WOVEN WORLD
A Participatory Art+Everywhere Artist Residency with Martha Chason-Sokol & Nova Darkstar
September 20–26, 2026
Gallery RAG | 37 Rocky Neck Ave. | Gloucester, MA
Gallery RAG | 37 Rocky Neck Ave. | Gloucester, MA
BUILD WITH US!
Tuesday, September 22 | 1–4 PM
Thursday, September 24 | 1–4 PM
Tuesday, September 22 | 1–4 PM
Thursday, September 24 | 1–4 PM
WOVEN WORLD — PUBLIC EVENT
Saturday, September 26 | 1–7 PM
Musical Activations | 1 PM & 6 PM
Featuring Bulk Mulch Di$count
Saturday, September 26 | 1–7 PM
Musical Activations | 1 PM & 6 PM
Featuring Bulk Mulch Di$count
Free and open to the public
GLOUCESTER, MA — Gallery RAG, the exhibition and experimental project space of the Art+Everywhere Foundation, welcomes artists Martha Chason-Sokol and Nova Darkstar for WOVEN WORLD, a week-long participatory artist residency on Rocky Neck.
WOVEN WORLD will evoke a possible future centered in interrelatedness, inclusivity, serendipity, and play.
Throughout the residency, Chason-Sokol and Darkstar will transform Gallery RAG into a working studio, laboratory, and evolving installation. Found and discarded materials sourced locally, music, performance, light, technology and collaborative making will come together to create a world that is not simply presented to the community—but built with it.
BUILD WITH US
On Tuesday, September 22 and Thursday, September 24, from 1–4 PM, the doors of Gallery RAG will open and the public is invited to join Martha and Nova in the process of creating WOVEN WORLD.
These participatory sessions are an essential part of the residency. Rather than encountering only a finished exhibition, visitors can enter the artists’ process and help weave the evolving environment alongside them.
The residency culminates on Saturday, September 26, from 1–7 PM, when WOVEN WORLD is fully opened and activated for the community.
The day will include musical activations at 1 PM and 6 PM, featuring Bulk Mulch Discount, within an immersive environment of sculpture, sound, light, bodies, objects, and collaborative work created during the week.
ABOUT THE ARTISTS
Martha Chason-Sokol is an interdisciplinary artist working between studio and public life. She builds gestural figural sculptures from discarded domestic and industrial objects and places them within site-specific installations to create accessible and participatory art in community spaces. Using tape, thread, found objects, and video, Chason-Sokol binds remnants of the past into new, speculative futures. Past, present, and future merge through hybrid sculptural creatures and human presence—experienced both directly and through video.
Chason-Sokol has exhibited nationally, including at Boston Sculptors Gallery, the Hudson Valley Museum of Contemporary Art, and Fitchburg Art Museum. She is an associate member of Kingston Gallery, Chair of the Everett Cultural Council, and Founder/Director of Art Lab Everett, which she established to provide accessible creative arts experiences to the Everett community and beyond. She holds a BA from Brandeis University and an MFA from Lesley University College of Art and Design.
Nova Darkstar (they/them) is a multidisciplinary artist and musician committed to community building as an art form and art as a form of community building. Their practice explores themes of identity and belonging in the LGBTQIA+ community and beyond. Nova's multimedia projects are often collaborative in nature, inviting viewers to participate in the work and bring it to fruition.
Nova holds an MFA in Visual Art from Lesley University and an MA in Counseling Psychology from the California Institute of Integral Studies. Color Me Trans, a coloring book for teens and adults, was published in March 2025. I Dream a Prom Queen, a short documentary made in collaboration with Tania Barricklo, was an official selection for the 2024 New York Transgender Film Festival. Nova Darkstar & their Invisible Band perform original dance music throughout the northeast. Recent gallery exhibitions include Taking Shape, a solo show at The D.R.A.W. (Kingston, NY) and group shows at Super Secret Projects (Beacon, NY), and WAAM (Woodstock, NY).
ART AS A RADICAL ACT OF GENEROSITY
WOVEN WORLD is part of Art+Everywhere’s artist residency program at Gallery RAG, providing artists with time, space, and community in which to experiment, collaborate, take risks, and make work that does not need to be fully known in advance.
Gallery RAG, located in Gloucester’s historic Rocky Neck Art Colony, is an exhibition and experimental project of Art+Everywhere. Art+Everywhere was founded around the idea of art as a radical act of generosity—creating opportunities for artists and communities to meet through experimentation, participation, curiosity, and exchange.
WOVEN WORLD embodies that idea particularly well. The public is invited not simply to look at an artwork, but to enter the process, participate in its making, and help imagine what another kind of world might be.
