The yellow wayfinder signs that sprout along Vermont's back roads each Open Studio Weekend are meant to point visitors toward potters' wheels, glass furnaces, and weaving looms. This fall, one of them leads somewhere stranger: a working horse barn in Barnard where the residents are creatures that don't exist.
The Dream Theatre is the studio of Kris Manning, a Vermont artist and fabricator who builds what she calls "impossible history" — sculptural animals with their own biology, behavior, and purpose, arranged into environments that feel less like a gallery and more like a film set left mid-shoot. On Saturday, October 3, from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m., Manning opens that studio to the public as part of the Vermont Crafts Council's Fall Open Studio Weekend, on a tour route the council labels Loop #10.
Manning's creatures have names and biographies. There is the Root Tunneler, described as keeper of living soil; the Wingwright, a wingbinder in symbiosis with dragons; the Driftsyphon, an atmospheric filter feeder; the Reclamander, collector of what people leave behind; and a Dragon, whose stated purpose is to "make things feel certain again." They are catalogued in a growing Field Guide, a record of creatures, systems, behaviors, and unresolved phenomena observed in and around the Dream Theatre.
Visitors to the October open studio will get an early look at the work heading toward a large-scale immersive exhibition Manning has said is in development.
The path to the barn runs through rhythm as much as sculpture. Manning is a lifelong musician and educator with decades behind a drum kit, and Rock n Rolling Hills Farm is also home to Vintage FM Drums, a drum restoration business that brings classic kits back to playing condition. The farm's own description of itself puts music and imagination side by side: rhythm, art, or a touch of both. Manning teaches drum lessons in a studio on the property as well, from first beats to advanced grooves.
That percussion background is not a detour from the artwork so much as a method. Manning has described how rhythm, performance, problem solving, and making things from scratch continue to shape the way she works. Her practice moves across sculpture, painting, fiber, found objects, and fabrication — foam, silicone, and 3D printing among the tools — the same vocabulary used to build creatures and props for film. The source listing for the event notes her creature fabrication work for major franchises, and her own bio places her at the edge of myth and make-believe, sculpting and molding creatures for the screen.
The materials carry a Vermont accent. Manning works with reclaimed and repurposed material sourced locally, and the Crafts Council lists her under its Green Design category, citing eco-focused practices: reusing materials, minimizing waste, sourcing locally, and turning discarded objects into art. The Reclamander, a creature defined by collecting what people leave behind, reads as a joke with a straight face — the studio's mythology and its material ethic are the same idea wearing different costumes.
Open Studio Weekend itself is a long-running Vermont institution. The Vermont Crafts Council launched it to raise the visibility of the state's artists and craftspeople and to foster appreciation for the creative process and the role makers play in the vitality of Vermont's communities. What began as a spring event has grown into a twice-yearly tour, with a fall weekend added to the calendar; the 2026 fall edition runs October 3 and 4, spread across more than fifteen self-guided loops. The council publishes a free map booklet with directions, and the yellow signs guide drivers to studios — some of which, like Manning's, open to the public only for this event. The program is supported by the Vermont Arts Council and the Vermont Department of Tourism and Marketing.
The premise of the weekend is that a studio is interesting because it shows the process, not just the product: the tools, the mock-ups, the sketches, the organized chaos behind a finished piece. That premise suits The Dream Theatre unusually well. A traditional Vermont horse barn has been remade into an immersive environment, and the work inside is deliberately unfinished in the sense that matters — evolving, expanding, and still being discovered by the person making it.
Manning frames the whole project around a single question: What if this existed? From there, she builds the evidence. The creatures are not characters so much as inhabitants, each with a biology and a story, and the studio is the place where they cross from imagined into physical form. Visitors on October 3 are invited not simply to look at objects on shelves but to walk into hidden systems and unseen worlds — and to watch a working artist decide, in real time, what else might be real.