MOLLY GAMBARDELLA
Aeolian Commission
Tremont Flats, Meriden, Connecticut
2026
Commissioned for Tremont Flats, a redevelopment of Meriden's historic Aeolian Company piano factory, this project includes two site-specific works that respond to the building's history and the surrounding landscape. Research into the site's industrial and cultural past guided the development of both pieces, incorporating authentic piano keys, archival materials, postcards, and found objects gathered from throughout Meriden to create new connections between memory, place, and contemporary community.
Harmonious Hills
Piano keys, steel
43 x 4 feet
2026
Hundreds of reclaimed piano keys trace the silhouette of the Hanging Hills, linking the building's history as the former Aeolian Company piano factory with one of Meriden's most recognizable landscapes.
Meriden Memories
Collage
40 x 60 inches
2026
Constructed from postcards, archival documents, and artifacts connected to Meriden and the Aeolian Company, the collage layers fragments of local history into a visual record of place, inviting viewers to discover connections across generations.
Field Notes
Places leave behind evidence.
Sometimes it survives as architecture.
Sometimes as stories.
Sometimes as a single object.
Research became collecting.
Collecting became composition.
Every piano key had already lived another life.
A building remembers differently than a person.
Archives are another form of landscape.
Observed
Construction workers stopped throughout the day to ask what was happening.
The wall looked more confusing before it made sense.
The installation grew one piano key at a time.
A father stopped to tell me about his daughter.
She was studying where I had once been a student.
The building remembered pianos long before the artwork arrived.
July 2026