James Barron Art
South Kent, Connecticut
July 11 – September 12 (by appointment only)
The Grass Has so Little to Do
curated by Deborah Goodman Davis
WORKS BY
Etel Adnan • Sam Akesuk • Eve Biddle • Vija Celmins • Francesco Clemente • Ann Craven • Tacita Dean • Lois Dodd • Spencer Finch • Charles Gaines • Brian Goeltzenleuchter • Andy Goldsworthy • Alex Katz • Ellsworth Kelly • Toba Khedoori • Byron Kim • Veronika Pausova • Kay Rosen • Ooloosie Saila • Susan G. Scott • Kiki Smith • Kunié Sugiura • Motohiro Takeda • Pola Wickham
The Grass Has So Little to Do
June 20 – August 30, 2026
James Barron Art, South Kent, Connecticut
Curated by Deborah Goodman Davis
Taking its title from Emily Dickinson’s poem “The Grass so little has to do,” this exhibition explores attention to nature as a form of resistance in an age of distraction. Dickinson’s ability to find meaning in the smallest details provides a framework for artists who engage the natural world as their subject.
Across painting, sculpture, photography, drawings and prints, installation, and scent, the works in this exhibition approach nature through observation, sensation, and structure. Sunrise and sunset mark the passage of time. Flowers and grass suggest fragility and endurance. Serpentine forms evoke danger and renewal. Moons and celestial bodies function as quiet cosmic clocks. Rainbows appear briefly — moments of wonder that refuse to last.
The exhibition brings together artists including Etel Adnan, Vija Celmins, Tacita Dean, Lois Dodd, Spencer Finch, Charles Gaines, Ellsworth Kelly, Kiki Smith, and Wolfgang Tillmans. Charles Gaines’s systems-based drawings of trees translate organic growth into rhythm and structure, while other artists in the exhibition engage light, atmosphere, landscape, and natural phenomena through sustained looking and perceptual attention.
Together, the works create a dialogue between observation and abstraction, between nature as lived experience and nature as structure.
In a moment when many feel anxious about the state of the natural world, these works offer not answers, but sustained attention — a mode of looking that feels grounding rather than overwhelming and that points toward the restorative possibilities of time spent with nature. The exhibition suggests that sustained attention to the natural world can offer a form of quiet steadiness in an unstable moment.
A live musical component is planned in conjunction with the exhibition, extending its exploration of cycles, repetition, and subtle change into the realm of sound.
Emily Dickinson