America 250: A Creative Reflection
Arts Center East
Vernon
June 25, 2026
We’re only a week away from the biggest birthday party of the year, as the United States officially turns 250 years old. Celebrations are popping up all over the place, including at the Arts Center East in Vernon, which is holding its own with the America 250: A Creative Reflection exhibit.
It’s difficult to boil down an entire nation to one idea, but I think it’s safe to say the defining characteristic of America is freedom. Here’s a fun fact though: The word “freedom” never appears in the Declaration of Independence or the Constitution. There are references to free people and free and independent states, but no discussion at all about freedom as a concept or a good.
Perhaps that lack of philosophical inquiry explains why the Founding Fathers were so comfortable with denying freedom to so many people at the nation’s birth, as Gina Beford pointedly notes in her piece 250 Years of Freedom, a mixed-media piece set on paper. The woman standing before the pieced together American flag is wearing suffragette white, as for 144 out of 250 years women were denied the right to vote.
I think Beford used a quilted pattern for this work to show both the pieced-together nature of the United States and the stitched-together effort it took for women to finally achieve suffrage–decades of rallies, agitation, meetings and support from both men and women. Beford’s work is in contrast to platitudes about liberty; it symbolizes the actual work of freedom.
Because ultimately, the injustices that sullied the founding of America were addressed. Not completely, no, but things have gotten better. Works such as Beford’s aren’t trying to tear down our imagined vision of U.S. history, but present a better one where justice and decency eventually triumph. That’s worth celebrating.
The United States is more than just its aspirations and failings. It’s also a physical place. The physicality of America has always been one of its defining features. The American landscape has influenced the national character as much as any governing system. Manifest destiny and the conquering of the frontier defined American policy and imagination for much of the nation’s early life, and there’s almost a reverence for the natural beauty of the New World.
Peter Cehily’s Purple Mountains Majesty draws its inspiration from both the American landscape and the classic song "America the Beautiful." (Another artist was so inspired as well; check out Kelly Taylor’s more surreal take, Purple Mountain Majesties). Cehily’s gentle brushwork makes the acrylic paint flow like watercolor, giving the distant indigo mountains a sense of movement that compliments their implacable presence.
There are much older nations than the United State. Few have started in a place of injustice and moved so much to make those failing right. The character of the land and the character of the people demand freedom, and as America moves into its next 250 years, we’ll keep moving towards justice and peace too.
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America 250: A Creative Reflection runs at the Arts Center East through July 25.
Jamil goes to check out a prose open mic.
