Artist's Statement

An artist and curator, Bess creates experiences out of borrowed objects, community, stories and research.  Her work emerges as a variety of community-sourced projects and presentations, and as artwork -- specifically what she calls 'exhibition installations.'  Through this work, Bess is aiming to hone the model of community curating, wherein the community selects and loans her the objects she works with and displays, creating beautiful and meaningful installation-exhibitions made entirely from the energy and joy of the people who bring her their stuff to work with. Because the installations are made up of other people's stuff, the projects become full of memory and story, and are completely ephemeral, as everything borrowed is returned at the end of the project.

Recent presentations include Borrowed Time: A Community-Sourced Time Machine at the Washington Street Art Center in Somerville in 2023 and Our Stories, Our Stuff, Our Somerville at the Somerville Museum in 2019. And, coming in fall 2026, Bess' next show Come As You Are will take place at the Somerville Museum - come by Bess' studio during SOS (or check besspaupeck.com) for more details about this next project and how to participate!