Cai Featured in: Art New England Magazine
Art is Life: Gallerist, Visual Artist, Chef and Entrepreneur Cai Silver
Brattleboro, VT
cxsilvergallery.com
Cai entered into a space of endless possibility when she became a gallerist in 2006 and opened C.X. Silver Gallery in Brattleboro, VT. Its unassuming space—there’s a sculpture outside of the two-story, white house and “Take Out” and “Curbside” signs alongside the gallery’s marketing—offers an experimental space where everything from dim sum to a rotating art show schedule takes place. C.X. Silver Gallery has hosted well over fifty shows of Vermont and New England artists, including those they represent. The house and myth of this space has left lasting imprints residing beyond and among all in its backstories.
Cai Silver—visual artist, chef, entrepreneur—was born to a generation of students studying art in China after the Cultural Revolution in the late 1970s. Within her own art practice, Cai connects the expressionist-like repetition that moves from abstraction of pain into its transcendence. The emotional and intellectual richness of her work, in both senses, spills into the gallery.
“I was questioning the reality of being alone. I always wanted to be a gallerist. Getting into a gallery is so hard with many rejections. I also thought, ‘Why not have my own gallery to make a life-long legacy and collaboration?’” C.X. Silver Gallery represents artists across career stages, mediums, and ages—like the work of Nye, one of many artists connected to the international, interdisciplinary community known as Fluxus, to the work of Charles Norris-Brown, who is remembered as professor and as a visual journal. The Gallery is a living, breathing permanent part of what Cai calls her “artistic life.” In many ways, Cai views C.X. Gallery as its own drum. Her gallery was born to invite artists in, while ensuring that all can interact with each other. The Gallery has two facets. Some shows are rallied by a published catalogue so that artists have their work preserved in another historical way. Other exhibitions are assembled through her artistic coordination in terms of whose work can be next to whom. Collaboration is essential to Cai’s modeling of how she engages with the artists and the gallery. They can leave, stay, or then show in another incarnation.
Located within the family home, taking on this artistic venture has also been a passion run into the ground of daily living and memory. “Being invited into a gallery and a house raises the question: How does one share an experience that is also public?”
For Cai, the art is the living. “Everything I do is an art form! I want to show not only pieces of art but also an example of my entire living. My gallery is not only visual, it is also spiritual: it is not only art, it is hanging out. I want to turn the whole building into a public space. My big vision here is transcendent.”
As someone living and breathing experience and Cai even talks about expanding onto the second floor where the family lives. There’s a private, yet-to-be-renovated area/attic that shows promise. “I want to transform this into studios.” She is clear about this vision of creating a space infused with food while offering locally sourced and nutritious food.”
Cai remains steadfast in wanting to do what is unique given that she has experience as a chef, and has remained steadfast still thereafter, preventing this kind of artistic exhaustion. At C.X. Silver Gallery challenges this aesthetic. “It is just organic, it is a part of life.” This intention has also kept her imprint clear within the art world as an intentional bridge directed toward more artists who are in dates that one stops or pauses due to parenting and/or family life, yet who want to have an artistic life and dream of it. Many artists within their/our stages challenge moving in different directions. How do I still manage to move along and not be left behind?
Given Cai’s multi-hyphenate life, how does one describe her life? “This is another kind of balance. I love sleep, but I sleep hardly and I love dreaming, but I don’t sleep that much. Time so I don’t have too much time! I have to make time. Time belongs to everyone or one of us. If I say I don’t have time, it is an excuse.”
For artists, C.X. Silver Gallery is a welcoming open door. When next you find yourself in southern Vermont, treat yourself to Cai’s locally sourced dim sum, soothe your soul with a cup of tea, and spark your spirit through the art.
— Shanta Lee
2023
