This story by Liberty Darr was first published in The Citizen on July 24.
For Charlotte residents Shawn Dumont and his two kids, peace signs are more than just a symbol. Each one, they’ve found, also tells a unique story.
So, the Dumonts started documenting them. But quickly, the journey shifted from a pastime summer hobby — finding peace signs and photographing them — to discovering the essence of Vermont, and an ethos grounded in community, culture and the enduring spirit of the back-to-the-land movement. The exhibition, “Peace Signs of Vermont: The Visual Legacy of the Back-to-the-Land Movement,” runs at the Karma Bird House at 47 Maple Street in Burlington Monday-Saturday, through the end of August.
“We are peace people,” reads a mural hand-painted on the gallery wall by Dumont’s kids, Zoë and Jasper, ages 9 and 4. That’s what the family is known for around those parts as of lately. However, Dumont has an even deeper connection to the Burlington art scene, much of which is rooted in the same building where the exhibition is located; he also was the art director for Burton Snowboards for ten years.
His latest creative endeavor: crisscrossing the entire state of Vermont with his kids in search of peace signs. And it turns out, once you start seeing them, they are almost inescapable.
“I was just like, what makes this piece so special?” Dumont said, his kids sitting next to him, sipping on chocolate milk. “What makes it so incredible? The peace sign just became this symbol of that. It was so obvious.”
But the journey didn’t just involve stopping to take a passing picture of any given peace sign — usually located on someone’s house, barn or even mowed into the grass. It also involved a conversation with the owner about the symbol and what it means to them.
“I have this deep understanding of graphics and design symbols, and I sort of had a tertiary respect for the peace sign, but then you meet the people who put them on their house, and then you’re just like, this really is significant,” Dumont said.
The interaction usually stood in stark contrast to how people nowadays communicate. Rather than sending a direct message over social media or a quick text through a cell phone, the family would knock on strangers’ doors and strike up a conversation.
And people, the Dumonts discovered, were always up for a chat.
“There’s this cool tension (initially), but then every single time we would meet these people, there was just beautiful kindness,’ Dumont said.
A lot of the people the Dumonts found were in their 70s, many of whom came to the state as part of the back-to-the-land movement. Others were younger people who came to Vermont more recently in search of that same lifestyle.
He noted people like April Cornell, the designer, and Robin Lloyd, Burlington activist and philanthropist who co-founded the Peace & Justice Center, as some prominent names whose peace signs have found themselves on the exhibition wall.
But among some of the more well-known peace sign carriers are the people who have laid the foundation for the state in a quieter way.
“Like the people who moved up here and then started running the library. I get goosebumps,” he said. “Because maybe they’re not living these big lives, but they’re super important. They’re raising kids here who understand how important it is to take care of your environment and how important food systems are and how important it is to take care of our waterfront and make sure that it’s for everybody.
“We’re living in such a unique, wonderful place because of the foundation that they laid for us.”
Part of his mission now, through this art display, has been to tell those stories.
But while the family has been retelling these stories through photographs, they have also been writing their own story. As Dumont puts it, the summer months in Vermont aren’t for screen time and staying in the house; they’re about family time and setting off in any given direction with no plan in mind, just seeing what adventure might be before them.
“My wife was like, the fact that you found something you get to do with your kids that fills your creative cup is really the biggest gift,” he said.
