"Inspired by a rabbinic contemplation of the question, 'Who is rich?' and by their collective wise answer, 'The few who are content with their portion,' this exhibition celebrated the works of artists with very little material means, but powerful in their creativity, resourcefulness, resilience, and delight in the simple abundance of their lives. A featured exhibition film was, Grandma Prisbrey's Bottle Village, made by Academy Award-winning filmmakers, Allie Light and Irving Saraf, and gifted in 2020, to the permanent archival collection of AVAM. A suite of richly hand-decorated furnishings by Brother Pickard, a Capuchin hermit monk was featured, alongside a variety of handmade memory jugs, anonymous bejeweled boxes of life’s most humble and personal mementos, the rag dolls of French Holocaust child survivor, Michel Nedjar, who had been hidden among rags in a Paris attic, alongside the hauntingly beautiful, stark shadow figures drawn by former slave and disabled plantation worker, Bill Traylor - later hailed as one of America’s all-time greatest visionary artists. This exhibition also featured the “Baba” cocoon-like creations created by Downs Syndrome Artist, Judith Scott, who emerged from decades of institutional confinement to create complex, chrysalis-like, woven sculptures - perfect visual metaphors for spirit emerging triumphant.
AVAM’s three-story central stairwell was filled by an installation of the glittering healing machines created out of everyday materials by the farmer Emery Blagdon." - Founder, Director, and Chief Curator, Rebecca Hoffberger