Months upon months of pandemic restrictions can take a toll on anyone — especially a community that thrives on interaction, on collaboration, and on opportunities to learn and discover.

The College’s Center for Creative Exploration partnered with a local senior living community to figure out how to bridge that isolation. The result is a new exhibition, Zammesei.

The exhibition’s tagline, Bringing the Lancaster Community Together Through the Arts, pretty much says it all. CCE worked with Garden Spot Village in New Holland to outline several CCE online Winter workshops that would be of interest to Garden Spot Village residents. Spots in those workshops were then reserved for GSV residents to take, free of charge, alongside members of the general public: all they had to do was log on to a computer and click the class.

Zammesei: Bringing the Lancaster Community Together Through the Arts

April 1-30

Online at https://pcad.edu/exhibits_beyond/

In person (to the Garden Spot Village Community only) at Garden Spot Village gallery, 433 S. Kinzer Ave., New Holland

 

Some of the work that resulted from those workshops in watercolor, collage, Notan design, poetry, and automatic drawing, along with works from other CCE classes, has been compiled in Zammesei by curator Aidan Thackray, a junior Illustration major. Though the classes were online, the connections that could be built, and the art that results, are all real. Zammesei became a celebration of art’s intrinsic ability to bring people together.

“Togetherness during a global pandemic is in short supply,” Thackray says. “The concept of ‘zammesei’ (which means ‘to be together’ in Pennsylvania Dutch) lies at the heart of this exhibition and stems from the rich traditions of this region.”

And for Thackray, who balances her classwork with a job as a Life Enrichment Aide at a different senior living facility, the experience has been a rewarding one. It has, she says in the exhibition’s online publication, “helped me realize just how strong and adaptive our community has been during a time of such uncertainty … it’s definitely made me feel a closeness to the community that I’ve never had before.”

 

Can you, in a nutshell, outline everything you’ve been responsible for in this exhibition?

AT: I was responsible for the exhibition title and refining the concept, designing the exhibition branding, designing the digital exhibition booklet, and completing the in-person gallery installation. 

VIEW ZAMMESEI HERE

VIEW EXHIBITION BOOK HERE

WALK THROUGH “ZAMMESEI” HERE:

Artists exhibiting in “Zammesei” include Hannah Bost, Lindsey Cammauf, Matt Chapman, Erin Dorney, Donna Felton, Noelle Fortna, Eva Gallagher, Bertha Hawk, Evelyn Hershey, Le Hinton, Angie Hohenadel, Doreen Jacoby, Michael Kelchner, Lia Lindemuth, Nichole Madonna, Connie McKane, Donna Milton, Joann Monk, and Barbara Strasko.