NORTH ADAMS, Mass. — Jarvis Rockwell's "American" assemblages now hang in the foyer of Bowman Hall at Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts.

 

"It's a lot easier than taking it home," Rockwell joked as he pointed out some of his favorite tchotchke fixed to one of the assemblages at his reception Tuesday. "It's collage and I just began on one end and kept going until I ran out of space."

 

The assemblages of lightly draw lines and shapes scattered with small items of all sorts have been a fixture at DownStreet Art over the past few years and will most likely be familiar to anyone who has walked down main street.

 

"Jarvis has been in at least four different storefronts in the past seven years creating these. He would have conversations, he would collect things from people and put that in these pieces," associate professor of visual art Melanie Mowinski said.

 

Mowinski, who opened the reception, said former president of the Berkshire Cultural Resource Center Johnathan Secor was instrumental in bringing the assemblages to the school.

 

She said before Secor, the collages weren't exactly portable. 

 

"Jarvis was drawing on walls and walls are walls they are not portable," she said. "So then Johnathan came up with the idea of creating these movable walls that Jarvis could draw on and they could become these artworks."

 

She said Rockwell donated the three walls in 2013 after a retrospective of his work was displayed at the Norman Rockwell Museum in Stockbridge, however, with the renovation at Bowman Hall and other obstacles, it took a few years to bring "America" to the classroom building.

 

Before closing the reception, Mowinski said she used a crown Rockwell happened to find in the trash that day as a "talking stick." Those who attended the reception were able to vocalize their reactions to the artwork.

 

"We used it as a talking stick voice assemblage, and everybody who was here gave a response to his work," she said. "It was a collage of voices and someone said it reminded them of science fiction and someone said they felt it was accessible. Everyone had something to say."  

 

Mowinski said the assemblages seem to start conversations.

 

Rockwell agreed and said he invites people to take their own journey.

 

"I don't know how it looks to other people necessarily but ... they make all of these things and they pile up," he said. "When our civilization is done, you will be able to go out into what where once called backyard and stick a shovel in the ground and you will come up with thousands of these things."

 

Students from Laura Thompson's Advance Museum Studies class created labels to accompany the works.