Our Yard in the Future features a rare selection of paintings, drawings, comics, cardboard cut-outs, broadsides, and other paraphernalia, most of which has never been publicly exhibited before, by one of America’s most gifted and prolific outsiders. Curated by artist, curator and critic Peter Gallo, who knew and corresponded with the artist, the show features some of Gayleen Aiken’s earliest works, and spotlights historic examples from the l950’s, 60’s, and 70’s gleaned from the significant collection of works discovered in her apartment after her death in 2005.

Artist, musician, and historian of her beloved hometown Barre, Vermont, Gayleen Aiken produced a haunting and beautiful body of work that often combine texts and images; her themes include music and musical instruments, the large old farmhouse where she grew up, the lyricism of Vermont’s seasons, the granite industry, and the pleasures and ordeals of rural life. These themes are threaded together by a cast of characters, members of an imaginary extended family, which she called The Raimbilli Cousins.