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KEVIN GUTTING

Maggie Nowinski, left, and Burns Maxey have created a sound and video installation, “Reflections,” on the ground floor of Eastworks in Easthampton. The piece, which, according to an artists’ statement, “maps the city of Easthampton through a series of constructed conversations, recorded correspondence and route documentation,” will have its opening reception from 5 to 8 p.m. Saturday, and will run through Nov. 30 on Wednesday, Thursday, Saturday and Sunday afternoons or evenings.

EASTHAMPTON - Ask eight city residents what the three main streets are in Easthampton and you might get some interesting answers.

Whether it's Union Street, Main Street and Cottage Street or Pleasant Street, East Street and Holyoke Street, the responses provide insight into how the responder perceives the place he inhabits.

"Most people were pretty sure about their streets, too," said artist Maggie Nowinski.

Exploring the different ways that residents of a place experience that place is exactly what Nowinski and fellow city artist Burns Maxey set out to do when they began work on their exhibit "Reflections," which opens today on the first floor of the Eastworks Building.

A reception will be held from 5 p.m. to 8 p.m.

The show is timed to open with today's monthly Easthampton Art Walk, in which businesses and other locations in the city feature the work of various artists.

Nowinski, 36, teaches studio and art history courses at several area colleges and has a studio in the Paragon Arts and Industry Building.

Maxey, 35, works for the communications office of the Williston Northampton School and has a studio at the One Cottage Street studios.

The two artists met in 2008 and realized they had much in common. Both had previously created art centered around the concept of place, specifically Easthampton.

"I wonder if the place matters, or if I am interested in the idea of place," Maxey mused.

When city's Cultural Council put out a call to artists seeking projects focused on the "character of Easthampton," in exchange for grant funding, Maxey and Nowinski jumped at the chance.

'Reflections' may be centered on the idea of place, but it is about more than just how people perceive a geographic location in which they spend much of their time.

The audiovisual installation is about interactions between people, both strangers and friends, the artists said. It's about shared experiences and how people end up being in their place - unique turns of random and planned events that bring them there.

Observers of place

And it's about the role of artists as observers of a place.

To illustrate these themes, Nowinski and Maxey recruited eight people who live in Easthampton, young and old and male and female, to answer a series of simple questions about the city, a "conversation between strangers," Nowinski said.

The artists found their subjects in different ways - people they both knew of and came across.

"We sort of took a look at a wide range of people we wanted to know more about," Maxey said.

Nowinski, who has a studio in the Paragon Arts and Industry Building, asked maintenance worker Benny Murphy to be in the project.

She said she thought that Murphy's vocation would lead to interesting perspectives on some of the questions.

Maxey said she asked a neighbor, Michael McDonnell, whom she frequently sees walking his dog on her street.

She found another, Markeil Cintron, while walking on the Manhan Rail Trail.

Other city residents in the exhibit include Plum Crane, Audrey Douglass, Jameson Lavo, Doris Madsen and Diane Sulisz.

The face of each person speaking is shown up close on a series of projection screens hung on the wall of the exhibit space.

"I think it's very visually compelling," Maxey said.

Naming three main streets is one of those questions. Naming a building and describing it is another. One popular answer is the recently renamed Our Lady of the Valley Catholic church on Adams Street. But the different ways in which the subjects describe the church and other buildings gives insight into the way memories and perception work.

"The responses say a lot," Maxey said.

In a third question, the subjects are asked to describe a typical route they take when traveling through the city.

During this segment, Maxey and Nowinski scale small ladders to draw the routes in real time with marker on a large map.

"We're sort of listening and responding in the moment," Nowinski said.

The subject is asked to repeat each question, a strategy the artists later used in the lengthy editing process to make it seem as if each interviewee is in turn interviewing the next subject.

The idea, the artists said, is to separate themselves from the subjects, a way of reinforcing their role as observers in the process.

Another way the two sought to achieve that separation is through written correspondence they sent each other on postcards throughout the seven-month project. On the postcards, the artists discuss and reflect on what it means to be an artist in Easthampton.

The postcards, which the public will be able to hold and read, will be displayed in a small side room of the exhibit space, a physical separation from the eight subjects in the main room. Maxey and Nowinski also created videos of each other acting out and interpreting what the other was saying in the postcard. They said it was a way for them to physically share the experience of the other without having been there originally, the artists said.

'Reflections' will be up through the end of the month. The schedule is Wednesdays and Thursdays from 5:30 p.m. to 8 p.m., and Saturdays and Sundays from 1 p.m. to 6 p.m.

Matt Pilon can be reached at mpilon@gazettenet.com.