SALEM — A year of stories and dreams captured through art will be on display at Old Town Hall starting Wednesday, but the artist at the center of a community in residence hopes the energy continues beyond her time in the spotlight.
Claudia Paraschiv, Salem’s Public Artist in Residence for 2023, has taken over the first floor of Old Town Hall, 32 Derby St., for “A City of Care + Wonder,” an exhibit built around her work last year.
Paraschiv was Salem’s fourth artist in residence after the initiative launched in 2020, the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic. It began as “an outgrowth of a desire from the Public Art Commission in the city of Salem to elevate the profile of Artists Row and provide unique opportunities for artists to dig in and get some teeth in the community,” said Julie Barry, Salem’s senior planner of arts and culture.
It was easy in the program’s first year for the artist to do more than create art, as society suddenly found itself sheltering in place amid a pandemic, Barry explained — 2020 brought Creative Blocks founders Jacob DeGeal and Lauren Smedley to Artists Row as the inaugural Public Artists in Residence.
“Their skillsets actually aligned so well with what was happening in the world around us,” Barry said. “They helped us with wayfinding and distance management when we were first experiencing COVID and the impacts on our community.”
Taking on the mantle comes with perks, but also requirements. The artist is paid a $2,000 monthly stipend for eight months and works out of one of the buildings at Artists Row 25 hours a week as they run programs on the city’s behalf. They’re also given “an opportunity to showcase their work either in the public realm somewhere or Old Town Hall, however they’d like to proceed,” Barry said.
“This is all about how artists are interfacing with visitors, tourists, people who live here, the entire fabric of ages within our community,” she said. “Showcasing Claudia’s exhibition is going to be a really wonderful showcase of not just Claudia’s work, but the community that built up Claudia’s work.”
That’s because last year’s artist focused not so much on creating art, as she did pushing the city to create art for itself.
Paraschiv, founder of Margin Street-based Studioful Design, spent her residency on Artists Row by running workshops for others to create and explore. While she was paid for her time working in Salem, she also worked to line up grants behind the scenes to not just attract other creators to events, but ensure they get paid for it, she explained.
Many of the works on display in Old Town Hall for the exhibition were created by Paraschiv in the end, but they’re made up of the ideas and stories of others.
In one corner, a more than 10-foot-tall map of the city has entire blocks of landscape swapped out for photos of places event attendees identified as where they “feel a sense of wonder,” Paraschiv explained. Opposite the map, 36 stories shared by event attendees are represented by a grid of egg shells.
“It’s all about how you translate someone’s experience,” she said, looking over the egg shells. “It’s the hatching of a fragile idea that becomes strong as a tree’s roots.”
The image of a tree sits at the center of the experience, with the “Tree of Care + Wonder” representing a common theme not just throughout the events of 2023, but the exhibit on display in 2024. It’s one that is set to grow as the exhibit ends with a table of ideas coming out of all the events.
“From all those conversations, I came up with six categories for how we can create a city of care and wonder,” Paraschiv said looking to the table and reading three of the categories out loud. “Creative self-expression; kindness and dignity; symbols of belonging.”
Each category then brings forward three ideas Salem can implement, Paraschiv explained — like installing chalk walls downtown for folks to hold conversations like children on a sidewalk, or a free little library that shares art supplies instead of books.
“The culmination is using all this information gathered to come up with these policies and project proposals: ‘practical and poetic projects for a city of care and wonder,’” she said. “We get so democratic in the design of our cities, but there’s poetry to it too. There’s art to it too. There’s emotion, and the way the whole exhibition is set up is to convey that poetry exists where people come to live.”
The exhibit is free to all and open from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Wednesday through Sunday, beginning Jan. 17 and ending Jan. 28.
Contact Dustin Luca at 978-338-2523 or DLuca@salemnews.com. Follow him at facebook.com/dustinluca or on Twitter @DustinLucaSN.