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Sacred Sheets

Titled “Sacred Sheets” after Gift Drawings made by Shaker sister “instruments” Semantha Fairbanks and Mary Wicks in the 1840s, this film reproduces their imagery and calligraphic spirit writing into a colorful cut-paper floor drawing. Shifting light marks a day’s passage and frames a ritualized space tending- via movement, bells, smoke, and song. Performances by the artists revisit the Shaker Era of Manifestations (or “Mother’s Work”), a period of heightened spirit communication - particularly from their matriarch Ann Lee- and unprecedented visual representation. Through intimate observations of Shaker ephemera and the natural world- including honeybee equipment, imagery and dancing patterns- they invoke spirited routine and matriarchal creative labor. Using objects from the Fruitlands collection such as iconic Shaker boxes, baskets, candle stands, beehives and Mother Ann Lee’s original rocking chair, they interweave visuals of an historic setting with surrealistic imagery.

  • Maria Molteni
    Director
    A Visitor’s Guide to Reorientation on Spectacle Island
  • Allison Halter
    Director
  • Gabe Elder
    Cinematographer
    Familiar Touch
  • Project Type:
    Experimental, Short, Other
  • Genres:
    Feminist, Queer, Mystic, Occult, Art Film
  • Runtime:
    17 minutes 42 seconds
  • Completion Date:
    September 1, 2021
  • Production Budget:
    5,000 USD
  • Country of Origin:
    United States
  • Country of Filming:
    United States
  • Shooting Format:
    Digital
  • Aspect Ratio:
    16:9
  • Film Color:
    Color
  • First-time Filmmaker:
    No
  • Student Project:
    No
  • Digital Cinema Package:
    Unavailable
  • “Unseen Hours: Space Clearing for Spirit Work” at Fruitlands Museum
    Harvard, MA
    United States
    September 20, 2021
    North American Premiere
  • “Figure, Character, Sign” at A Plus A Gallery
    Venice, Italy
    Italy
    July 27, 2022
    Italian Premiere
  • GRRL Haus Cinema International Shorts, Brattle Theatre
    Boston, MA
    United States
    October 11, 2023
  • Nashville Film Festival
    Nashville
    United States
    September 20, 2024
    TN Premier
    Official Selection
  • Institute of Contemporary Art Boston screenings
    Boston
    United States
    April 19, 2025
    For the exhibition "Believers: Artists and the Shakers"
  • Dunes
    Portland, ME
    United States
    August 2, 2025
Director Biography - Maria Molteni, Allison Halter

Maria Molteni:

Maria Molteni (They/Them, b. 1983, Nashville) is a multi-media, transdisciplinary artist, mystic, beekeeper, and Shaker researcher based in Massachusetts and Tennessee. Molteni received a largely formalist arts education at Boston University, studying oil painting, printmaking, and dance, but grew to incorporate research, mysticism, and collaboration into their practice. They pull from a well of historical contexts, playfully asking audiences to imagine them as a Phys-Ed coach of visionary movements like the Bauhaus, Black Mountain College, or the Shakers.

Molteni has exhibited at numerous galleries and museums as well as basements, meadows, sidewalks and seascapes across the globe. More formal institutions include: The Momentary (Bentonville, AR), ICA & MFA Boston (MA), Project Rowhouses (Houston, TX), Den Frei Contemporary Art Center (Copenhagen), NGBK (Berlin, Germany), Museum of Design Atlanta (GA), San Luis Obispo Museum of Art (CA), Fuller Craft Museum (MA)

Allison Halter:

Allison Halter is a conceptual artist and witch. Using performance, video, sound, and photography, Halter explores themes of physical and psychic accumulation and calls into question audience expectations. Repetitive actions hint at mysterious prior events. The viewer must extrapolate the significance of these proliferating gestures, which take on a deeper emotional charge as they slowly and inexorably pile up.

Halter received her Master of Fine Arts in Visual Studies from the Pacific Northwest College of Art in Portland, Oregon.

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Director Statement

Sacred Sheets, created by collaborators Maria Molteni and Allison Halter with cinematographer Gabe Elder (of the award-winning “Familiar Touch”), grew from more than a decade of Molteni’s research at various historic Shaker Village sites throughout the eastern United States. The film was commissioned by the Fruitlands Museum under curator Shana Dumont Garr’s care. It was shot in their preserved 1794 Shaker office building with a crew of exactly three, over two autumn days in 2020. The film debuted at Molteni and Halter’s Fruitlands exhibition “Unseen Hours: Space Clearing for Spirit Work” where it looped in the gallery along-side objects featured in the film. These included original works of art created by the artists- brooms, garments, a cut-paper installation - as well as Shaker objects from the permanent collections of Fruitlands, Hancock, and Canterbury Shaker Villages.