NEWPORT — The MAC Center for the Arts is presenting a collaborative exhibition to celebrate both the tenth anniversaries of the Memphremagog Watershed Association and the MAC Center for the Arts.
The exhibit, Memphremagog Watershed Association – Preserving the Beauty of Our Waters, will open on June 24 at 5 p.m. with a presentation by Louise Abbott, author and photographer whose second volume, Memphrémagog: An Illustrated History, vol. 2, will be published later this summer. All proceeds from this beautiful book will benefit the Watershed Association.
This unique exhibition on display in the Downstairs Gallery will run until September 5, and is free and open to the public.
Louise Abbott is a Canadian non-fiction writer, photographer, and filmmaker living in Quebec’s Eastern Townships. She graduated from McGill University in 1972, and is a featured writer and photographer, with works appearing in the Montreal Gazette, The Globe and Mail, The Canadian Encyclopedia, Canadian Heritage and Photo Life.
Abbott received the 2002 Canadian Journalism Foundation Greg Clark Internship Award, and in the same year the Professional Writers Association of Canada’s Norman Kucharsky Award for Cultural and Artistic Journalism.
Her first book, The Coast Way: A Portrait of the English on the Lower North Shore of the St. Lawrence, was a finalist for the 1989 QSPELL Award.
In 2014, her documentary, Nunaaluk: A Forgotten Story, won the inaugural Jasper Short Film Festival Best Film by an Established Filmmaker award.
The Memphremagog Watershed Association (MWA) was formed in 2007 with a mission to promote public awareness of the Memphremagog Watershed and protect its unique ecosystem. They have worked closely with partners in the basin to implement many of the strategies laid out in the 2012 Basin 17 tactical basin plan, hosting watershed workshops, installing buffer plantings and rain gardens, selling rain barrels, lake and river clean-ups, hosting educational boat rides for adults and schools, providing scholarships for High School graduates who intend to study in an environmental field, and establishing a Vermont Invasive Species program for Lake Memphremagog.
Members of MAC will exhibit new work in a variety of media using the lake and environment as inspiration in concert with informational materials and photographs on the important preservation work of the Watershed Association.
MAC Center for the Arts supports Vermont’s Creative Economy through the sale of its member’s work at the 4,000-square foot Main Street gallery.
In addition to our gallery store and seasonal opening receptions, they offer a full calendar of special events, performances, visiting and original exhibits, classes and workshops.
All are open to the public and most are free to attend.
For more information, visit www.maccenterforthearts.com or call 802-334-1966.
