WILLIAMSTOWN — They stand, 12 silent sentinels, watching over the land.
In this field, they bear witness to the wind as it blows, to the rain as it falls, to the stars in the night sky. They watch the fireflies flit in the dark of night and stand watch over the bobolinks that nest in the tall grasses of Field Farm Reservation, 316 preserved acres overseen by The Trustees of Reservations.
If You Go
What: Counterculture
On view: Through April 30, 2024. Free 30-minute walk-and-talk tours will take place at noon on Saturdays from July 9 through Sept. 3.
Where: The Guest House at Field Farm, 554 Sloan Road, Williamstown
Admission: Free
More information: thetrustees.org/exhibit/counterculture/
It is here that sculptor and mixed media artist Rose B. Simpson‘s slender, androgynous cast-concrete 9-foot-tall sculptures will stand, along the horizon line of the meadow, visible from Sloan Road, though April 30, 2023. Her most ambitious work to date, “Counterculture,” honors generations of marginalized people and cultures, whose voices have been too often silenced by colonization and in many cases, forcibly removed from their homelands.
“I’ve been playing around with this idea being a witness, of witnessing; in that we look deeply at so many subjects, everything that we experience,” Simpson said, during a recent interview in the meadow, at the foot of her sculptures. “How do we look deeper and ever deeper into those subjects?
“This piece, initially, was about looking at a sort of the post-apocalyptic landscape for indigenous people. So, they are witnesses of that really difficult history [of colonization] … these could be put anywhere on this planet and they’d still be, in a sense, surveying that difficult history.”
And this piece, she said, is about personal growth, for her, and her audience.
“So much of my work is about teaching myself how to slow…
