Echos of Belonging: Latest show at Pitcher-Goff House puts young artists on display

On a warm summer night, Nick Paciorek’s Pitcher-Goff House gallery provides a unique and inspiring environment in which to appreciate art from around our region.

If you haven’t visited this unusual space yet, there’s still time before the weather cools. The Pitcher-Goff house is an odd and twisty marvel of a bygone era, once the mansion of a baron of the industrial revolution, more recently the Pawtucket Children’s Museum for many years (note, children are no longer on display here).

In stark contrast, the outdoor area, where most of the fun happens during the good weather, is formed of a collection of shipping containers, refit with doors and providing an intimate viewing experience for the art hung within. Wandering the patio from container to container provides artistic surprises around every corner.

The current show, Echos of Belonging, was curated by Catarina Maina and launched on July 22 with a robust turn-out and touching performances by INDI-DOS, a poetry/jazz duo with spoken word chops. The theme of the show is the quest for identity within younger communities, and Maina and Paciorek curated it to focus on the work of younger and emerging artists, with a mix of photography, painting, and sculpture. 

Artists from RI and throughout New England are featured. “We narrowed the submissions down, and selected work that had a sense of community and relationships. Then each container has its own motif, like the ‘hand’ container, or ‘the black light’ area,” says Maina, explaining that the theme really emerged from the submissions, not the other way around.

Check paciorek.com for future openings or to schedule a viewing of the show.