Supplement to Across Common Grounds: Contemporary Art Outside the Center, an exhibition at Bates College Museum of Art, October, 2024 - March, 2025

from an unmarked point in the horizon continues the conversation of topics brought up in the expansive contemporary art exhibition Across Common Grounds. Through original writings by diverse scholars and artists, this small volume provides more discovery and connection, and serves as a memento from the exhibition that takes the form of a special edition arts magazine. This publication highlights new work today that unites rural studies with arts practice beyond one ephemeral exhibition.

Across Common Grounds displays the works by over 20 artists, proclaiming that some of the most engaging and relevant artwork being made in or about America today is often related to places that exist outside of exclusive urban art centers. This art ties us to others and to the land around us and confronts negative assumptions made about rural living and making. 

This art addresses themes that are vital to aspects of our daily lives today such as the relationships between migration and belonging, labor and craftwork, bodies and landscapes, and extraction and placekeeping.

This supplementary publication contains overviews of the artists whose works are on view–all actively making around the US and beyond, as well as an introductory essay by curator Samantha Sigmon delving into the lineage of thinkers she followed for conceiving of the exhibition. It also contains artwork by Portland-based Lokotah Sanborn, an interview with former Bates Visiting Assistant Professor in Anthropology Jen K. AlVarez Hughes, essays on craft by art historians Julia Silverman and Clio Rom, and a poem by ethan s. evans. Taken together, this miscellany takes us on a personal journey of what words like “rural” and “outside” can mean. 

Authors: K. Samantha Sigmon, ethan s. evans, Jen K. AlVarez Hughes, Clio Rom, Julia Silverman, and Lokotah Sanborn

Softcover, 66 pages, 15 color images, 23 x 18 cm (9 x 7 in)

Published by Bates College Museum of Art