist owned cooperative gallery)

Solo show March 2024 

Member Group Shows bimonthly

Vermont Open Studio, Spring & Autumn (yearly)

Caspian Arts, summer show at Greensboro Grange (yearly)

  Art Resource Association (ARA), Montpelier, VT

ongoing membership shows

Sheltering in Place Project, Summer 2020, Highland Center for the Arts, Greensboro, Vermont

ReVision, Kent Museum, invitational, Calais, Vermont, September 2019

Studio Place Arts (juried /invitational shows & membership show), Barre, Vermont

Silver Lining,  February 2025

What's Cooking , 2024

Beacon of Light 2023, Now You See It 2022, Strictly Sedimentary, Scorched, 

Black & White, Encaustics, Small Point Artists, 30 Year Conversation on Art

Barre Opera House Gallery 

Solo-show, September-October 2025

Two-person show w/ Philip Robertson, Winter 2006

Woodbury Public Library, Solo-show, Spring 2025

Sterling College, New Work 2017, Craftsbury Common, Vermont

Poetry City, Collaboration PULSE, Kellogg-Hubbard Library, Montpelier, Vermont

Chandler Center for the Artis, Randolph, Vermont

Changing Seasons – Innovations After 70, 2021

Art of Place 2014

70+ Gereotrancendence, 2019, Rutland Gallery Space, Rutland, Vermont

Christine Price Gallery, 2nd Tuesday -- New Work, Castleton State College, Vermont

Catamount Arts, St. Johnsbury, Vermont

   New Work, show w/Kathy Stark

   Life & Death

T. W. Wood Art Gallery, Four Today (with Tari Swenson, Beth Pearson, Deborah

   Hillman), Montpelier, Vermont

Sullivan Museum, Inspired by Stories, Norwich University, Northfield, Vermont

    (Summer 2009)

Artpath Gallery, Four Score (w/Harriet Wood, Susan Russell, Ann Young),

  Burlington, Vermont (Summer/2006)

Lazy Pear Gallery, Adding Dimension (Spring/2008). Montpelier, Vermont

AVA Gallery, Second Tuesday, Lebanon, New Hampshire (Spring/2008)

Tamarack Gallery, East Craftsbury, Vermont

Elan Gallery, Jewels, Rockland, Maine

Leighton Gallery, Blue Hill, Maine

Doll-Anstadt Gallery, Burlington, Vermont

    Early Memory as Icon (11/1999)

    Ruins: History Without Dates (2/1998)

    New Works (Fall/2001)

New O’Farrell Gallery, Small Point Artists, Brunswick & Eastland Gallery, Portland,

   Maine (Fall/2002)

Julian Scott Memorial Gallery, In Depth: 7 Vermont Artists, Johnson, Vermont

EDUCATION & RESIDENCIES

Connecticut College, BA, New London, Connecticut

Vermont Studio Center “Vermont” Residencies, Johnson, Vermont 

Morse Mountain, Small Point Residencies, Maine (1997-2024)