Bess Paupeck is a maker of interdisciplinary installations, exhibitions and experiences that forge connection to community, self, story, and our shared humanity. Living life as a work-in-progress, her love for art-making, objects, collections, and communities come together in the offerings she is deeply grateful to create and share with others.

Bess focuses on the model of community curation, in which she borrows the items she needs for her projects from the folks in her neighborhood. To find the objects, she puts out a community call around a specific idea, and folks then select from their own homes what to loan to the show. Bess then turns whatever she is given into an installation-exhibition of sorts, ultimately inviting the community into the gallery space to experience their stuff, together with other people’s stuff, and the stories, connections, and magic found within. Bess also builds programming around these shows, designing opportunities for community members to further share their collections and memories with others, building community strength and connection through understanding and wonder, all derived from our everyday stuff. The community curated shows have included the 2019 exhibition Our Stories, Our Stuff, Our Somerville, the 2023 show Borrowed Time: A Community Sourced Time Machine at the Washington Street Art Center, and, coming up in 2026, her next show Come As You Are will feature beloved and meaningful clothing from people's lives. Stay tuned for that community call!

As part of the Boston-based Excavate Collective from 2015-2019, Bess collaboratively produced installations and performances, including But Does it Bring You Joy?, a performance installation in the 2016 experiential exhibit Performing the Home at the Nave Gallery Annex, Quotidian Wonder, a performance installation in the 2017 collaborative show Wall to Wall II: Working Together at the Nave Gallery, and Trans-Lucent-See, produced out of a 2018-19 research and performance residency with the deCordova Museum and Sculpture Park, and performed both at the Somerville Museum as part of the exhibition Our Stories, Our Stuff, Our Somerville and at the deCordova Museum and Sculpture Park in collaboration with Saul Melman’s sculpture Best of All Possible Worlds.

 Bess lives in the Boston area and as an independent artist and producer works and collaborates in the cultural arena, which has included the Washington Street Art Center, the Somerville Museum, deCordova Museum and Sculpture Park, the Somerville Arts Council, Mad Oyster Studios, and Somerville's Nave Gallery and Nave Gallery Annex.  When she is not engaged in her art practice, you can find her professionally working as an arts producer, experience curator, and builder of opportunities for public and community partnerships at museums, universities and cultural spaces. 

culturalsalt@gmail.com