Cordon Sanitaire by Rachel Loischild Wins Best in Show
We are thrilled to announce that Cordon Sanitaire, an installation of willow branches, woven into a spiral fence in the lower meadow of Beals Preserve, has been awarded best-in-show by art juror Lisa Barthelson. The work was conceived and built over 10 days in June by Roslindale artist Rachel Loischild.
Cordon Sanitaire is a willow installation, up to ten feet tall in places and forty feet long, that moves through the meadow in curves and undulations. The work draws on a specific and largely forgotten history: the wattle enclosures built around plague villages in medieval and early modern Europe, constructed to seal the sick inside and protect those beyond the boundary. The fence was at once an act of care and an act of abandonment. To those outside, it marked safety. To those within, it marked the end. At that scale, in those villages, wattle fencing was an ordinary material turned toward an extraordinary purpose.
The same woven willow that marked a garden or penned an animal became the boundary between the living and the dying. The fence is fully self-supporting, all materials are natural and biodegradable.
Lisa said about the installation: “Cordon Sanitaire is powerful, relevant, visually stunning, and a work of devotion. It is a piece that rewards both looking and lingering…an invitation to spend time moving through, around, and within.”
Rachel Loischild makes work about places and lives shaped by histories of control, exclusion, and erasure. Trained in studio art and the social sciences, she follows these histories through research into landscapes, toward what has been obscured, taken, or left behind. She is a Massachusetts Cultural Council Fellow and has received grants from the Boston Opportunity Fund, American Aftermaths, the Puffin Foundation, and Berkshire Taconic Artist’s Resource Trust. Her work has been exhibited widely and is held in numerous public and private collections, including museum and institutional holdings that span regional and national programs.
Art Juror Lisa Barthelson is a three-time Art on the Trails exhibitor and Rutland, MA, resident. Her work is inspired by a reverence for the natural environment and a drive for sustainability, repurposing what she already owns to make art. Her mixed media, printmaking, sculpture, and installation work have been featured in New England and New York gallery and museum exhibitions. She received a 2022 Finalist Artist Fellowship Grant in Drawing & Printmaking from the Massachusetts Cultural Council. The site-specific sculpture: ’hangling, family debris’ was purchased by the Newport Art Museum for their Permanent Collection. Barthelson works from her studio in Worcester, MA.