The Net Works

Manship Artists Residency invited Vermont artist Erika Senft Miller to create a public art project inspired by Gloucester’s fishing industry as a means to commemorate the City’s 400+ anniversary as America’s home port. Begun in 2020 during the pandemic, Erika’s project, The Net Works, benefited from the proliferation of opportunities to attend events and connect with people virtually over zoom.

Senft Miller’s phenomenal, multi-sensory installation represented a collaborative effort of a team of artists and local fishermen. The installation at 52 Commercial Street, was located in the heart of Gloucester’s working waterfront in a building that was a former seafood processing plant. A monumental fishing net served as a literal and metaphorical symbol in an immersive exhibit that included scents, sounds, and tactile experiences, where visitors, like fish, moved through a passage of netting. The Net Works honored Gloucester’s iconic working waterfront and its generations of fisherman with the net symbolizing the interconnectedness of man and sea and the community itself.

Multi-sensory artist Erika Senft Miller, who has coordinated other community-based, site-specific productions explains, “No matter where we are, we’re all connected. Whatever happens in the fishing community in Gloucester affects us all. The Net Works plunges us into this experience at a crucial moment in the life of America’s oldest fishing port.”

Senft Miller described her vision for the exhibition as: “My team and I wanted to make something that you can touch, smell, hear, move through, and contemplate. We imagined an experience that entails walking through a full-scale fishing net and engaging with a mixed-media composition that incorporates the creaking of a boat, the voices of the fishermen, the sounds of blocks, lines and the sea, and scents of fishing life that have lingered for so many generations.”

Senft Miller’s team consisted of the founder of Alice & the Magician Sensory Design, Aaron Wisniewski, to incorporate scent; media technologist and composer Miles Dean Ewell for sound as well as musician Neha Ewell; video by Menghan Wang; the photography of Paul Cary Goldberg; glass blown by Rich Arentzen; and Peter Waxdal of SenovvA, Inc., who designed and installed interactive generative experiential features. Many members of the local fishing community contributed to this project, especially Gloucester native and former fisherman James Tarrantino, and commercial fisherman Captain Joseph Sanfilippo.

Research for the project was supported by Prometheus Circle of the Manship Artists Residency, and a learning grant from the New England Foundation for the Arts. The project has also received grants from The Vermont Arts Council, The Bruce J. Anderson Foundation, and Awesome Gloucester. Support and contributions were also provided by Burlington City Arts, The Cape Ann Museum, and Maritime Gloucester. Monte Rome, the owner of Intershell, also donated the exhibition space.

The exhibition opened May 10th and ran through May 27th.