Aurora Archive(s) curator Samantha Dalmas brings together 14 diverse artists to preserve and champion the handmade and the collaborative.
Art need not be a solitary pursuit. Some of the greatest work can emerge in conversation between artists and friends, each disparate piece informing and elevating the others. In the Berkshires, Samantha James Dalmas, curator and founder of Aurora Archive(s), recognizes just that. Bringing together fourteen artists across various mediums, Voices Across Time is not simply an exhibition or a marketplace; it is akin to a modern-day salon. Dalmas sees it as a “happening.”
Dalmas’ peers, described as “a collective of friends bound by discipline and devotion to craft,” achieve a unity that transcends their differing modes of creation. Whether through jewelry, textiles, fine art, or ceramics, each is characterized by a slow, deliberate handmade technique, a direct challenge to this era of paper-thin speed and the relentless chase of novelty. Dalmas has spent her twenty-five-year career cultivating an understanding of careful craftsmanship, including serving as Press Officer and Archivist for Dame Zaha Hadid and working at Liberty of London, where she collaborated with the likes of Dries van Noten, Yohji Yamamoto, and Ann Demeulemeester.
“This is about voices, across generations, disciplines, and time, meeting in one room.”
Samantha James Dalmas
Running from July 17th through October 10th in Great Barrington, Massachusetts, the happening was born of Dalmas’ time in the region: “Voices Across Time grew out of my own experience in the Berkshires, the conversations, the friendships, the unexpected sense of community that forms when people gather around the things they love. A happening felt truer than a marketplace. This is about voices, across generations, disciplines, and time, meeting in one room.”
Time and handmade objects are inextricably linked. To make something by hand requires skill, patience, and an open, respectful spirit. An artisan often learns aspects of their craft from preceding generations, linking them forever in an unending daisy-chain of artistic stewardship. In its mission statement for the event, Aurora Archive(s) states: “A quilt on the wall is never only a quilt; it is a mother or grandmother bent over fabric, mending a shirt button, repairing a torn hem, small, repeated acts that return us to the past. Each piece in this collection asks the same of its viewer: to look, to remember, and to feel time pass through the work of the hand.”
Sometimes art comes not from some lofty attempt to reflect the human condition but from practicality. For Aldo Rossi, it was a beloved bracelet that brought about his pivot from fashion photography to leather working. Attempting to recreate a personal style staple he had worn daily for years, Rossi turned a one-day project with a boot maker friend into a passion for creating timeless pieces destined to become family heirlooms, passed from one steward to the next.
Daisy Dodge is a visual artist and author who has worked across painting, collage, and Louis Comfort Tiffany-style glassmaking, but quilting has remained her steadfast medium. Quilting since 1992, Dodge aptly bridges the past and present through her translation of the Bauhaus Art Movement into her work. Brilliantly colored geometric patterns are stitched into each piece, a kaleidoscope of past and present, history and the contemporary.
Dalmas’ Aurora Archive(s), like the diverse array of artists involved, eschews traditional exhibition structure, becoming a curatorial platform and a sounding board for artistic collaboration. “Voices Across Time is about the people as much as the pieces,” she reflects, “the tension and harmony between the old and the new, the celebrated and the overlooked.”
Homepage banner: Alexi Lubomirski, Untitled #4. Homepage thumbnail, Carlo Mongiardo, Wild Flower Field, 2025. Inside image left, Shauna Burke earrings, silver beehive remnant drops, champagne diamonds, South Sea Baroque pearls set in 18k yellow gold and right, Michael Dickey, Ceramic Colored Tower, and vintage Yohji Yamamoto dress, 2004.
Voices Across Time by Aurora Archive(s), 70 Railroad Street, Great Barrington, MA. Open Monday – Saturday 11am-6pm, Sundays, 12pm-5pm, and Tuesdays by appointment only.
