A Living Landscape in Motion
Great Marsh Artists Fellows Exhibition
at Rocky Neck Cultural Center
6 Wonson Street, Gloucester Massachusetts
November 6 – 22, 2026
Gallery Hours:
Fridays, Saturdays, and Sundays
12:00 – 5:00 PM
– REGISTRATION REQUESTED –
A collaboration between Manship Artists Residency and Artists for the Great Marsh.
Funded in part by the Kathleen Van Demark Fund for the Great Marsh.
The Great Marsh Starts Here! A Living Landscape in Motion brings together artists from the Great Marsh Artists Fellowship for an exhibition celebrating three years of artistic exploration, collaboration, and engagement with one of New England’s most significant coastal landscapes.
The Great Marsh is the largest continuous stretch of salt marsh in New England, a remarkable coastal ecosystem of tidal creeks, wetlands, and barrier beaches that supports an extraordinary diversity of wildlife. Beginning in Gloucester and extending north along the Massachusetts coast toward the New Hampshire border, it is a vital living landscape that connects communities, sustains biodiversity, and shapes our relationship with the sea.
The exhibition features work by artists who have participated in the Great Marsh Artists Fellowship, a program created to support artists in developing new projects inspired by the Great Marsh, its natural and man-made history and significance, as well as its beauty and immediate fragility. Over the past three years, 22 artists have been selected as Great Marsh Artist Fellows and have dedicated themselves to creating 24 projects that connect art, ecology, history, science, and community. Some have been completed and presented to the community, others are still underway.
Artists and Works
The exhibition brings together work by 18 of the 22 Great Marsh Artists Fellows including Resa Blatman, Gail Boyajian, Marcia Ciro, Robert J. Bradshaw, Michele Brody, Anne Eder,Karen Futral, Isaac Grenader, Robert Honstein, Jenn Houle, Amy Kaczur, Andrea LeBlanc, Susan Quateman, Katie Pustizzi, Norah Solorzano, Erika Sutter, and Alex Young.
The work presented moves across artistic disciplines and mediums—from painting, photography, and sculpture to video, book art, music, animation, and dance—revealing the many ways a living landscape can be seen, experienced, interpreted, and expressed.
Public Programs
Public programs will accompany the exhibition and will include artist talks, presentations, workshops, film and video, performance, and conversations among Great Marsh Artist Fellows.
❖ Saturday, November 7, 4 – 6 PM. Opening Reception.
❖ Saturday, November 14, 5 PM. Premiere public screening of Erika Sutter’s short film, Legacy.
❖ Sunday, November 15, 5-6 PM. The Crab and The Knot, a multi-media presentation by Susan Quateman and Andrea LeBlanc of Arpeggione Ensemble.
❖ Saturday, November 21, 10 am–12 pm. Start your morning with a sound and visual bath in the tranquil space of the Great Marsh. Robert Bradshaw’s new Great Marsh meditation app as an immersive experience.
Image credits: Above inset – Dream Eaters Collective_Ebb Remains_Great Heron Leaf and Crab, above background: Michele Brody, and Left – Katie Pustizzi_The Great Marsh_ Liquid Spine Dance Troupe.
About the Great Marsh Artists Fellowship
The Great Marsh Artists Fellowship was established following the 2023 Great Marsh Concert, a collaboration between Manship Artists Residency and Artists for the Great Marsh. The fellowship provides $2,000 grants to artists to create projects inspired by the Great Marsh and to develop those projects in partnership with organizations throughout the region.
The program recognizes artists as important observers, interpreters, storytellers, and participants in the life of a landscape. By placing artists in conversation with environmental organizations, historic sites, conservation groups, scientists, educators, and local communities, the fellowship creates opportunities for new forms of public engagement with the Great Marsh.
Since its creation, the fellowship has supported 22 artists and 24 projects, with projects ranging across visual art, music, film, dance, performance, writing, interdisciplinary practice, and community engagement.
The Great Marsh Starts Here! A Living Landscape in Motion continues that work by bringing the artists together in one place and inviting audiences to experience the Great Marsh not as a single subject, but as a complex and interconnected living landscape.
RIGHT: Great Marsh Artists Fellows Fieldtrip, 2025. Peter Van Demark photographer.
The exhibition marks an important milestone in a partnership that began with The Great Marsh Concert in 2023, a collaboration between Manship Artists Residency and Artists for the Great Marsh. The concert brought artists and members of the Great Marsh community together around a shared interest in the landscape and its future. That initial collaboration led to the formation of the Great Marsh Artists Fellowship, which provides $2,000 grants to artists to develop projects that premiere at organizations and institutions connected to the Great Marsh.
The fellowship has grown into a network of artists and organizational partners extending across the Great Marsh region. Over the past three years, fellows have developed and presented projects with organizations including Essex Heritage, Greenbelt, Essex County’s Land Trust, Mass Audubon, Parker River National Wildlife Refuge, The Trustees of Reservations, TownGreen, Essex National Heritage Area, Historic New England, Massachusetts Bay National Estuary Program, Merrimack Valley Planning Commission, Plum Island Ecosystems LTER at the Marine Biological Laboratory, and the Wilkie Center for the Performing Arts and Bass Institute at The Governor’s Academy.
The Great Marsh Artists Fellowship and this exhibition are funded in part by the Kathleen Van Demark Fund for the Great Marsh.
