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• "Kite in a Tree"

Winslow Colwell has installed a lot of kites in Middlebury's Jackson Gallery. It's a no-fly zone, of course, but that's OK: These kites are perfectly content just to hang around.

Colwell titled his exhibition "#Skylights," in the manner of a hashtag, but that simple weave pattern long preceded the social media signifier. Here, the crossbar shape is the basis for the Ripton artist's two- and three-dimensional constructions, singly or in combination. That is, he cuts and overlaps equal-size strips of Epson watercolor paper printed with photos of treetops, sunsets or clouds, then attaches them to a featherweight infrastructure of bamboo, or "bones."

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• "Life, the Universe, and Some Things"

A quartet of the simplest structures is hung together but titled separately: "Dappled Clouds," "Sky Blue Sky," "Sunset Branches" and "Drive-In Sky." Colwell adorned another foursome, collectively titled "Multi Moon Color," with photos of the moon screened in yellow, green, red and blue, respectively. A smaller moon in the center is, well, moon-colored.

A four-sided suspended construction called "Life, the Universe, and Some Things" puts the weave pattern to higher purpose. The dark blue strips are punctuated with white dots representing constellations. Within the structure, an image of the Earth spins gently in ambient puffs of air. This remarkable piece casts a complicated shadow, itself a kind of universe.

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• Winslow Colwell with "Self-Portrait With My Head in the Clouds"

Though Colwell finds sources for his photos of the moon and other celestial orbs, he loves taking pictures of the sky, he said in a gallery visit. Even if this current crop of kites doesn't fly, the images inherently direct a viewer's gaze upward. The suggestion of loftiness echoes what Colwell calls the "irrational joy" of flying kites, the residual pleasure of a childhood pastime.

"Everything is about what's in the sky," he said of his works.

Long enamored of all things airborne, Colwell used to make kites professionally. He sold them in his former shop in Middlebury, where he also held kite-making classes. He had residencies in schools. He cobbled together a living, Colwell said, but "it was always a struggle." Eventually he turned over retail sales to the original Frog Hollow craft center, also in Middlebury, and "morphed into making nonflying kites."

• Pamela Polston ©️ Seven Days
• Geodesic lanterns

In the early '90s, Colwell went back to school to study graphic design at California College of Arts and Crafts (now California College of the Arts). "But I didn't finish, because I got my dream job," he said. "The Whole Earth Catalog needed another person in the graphics department."

Colwell worked at the beloved counterculture magazine and product catalog for five years, including on its final volume in 1998. Just before the pandemic, he said, Colwell went to San Francisco for the 50th anniversary of the publication, reuniting with the "wonderful people" he had worked with and looked up to.

Colwell's many years as a graphic artist and book designer honed skills that serve the kite-adjacent artworks he crafts in Vermont today. He also makes lanterns — softly illuminated columns of paper in geodesic patterns. Though his pieces are essentially handmade, digital technology assists him, both on the computer and in the shop.

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• Clockwise from top left: "Dappled Clouds," "Sky Blue Sky," "Sunset Branches," "Drive-In Sky"

"Two years ago, I took part in JumpStart at Generator," Colwell said, referring to an entrepreneurial program at the Burlington makerspace. There he learned how to use a laser cutter. He uses a Cricut cutting machine to score the paper for his lanterns. "I've had to come up with a lot of special jigs and tools," Colwell remarked.

The artist has included several light boxes in "#Skylight." One, aptly titled "Constellation," is a near-square piece of stiff watercolor paper in deep blue, softly printed with an illustration of a 17th-century star map. Pinpricks in the piece emit dots of light from an LED bulb behind it. On the lower section of the image, Colwell layered in his own photograph of a tree line in Ripton. One can imagine its magic in a darkened room.

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• "For Bucky"

In Colwell's nod to the selfie era, "Self-Portrait With My Head in the Clouds," his outsize bewhiskered image appears on a matrix of hashtag shapes, this laid atop a photograph of blue sky with fluffy clouds. The artist's brown eyes — the only part of the photo not cut through — gaze steadily at the viewer.

All the works in the exhibit were made over the past two years, Colwell said. One piece in particular represents a new direction. "Kite in a Tree" features four woven shapes printed with bare branches against the sky, placed over the original photo of the same tree. It's a meta image in which the crisscrossed sections seem like portals to another dimension — another sky.

"They are in an environment, on a wall," Colwell said. "But putting [them] on top of a tree, a sky, is super exciting to me now."