“Remnants of the Ameckmite Library Collection (Artifact No. 067,” circa 20th century, various authors, paper, yardstick, buckram cloth, ink (books on shelves above lectern); “Reader for Occult Studies,” 2024, by Andrew Tosiello, paper, toner (on lectern); “Memorial, Ready to Wear – #1” and “Memorial, Ready to Wear – #2,” both 2024, cowhide and ink (against wall in background) Photo courtesy of Sidle House Gallery

Back in the 1960s, there was a school in Turtle Island, Vermont, called St. Amelia’s College of Speculative Timbre that was remarkably progressive and experimental. Among its intellectual innovations were spontaneous postings around campus of artistic and linguistic prompts called “Provocations” that professors would ponder and incorporate into their course work.

Professor Cummings taught “The Ethics of Listening,” and Professor Samuel Drexler built odd musical contraptions taken from literary works, such as “the Detestable Electrical Machine” H.P. Lovecraft wrote about in his short horror story “From Beyond.” Professor Lampman taught his theory of sentient cloud covers of Jupiter and Saturn, while guest lecturers like planetary geologist Jim Head would hunt for meteorites in the fields surrounding St. Amelia’s.

But in 1996, the whole place burned to the ground, ending the spirit of adventure and learning that had meant so much to so many. The tragedy reverberated throughout administration and faculty, as well as the many alumni for whom St. Amelia’s changed their whole approach to knowledge. Librarian Angelina Larson recalled carrying books out of the flaming library, but lamented saving only a fraction of her beloved volumes.

Except that, of course, none of this is true; not a single word of it. But that’s precisely the bizarre and wondrous brilliance of the hypnotic conceptual experiment that is “things we lost in the: The Legacy of St. Amelia’s College of Speculative Timbre” at Sidle House in Freeport (through Nov. 1). By the end of our time in this barn gallery, we deeply, earnestly, longingly wish for it to be true – every character, every course and every nutty professor.

The show is as pure an illustration of the power of narrative as you’ll likely encounter in an art show. Curator Colin Cheney – a poet, musician and artist – invited a group of artists to create works, along with their own fictional narratives about the college, or their imagined recollections and experiences of it, then installed them in the various stalls of the barn. Media ranges widely, encompassing painting, sculpture, bookmaking, video, sound, photography, ceramics, collage and Duchampian ready-mades.

These all work in concert to conjure an illusion of a place that never existed, even as we become increasingly convinced – through imaginative, sometimes political, sometimes purely wacky narratives accompanying each work – of the thrumming intellectual life of the campus and its unorthodox educators.

Cheney’s inspirations come from the works of Thai artist and independent filmmaker Apichatpong Weerasethakul (particularly “Primitive”) and The Museum of Jurassic Technology in Culver City, California. “Primitive” was a dreamy, surrealist multi-platform work that, according to the New Museum in New York, which hosted its U.S. debut, “explores the intersections between man and nature, rural and urban life, and personal and political memory.” The museum is a modern cabinet of curiosities containing ethnographic and historical items, art, scientific ephemera and enigmatic objects of unknown origin. The museum labels relate – as in Cheney’s show – unverifiable and sometimes patently incredulous histories with the intention of interrogating the authenticity of objects, memory and even our own perceptions and interpretations.

Some artists in the Freeport show take the occasion as an opportunity to explore political and cultural themes that thread through their own works. Jordan Carey, for example, creates garments (“Memorial Ready to Wear” #1 and #2) made of cowhide and ink that look like tombstones. In his fictional narrative, he criticizes the school’s refusal to properly honor the unidentified slaves buried in its graveyard. “Each uneven inch these stones sink into the ground re-performs the expendable relationship that St. Amelia’s had with them,” Carey writes.

“Gift of My Mother’s Mother, Rhythm of My Heart,” 2024, by Aminata Conteh, steel, calabash, and glass beads. Photo courtesy of Sidle House Gallery

Aminata Conteh constructs an elaborate story about an antecedent (her grandmother’s sister’s cousin’s niece’s daughter) who attended St. Amelia’s and wanted to expand their collection of African Diasporic instruments. But the Dean was uninterested, so she asked friends to source materials, then sought the help of the woodworking and metal shop at the college to create her own. Conteh’s piece is a gourd “sourced from her friend’s trip to Sierra Leone” with beaded ornament threaded on steel wire “salvaged from the ruins of St. Amelia’s.”

Lokotah Sanborn, “Just Before the Dawn…,” aluminum print of collaged basket, Wabanaki symbology and newsprint Photo courtesy of the artist

Lokotah Sanborn’s aluminum print of collaged Wabanaki symbology, “Just Before the Dawn…” is offered with the observation that St. Amelia’s “was built on lands violently seized from the Abenaki people,” and that no trace remains from the college’s collection of experimental Wabanaki basketry, not even photographic evidence. Juria Toramae credits St. Amelia’s unconventional teaching methods and the way the school modeled boundary dissolution for her single-channel video, “Pelagic Dreams 2.” This mesmerizing work takes documentary images and taxonomic illustrations of sea life and feeds them into “machine learning models” so that we see them continuously morphing into new and unusual – and beautiful – lifeforms, prompting us to contemplate the difference between what is natural and what is artificial.

Juria Toramae, still from “Pelagic Dreams 2” Photo courtesy of the artist

Some of the stories these artists fabricate, however, are just plain zany. Ziyao (Seri) Zou created ceramic tableware with weird faces on them that she claims were reactions to the tedious formal dinners held in the van Elferen dormitory where students would be paired with teachers at tables. She relates how her soup got cold one night as a professor “rattled on interminably about the repairs being made to his observatory of bone after the extratropical cyclone the month before.” Or, she speculates, the cause of the monstrous tableware might be attributed simply to exhaustion she felt after her “Arboreal Linguistics 205” course.

Andrew Tosiello, in his quest to learn about a course on Occult Philosophy and Practice that no alumni are willing to admit to knowing about or taking, he creates a book of what he believes to be the texts used in the teaching of said philosophy and practices (Reader for Occult Studies). Because of the era in which it was taught, he notes, it’s “heavily skewed to white, male, Western authors. Had the college survived, I fervently believe that the syllabus would have been, rightfully, reevaluated to incorporate more diverse sources and perspectives.”

Jenny Ibsen, “Two winners and no losers” Photo courtesy of the artist

And there’s lightheartedness too. Jenny Ibsen’s “Two winners and no losers” weaves a sweet tale of her and her best friend playing cards at a table under the staircase of their homeroom at the college. (The fact that Ibsen and others were born after St. Amelia’s allegedly burned down is one hint that you’re in fantasyland here.) Ibsen recreates the cards, the scoring pad and even the pen they supposedly used, but all of these items are made from terracotta with underglaze, glaze and gold.

There are many more works, some of them made for the show and, so, arising organically from the fictional narratives that accompany them. Other artists contributed work that was already made and tied it loosely to St. Amelia’s. Burmese-born, Bangkok artist Maung Day’s three short videos have no discernible connection, except that he implies in their companion story that they may have come to him after a vision in a dream of a “ghost bird” that had been born at St. Amelia’s. The connection is improbably tenuous. But since it’s all a fiction anyway, the convoluted plots of these narratives needn’t really make any sense. Rather, they just add to the fun.

Scattered around these works are “artifacts” curated by Cheney (mostly sourced from his father’s barn) that supposedly came from the rubble of St. Amelia’s after the fire. Greeting us, in fact, is a charred door. The objects just layer on more kookiness to what is already an eccentric and absurdly absorbing concept.

Jorge S. Arango has written about art, design and architecture for over 35 years. He lives in Portland. He can be reached at: jorge@jsarango.com