WALKABOUT: Open Studio Weekend

by Cully Renwick

On Route 12 in the town of Northfield, five women share a beautiful big studio in the Gray Building, 168 North Main Street. At this site watercolors, pastels, oils, and basketry were all on display in "Classroom 2" on the first floor of the large gray school-house on the top of the hill. The artists are: Kathrena Ravenhorst-Adams (802 485-7288), Tamara Wright - Brook field Basketry ( 802 276-3173), Phyllis Higgins (802 485-7667), Annie Gould (802 485-9871), and Phyllis Greenway (802 485-8373) who also has a studio at 421 South Main Street in Montpelier.

Images: detail of watercolor of jewel weed by Kathrena Ravenhorst-Adams, and horse race by Phyllis Greenway.

WALKABOUT: Open Studio Weekend

by Cully Renwick

Jess Graham was among the exhibitors at River Arts in Morrisville for Open Studio weekend. Her web site, jessgrahamstudio.com, posts lots of artwork and information about her, including some photos of her garage studio. She's been noticed by VT Journal and Seven Days in 2006 and then featured in Eastcoast Snowboarding Magazine in 2008.

Here are some excerpts from her “mission” statement:

I paint to build a reference for gestures and movements. I reference split second sparks and lifetimes of ruminations. I want my scrawlings & scratchings to coax a little glimmer of a smile, a hope in the mundane, a joy for hot pink, a moment of pause to pick out individual cricket's songs. I believe in art that makes you happy. Not happy in a saccharine "have a nice day" sense, but the sort of happy that reaches-your-soul-makes-you-love-waking-up-in-the-morning. Because I believe that everybody yearns for art, needs art, sleeps better if they breathe art, I offer my art in a variety of forms. You can get it on a card for your grandma's mantle, an iron-on for your favorite hoodie, a colorlicious oil painting to keep you company in your mountain shack.

Painting, making, playing makes me feel peaceful because when I'm making art I'm communicating in energy and color and I'm making a mess and I'm acting on those, "oh what a pretty shiny object, what a crazy lit-from-within crabapple tree" impulses. Sometimes painting feels like singing really loud from my belly. Sometimes making art feels as content and quiet as waking up on a rainy day off with the one I love.

My art probably conveys layers of meaning, but generally I leave that up to you to decipher (you know, like a good story that gives you just enough clues to put the pieces together but not so many that your intelligence is insulted). When it comes to analyzing my art, I prefer not to confuse it with a lot of words. To me, making art is non-verbal, and so in trying to analyze its meaning and purpose I always come to the conclusion that I'm simply lucky to find a peace in the process of making it, and I hope some of that peace and energy and spontaneity and irreverence and downright joy translates to you. I hope you find my art satisfying like the crust of wood-fired bread, fun like dancing, silly like riding bikes in the dark, fluffy like snow. I hope it helps shake out the dust in your bodymindsoul like good beer and a long hard laugh.

ESSAY: Francis Colburn's "Memorial Piece"

(from the exhibit “Masters of Vermont: The Men” Bryan Memorial Gallery, Jeffersonville. Through July 12.)

by Lindsay Vezina

   "Memorial Piece" is Francis Colburn's evocative swirling, quasi-cubist painting - its foreground has a downcast semi-see through bride with a down turned bouquet. Behind her sits a melancholic young girl, to the right is a life-sized Magrittesque painting of a man leaning on a bicycle peering toward the bride. Is he a painted stand-in for a dead husband in transit? They all occupy a meadow whose ground and trees seem to be alive with psychic turmoil. Bare branches reach beyond a canopy of graduated green growth, the sky is framed by forbidding dark blue. 

  Colburn has an amalgam of influences such as Picasso, Rockwell Kent, Thomas Hart Benton, Magritte, Da Chirico as well as early Stuart Davis. Colburn has succeeded with great technique and psychological force to create a painting that works viscerally as well as compositionally! This is just one of other interesting work at this fine show at The Bryan Gallery in Jeffersonville.     

PRESS RELEASE: Into the Woods at Chandler Gallery

The Chandler Gallery in Randolph presents Into the Woods, a show in which 15 artists take a look at and use woods in a multi-media art show of painting, sculpture, glass, furniture, pottery and porcelain, aquatints and textiles, photography and altered books. New art curators Dian Parker and Laurie Sverdlove have chosen to display the work of artists Tom Batey, Jeanne Bisson, Ria Blaas, Anne Cady, Nick Defriez, Joan Feierabend, Mark Goodwin, Bunny Harvey, Judy Lampe, Ruth Mengedocht, John Parker, Jim Richmond, Gerard Rinaldi, Laurie Sverdlove and Bhakti Ziek. Into the Woods runs from June 6 through July 12, 2009,with an opening reception June 6 from 4 – 6 pm.

Gallery Hours: Thursdays 4-6 pm, Saturday and Sunday 1-3 pm, also during performance intermissions and by appointment 802-728-9878.

Images of work by Jeanne Bisson:

Birch goblets,hand formed porcelain 4" diameter x 6" height

"By the water's edge" hand formed twig.rock and riverbank porcelain 10" x 6"

Review: STAART GALLERY, May-June exhibition.

by Marc Awodey

Franklin county had a dearth of exhibition spaces for a long while, but it seems to be quickly making up for lost time. Now in its second year, STAART gallery (acronym for St. Albans Art) is a welcoming venue on Main street in the heart of bustling St. Albans. It’s one of two prominent co-op galleries in that neck of the woods - the other being Artists in Residence Gallery of Enosburg Falls - and both venues seem to be thriving. STAART Director Stina Plant is a photographer whose commercial studio is also on the premises, and the well organized walls display work in all media salon style. Various member artists are featured in revolving shows, and many come from the ranks of the St. Albans Artists Guild, of which Plant is also on the board of directors. In e-mail about the gallery she wrote “My goal is to not only have this space for the artists but also to expose the community to the visual arts.And by expose I mean

show them everything from traditionally executed landscapes to conceptually driven abstractions.”

The current exhibition includes work by five featured artists: Lisamarie Charlesworth, Chad Jenkins, Jen Kristel, Tinka Martel and Syracuse, N.Y. artist John Mannion. ”Fast Lane” by Charlesworth is a mixed media collage in which layers of imagery indicate layers of meaning. It’s one of her seven pieces in the exhibit. All are small scale, full of energy, and tightly composed.

In addition to the featured artists, all members have work on display. The black and white photographs by Clair Dunn are among the

highlights. Dunn was a finalist in the recent “Art of Action, Shaping Vermont’s Future” competition sponsored by the Vermont Arts Council. Many of her works have the mood of Edward Hopper paintings, as she often emphasizes stark contrasts of value in cityscape nocturnes.

STAART is a very egalitarian space that doesn’t jury, and takes no commissions either. Maybe the concept of a non-elitist, non-juried, unpretentions gallery could work in other hardscrabble Vermont towns also?

"5 a.m. in White River" By Clair Dunn

”Fast Lane” by Lisamarie Charlesworth

The Art of Vermont Exhibits

by Theodore Hoppe

"Art of Vermont" is a celebration the 170- year evolution of the Vermont State Art Collection, as well as 20 years of commissioned work created through the Art in State Buildings Program. In 1837, the Vermont Senate vote to purchase a painting of George Washington by artist George Gassner for the newly constructed statehouse. The State of Vermont has been collecting art ever since. With the creation of the Vermont Arts Council in 1964, the state art collection begin to expand beyond the walls of the capitol itself. Throughout the 70' and 80's the Arts Council continued to install art in public facilities like the Pavilion State Office Building. In 1988, the General Assembly passed the Art in State Buildings Act "in recognition of the need to encourage Vermont artists." As David Schutz, the State Curator, explains,"...it is (this) public art program which has allowed the placement of a wide assortment of works of art in facilities all over the state."The State collection includes the work of hundreds of artists, and can be found at twenty-eight state facilities across Vermont


The Department of Buildings & General Services, with the help of Paul Gruhler, working with the Vermont Arts Council, has created a show of paintings and photography from the collection by some of the best artists in Vermont. The first of four 2009 exhibits will be at the River Arts Center in Morrisville from May 8-July 5. The River Arts Center is proud to host a version of the "Art of Vermont" exhibition that features the works of many Lamoille Valley artists.

Another version of the tour travels to St. Michael's College in Colchester, from June 5, 2009 until August 8,2009 with an opening reception on June 5, 5-7 PM. Since the dates of these two exhibits overlap they will feature different works from the collection. There are shows planned for the Brattleboro Museum and at Catamount Arts in St. Johnsbury later in the year, with more dates planned for 2010.

There is also a beautiful glossy catalogue developed by Paul Gruhler, for "Art of Vermont" that presents a sampling of the State Art Collection. In it, David Schultz says, "Art helps define who we are as people. As we look back over the works that constitute the State Art Collection, we cannot help but be struck by the amazing messages that are conveyed about Vermont and its people."

Images:
Top: Alden Bryan, Cambridge, VT, c. 1955
Middle: Mickey Myers, Night Falls on Jericho Street, 2004-5
Bottom: Peter Miller, Fred Tuttle, 1987

LECTURE: Deidre Scherer at Bennington Center for the Arts

Red Hat 12” x 11”, thread on fabric, © Deidre Scherer

Quiet Valley Quilters Present A Deidre Scherer Lecture on Art and Healing with Thread on layered Fabric, Saturday, May 30, 2009 at 2 PM at Bennington Center for the Arts, 44 Gypsy Lane, Bennington, VT 05201

Scherer’s presentation moves through 30 years of work during which she pioneered “thread on fabric” as a fluid, intimate medium ideal for narrative expression. By drawing directly with scissors and sewing machine, her process becomes a way to listen, to give undivided attention and meditate. Book signing and reception to follow the lecture.

To make a reservation, or for further information contact Mary Kohler at (802)-442-7318.
Admission : $12.00. Sorry no credit cards. Tickets will be available at the door. This event is open to the public.

CALL: Circus! at Studio Place Arts (SPA)

LADIES AND GENTLEMEN!

The circus is coming to SPA and we want you to get in on the act. The official deadline for proposals is past, and I have selected some fabulous work to exhibit, but I'm still looking for 2-D and 3-D work related to aerialists, clowns, animal acts, and sideshows of the weird and strange. Does not have to be realistic or traditional. All media welcome. Contact me by May 15 at janetvanfleet@fairpoint.net with images of your work

The exhibit will run from June 16 - July 25, 2009. Delivery of work will be scheduled for June 8 and 9.

CALL: Lake Champlain In Plein Air

This is the first call Vermont Art Zine has posted. We are experimenting with posting calls to artists for Vermont exhibits, and will evaluate whether we wish to continue with this practice.

2009 is the 400th Anniversary of the sighting of Lake Chaplain by Samuel de Champlain and artists been captivated by it right from the start. This summer marks a wonderful opportunity to celebrate its beauty and show the many ways that it can be expressed, by participating in a Plein Air Festival and Art Show in St. Albans, Vermont during the weekend of July 25 and 26.

This event will feature a chance for the public to meet and talk to artists while watching them at work. It will also provide an opportunity to view and purchase other artwork by the artists.

The Moose Lodge, on Lake Street in St. Albans, less than 5 miles from beautiful Lake Champlain, will be transformed into a gallery exhibiting lake-themed artwork by the participating artists. NVAA will handle sales during the exhibit and will retain a 10% commission, leaving artists free to paint anywhere in the area. While this will be billed as a Lake Champlain event and this theme should make up the majority of the artwork, there are numerous scenic spots in and around St. Albans and any plein air, local artwork will be accepted. There will be a map in the Moose Lodge for artists to show where they will be painting during the weekend to make it easy for their patrons to find them.

The Moose Lodge will be open from 10am to 5pm on Saturday  and Sunday, July 25 and 26. Additionally, there will be a reception on Sunday evening from 6pm to 9pm to exhibit works finished during this plein air event.

ELIGIBILITY: Open to all artists who do original two or three dimensional artwork with a Lake Champlain theme. All media accepted. Artwork to be exhibited should have been executed in the past three years with plein air work done the weekend of the event. This is a gallery type exhibition, not a booth show.

FEE: $45 fee will cover 6' wide x 8' high display panel for paintings in the Moose Lodge, publicity including postcards for artists to send to their special patrons and a Sunday night reception. Additionally, Norm Choiniere of Champlain Collections will give a discount on plein air frames to participating artists.

AWARDS: Peoples' Choice awards will be presented.

DELIVERY AND PICKUP: Paintings for display should be delivered Friday, July 24 between 6 and 8pm. Unsold paintings may be picked up Monday, July 27 between 6 and 8pm.

INSURANCE: There will be overnight security and all due care will be taken but neither the Moose Lodge nor any sponsoring group or individual will be liable for loss due to accident, theft or injury at the exhibit or in transit.

CONTACT INFO: To enter send check for $45 to Lake Champlain in Plein Air, c/o Martha Ohliger, 63 North Road, Fairfield, VT 05455.

Image: Lake Champlain at sunset, viewed from Grand Isle looking 5 miles west towards Plattsburgh, NY and Crab Island, by Atlant

REVIEW: Andy Potok Lecture - When Is it Art?

By Theodore Hoppe

The Kellogg Hubbard Library in Montpelier recently hosted a well attended lecture by artist and writer Andy Potok entitled, "When Is It Art?" While the presentation touched on the subject of 'What is art?' by looking at such works as "Fountain" by Marcel Duchamp, Potok's real intent was to explore the struggles and ordeals of the artist, and the various mental and physical deficiencies that can affect artists and therefore their art. Instead of providing answers to his question, Potok was content to refine the question to understand its implications: Do paintings produced by an artist afflicted with a drinking problem, drug addiction, mental and health issues and even blindness deserve to have an "asterisk" beside it? (like athletes on steriods) Potok focuses on the work of Willem De Kooning, who suffered from alcoholism for many years, and later, dementia. Because of the dementia, De Kooning needed increasing assistance to help him start each work. The assistants decided a painting was done when De Kooning ceased working on it for a time judged long enough.

When the issue of loss of vision came up the discussion became personal. Trained as an architect, then an artist, Potok painted and exhibited the U S and Europe until, in his early forties, a hereditary condition called retinitis pigmentosa began to steal his vision. He stopped working in the visual arts for many years, turning to writing about art and his disability.

Many great artists have experienced vision loss. Degas and Monet were in the midst of their careers as well when they became visually impaired. Monet became legally blind after developing cataracts. An increasing fuzziness and muddy colors are evident in his paintings. Degas began to lose his vision in his thirties. His visual impairments included amblyopia, corneal scarring, and ultimately, blindness in one eye.

Potok seemed to bristle at stories that credit divine intervention for what is actually determined adaptation. David Tineo, a Tunson, AZ muralist, struggled to paint after losing most of his central vision to macular degeneration. He had never tested the limits of his artistic abilities. He thought that his diminishing eyesight would be the catalyst, saying "I'm letting myself go, not being afraid that I may not one day see at all." Painting large 10x6 canvases using innovative ideas to overcome his "bad eye days", his work became freer and more expressive.

In 1993 Lisa Fittipaldi (see her painting, Inclination, at left) experienced the loss of her vision. She was depressed by having to relearn the basic tasks of life her, so her husband bought her a watercolor set and encouraged her to paint, even though she had no prior experience or training. To everyone’s amazement Fittipaldi began to paint beautiful paintings using what she refers to as her "mind's eye." How she paints is a mystery, even to Fittipaldi herself. The sales of her paintings now fund a foundation she has started to educate the public about blindness.

"What (they have) done that's really great is to learn and be innovative and to do what (they) need to do. It's not heroic. It is smart and it’s human and it's touching and its great," says Potak.

After a long hiatus from his painting, Potok again returned to his brushes and paints using the small bits of residual vision that remained. (Potok showed slides of the paintings he produced when his vision deteriorated.) Unsatisfied by the results and his experience, he stopped painting again, raising the question why? "It was not what I intended," was Potok's answer. What was gone was what he calls the "controlled-surprise" of creating. He is beginning to work in wire to create three dimensional "drawings in space."

Andy Potok's books include a memoir of the loss of his sight, Ordinary Daylight, as well as a novel about a boy growing up to be an artist in New York during the 1950's, My Life With Goya. For more information about blindness and the arts you can visit: www.artbeyondsight.org

SHORT: FLYNNDOG PREVIEW

The Flynndog gallery in Burlington's south end is a cavernous exhibition space on Flynn avenue, in a referbished industrial site. Curator, and architect Bren Alvarez always installs some of the most engaging shows of northern Vermont, and the current exhibition of paintings by Vinicio Ayala and Greg Mamczak is likely to be one of them. It's on view through June 30, and the opening is Friday May 8, 6-8 pm. There will also be an open house at the studios of Photographers Jeff Clarke and Karen Pike, 5- 9 pm at the Flynndog. In addition to exhibitions the Flynndog hosts poetry readings, that are usually attended by some of the area's best writers.

PRESS RELEASE: Works by Lee Garrison at the Vermont Supreme Court

A show of works by Lee Garrison entitled “Lee Garrison in Vermont: landscapes, flowers, ponds, portraits,” is on display at the VermontWorks by Lee Garrison at the Vermont Supreme CourtSupreme Court from May 1 through June 30.

After years of study at the Ruskin School of Drawing and Fine Arts at Oxford University, the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, and the Art Student’s League, Garrison pursued life as an artist based, primarily, in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Her work has been featured in solo and group shows in New England and Europe.

Much of Garrison’s work over the years has been inspired by Chinese art, particularly the flower paintings, water landscapes and portraits of the Sung dynasty. Even her method of working, moving from long contemplation to quick execution is inspired by the work of Sung artists. Among the works in Garrison’s current show are a number from a period in her life when she spent much time painting on the shores of Lake Champlain, others reflect her more recent work, painting beside a pond in Colchester, Vermont.

The Supreme Court is open Monday through Thursday, from 8 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. and Friday from 12:30 to 4:30 p.m. The court building will be closed May 5, May 25 and June 5.

PRESS RELEASE: The AIA at the Vermont State House

Release: Immediate

Date: April 29, 2009

Contact: Tracy Martin, Assistant Curator

802-828-0749

tracy.martin@state.vt.us

The American Institute of Architects/ Vermont Chapter

2008 Design Awards Exhibition at the Vermont State House

Entries from the 2008 Design Award Competition of the American Institute of Architects/ Vermont Chapter will be featured in an exhibition at the Vermont State House cafeteria from May 5 through May 29.

The jury for the AIA competition, all members of the Boston Society of Architects, selected seven projects for awards. The three firms receiving Honor Awards were: Breadloaf Corporation of Middlebury, Pill-Maharam of Shelburne and Watershed Studio Architecture of White River Junction. Honorable mention went to Black River Design and Gossens Bachman, both of Montpelier. Banwell Architects of Lebanon, New Hampshire received a Citation, while Freeman, French, Freeman received a Fifty-Year Award.

Forty-one panels with images of all the entries, including the award-winning projects, will be on display through the month of May. The public is invited to an opening reception for the AIA Awards show on Tuesday, May 5, from 4 to 6 PM.

above: Edge Ledge House, Norwich, Vermont, Watershed Studio Architecture.

CARTOON: Why Artists Go Mad

By Robert Waldo Brunelle Jr.

CLICK ON CARTOON FOR A VIEW THAT YOU CAN ACTUALLY READ

PRESS RELEASE: Recent Paintings of Dan Gottsegen

Furchgott Sourdiffe Gallery of Shelburne, will be showing "Recent Paintings of Dan Gottsegen" May 1-June 9, 2009.

Gottsegen, who resides in Woodstock, VT, has a long history of working in and studying the natural environment that is strongly reflected in his paintings. Many of the recent oils, while retaining elements of realism in the landscape, are conceived as collages of juxtaposed images to better represent the physical and spiritual explorations that are involved in their conception.

"Much of my earlier painting emerged from my work for over a decade trapping, banding, measuring, and releasing hawks in California to study their migration patterns. My involvement in this study was born out of many strange and intense encounters with owls and hawks that I had been having for years. My work was also influenced by week or longer, completely solitary hikes that I took far into the wilderness of the high Sierra, traveling miles off marked trails, camping and painting alone above ten-thous

and feet (something I have always done).

... I am interested in the tension and duality between our romantic conceptions of nature and the reality of the potential environmental calamities we are facing. I seek to embody this tension in my work by the use of technology (video that I shoot) to derive image sources, or in recent work (the “Die Wanderungen” series) by juxtaposing images.

My recent work is inspired by my return to the Northeast after living for twenty years in Northern California. It varies from smaller (8 x 10 inches), more abstract pieces to larger (80 x 72 inches) paintings....

Working is for me a physical and even a spiritual exploration. It is improvisatory and often revelatory."

Furchgott Sourdiffe Gallery is located at 86 Falls Road,in Shelburne

Village. Hours are Tue-Fri 9:30-5:30, and Sat 10-5. For more information

please call Joan Furchgott, 802-985-3848, or go to fsgallery.com

ABOVE RIGHT: "Walking", oil, 38" x 38" 

ABOVE: "Season Suite", oil, 59" x 65"

PRESS RELEASE: Robert Brunelle at Red Square in May

There will be an opening at Red Square on Church St. in Burlington Friday, May 1, 5-8 p.m. for a solo exhibition by painter Robert Brunelle.

The opening will also be a book release party for a new book about the Northern Vermont Artists Association, published by Kasini House. The NVAA is the state's oldest arts organization, and Brunelle is its long-serving president.

REVIEW: Heidi Broner at Governor’s Office

By Janet Van Fleet

Heidi Broner’s exhibit, entitled AT WORK, shows men at work in a variety of blue collar jobs. The workers all have tools (shovels, rakes, floats, mallets) in these acrylic on canvas paintings, and appear in a misty atmosphere in which only the task itself seems in focus – an experience familiar to all hard workers, whatever their gender or collar color.

Two large paintings showing solitary workers on their knees are particularly strong, and ethereal at the same time. In Spreading Cement (40 x 60") the worker, kneeling on the edge of a crumbling cement island or continent, touches his float with just his fingertips. Brickwork (Sidewalk) shows a kneeling man on a raft of bricks, tamping them into place with a wooden mallet held with a similarly light touch. A blue shadow falls out the bottom of the painting like running water. Both of these paintings evoke the Jewish concept of Tikkun Olam, repairing the world.

Another of the six large canvases on display is Burn Site (40 x 30"), with two slender men shoveling the charred remains of a building into three white plastic buckets. There are small red flecks and reflections on the buckets, suggesting that the charcoal is still hot.

There are also mid-sized paintings (such as Asphalt 1, which has a much busier composition that makes the eye flit around and not quite find a place of interest or repose), as well as a number of tiny paintings (in the 4x5" range). Asphalt (Green) (8x8") features the Roadwork crew from the exhibit card, with the same elegiac golden background and square format.

Heidi Broner is a masterful painter who celebrates (in both this and other work, such as a previous series of paintings featuring a walk in the country with a dog) daily-ness and iconic human activities. Somehow she also manages to express, at the same time, a more elevated, otherworldly experience. This may the sign of a great artist.

REVIEW: Thomas Mulholland, Bulletins From Neptune

By Theodore Hoppe

Christopher L. C. E. Witcombe wrote in his essay, What is art...What is an artist, "Art can be many things and one example may look quite different from the next. But something called ‘art’ is common to all." He goes on to say, "For art to be an effective instrument of social betterment, it need(s) to be understood by as many people as possible." It is in this vein that Thomas Mulholland has created Bulletins From Neptune.

Just about everything about Bulletins from Neptune is surprising. For starters, instead of displaying his art in an art gallery, Mulholland took an unconventional approach and transformed an unoccupied store at 13 Main Street in Montpelier into his own gallery for a month.

The show itself is about bulletins and bulletin boards. A bulletin board is a place where people leave public messages to advertise things to buy or sell or announce events. It is Mr. Mulholland's idea that bulletin boards take on the unintended and accidental qualities of a collage construction. Bulletin boards as an art form, a merging of both words and visual art, draws on the work by the cubist Georges Braque in paintings such as "Pedestal Table."

Bulletin boards can also provide information. Teachers use them effectively to make their classrooms visually appealing and stimulating to students. It is in this way that Mulholland, as teacher and artist, chooses to display both drawings and thoughts. The walls of the store space have been filled with large cobalt blue bulletin boards surrounded with simple burnt sienna wood frames. In another surprise, half the them, the ones along the left side, are intentionally blank, creating a stark minimalist feel to the space. The spaces along the right side of the space are filled with "bulletins" collected over the past fifteen years. These drawings are about complex and perplexing notions, the quiet ecstasy of a germinating seed, a brief philosophical kiss. There are words that dance, lines that whisper. All have a simple, clean and graceful manner.

The artist has some other surprises too: Some of the blank bulletin boards will be filled in as the show progresses. There is a design drawing for a granite sculpture that was proposed as a war memorial for the front of Montpelier City Hall. There is a sculpture of a chair made out of copper and copper plumbing pipe. There is a piece of a tree resting on a bed of smooth stones in the store's front window, the artist's homage to a tree that lived a poetic life.

In all, there is much more here than meets the eye. Thomas Mulholland is answering the questions, "What is art...What is an artist?" in a way that is as open as Main Street.

Bulletins from Neptune will be at 13 Main St. in Montpelier until May 10, 2009. The hours are Thur.-Fri. 5-9 P.M., Sat. 3-8 P.M. & Sun. 2-6 P.M.

STUDIO SPACE: Gray Building in Northfield

Two north facing classrooms available July 1st in the historic and newly renovated Gray Building in Northfield.

Large airy classrooms (30'x30'), $775 each, perfect to share with several artists. Located on Route 12 in Northfield village. North light, tall ceilings, views, attached small office.

Come tour a working studio of 5 artists, and ask questions.

• Fully accessible, elevator
• Ample parking
• Shared full kitchen
• All utilities included

Call Kerri at 802-279-8981 for more information.

REPRINT: "Paintings For The Palate" from the Hardwick Gazette

by David K. Rodgers

HARDWICK — Artist Marie LaPré Grabon has a show of about a dozen works at Claire’s Restaurant, paintings and drawings that at first glance appear to be quite simple but remind us of the sculptor Brancusi’s enjoinder, “We arrive at simplicity in art in spite of ourselves by doing what is fundamental.”
   In her graphic work she makes fine use of the subtle possibilities of charcoal on the slightly textured surface of hand-made papers in varied shades from black to light grays. With graphite, her sparse lines capture the stark contrasts of trees and snow of winter landscapes. Many of the latter works were done this winter when she was home-bound recoveringfrom an operation, and they have a psychological component in addition to the representational.
   In her oils, oil

 pastels and acrylics LePré Grabon creates bold areas of unmixed colors that jostle each other in well balanced compositions. The colors themselves are used in an abstract way, not necessarily that of the “real” objects, much like the artists of the Blue Rider movement and the later German Expressionists of the 1920s. As in her black and white drawings, there are a lot of dynamic visual movements in her compositions. These often lead our eyes to the top of the painting, but with some counterpoint in horizontal and downward pointing forms. These vigorous movements well express the rhythmic energies of nature, the deeper unseen but powerful forces of life.
   LePré Grabon effectively combines the freedom of abstraction with recognizable landscape forms, but still retains something of the spontaneity and delight of children’s art. This is perhaps symbolized by the circle of the sun the young frequently 

put in their drawings and paintings and which is a common motif in her work; a reminder of what we all too often forget, that we are part of an infinite universe. Many of these drawings and paintings are based on local landscapes around Hardwick, where LePré Grabon lives, or are a more general celebration of the beauty of each season in Vermont. And this underlying joyousness (especially in her colors) is reflected in the last sentence of her artist’s statement: “The best part of making art objects is that we, as artists, are doing what we absolutely and passionately love to do.”

   This show of LePré Grabon’s work will continue at Claire’s until the end of May. For more information, go www.marielaprégrabon.com.

images- Paintings by Marie LaPré Grabon

above: The Upper Field  Oil on paper  24x36"

right: Field in East Hardwick   Oil on canvas  24x36"

drawing: Study/Gold Brook   Charcoal on paper   18x24"

PRESS RELEASE: WalkOver Gallery in Bristol

"This spring marks the five year milestone of the WalkOver Gallery.  We are celebrating this fact in several ways.  Kit Donnelly was our first exhibiting artist and she returns five years later with an exhibition of recent works.  The opening and reception will be held on Friday, May 1, 2009 from 5:00 p.m. to 7:00 p.m.  The Exhibition runs from May 1, 2009 through June 19, 2009.  

WalkOver Gallery Exhibitions in its Fifth Year:

* May1st - June 19th - Recent works of Kit Donnelly
* June 20th - July 10th - Juried photography show (a National Juried Exhibition Sponsored by the Vermont Photography Workplace)

*July 11th - August 30th - Ray Hudson, printmaker
* September 4th - October 31st - WalkOver Artists' Retrospective - Each artist who has had a solo show may choose to submit 2 pieces for this special five year anniversary exhibition.  It will be interesting to find out what has happened to artists since their time here at the gallery.*Nov - Dec.  CALL TO ARTISTS - The WalkOver Gallery Really Good Shoe Show - will be a fun exhibition and an open invitation to all artists interested, to submit renderings of the shoe.  

The WalkOver Gallery has had a wonderful five years.  The walls embrace the art placed on them. Generously proportioned walls, the glow from the northern light of the arching window, the fine architectural details of the old building, the imagination of the artists, all merge into sharing artistic vision and renderings."

ABOVE: Paintings by Kit Donnelly

Interview by Riki Moss with Diane Gabriel

RM: You've had a memorable career working in different media: stuffed dolls, soft sculpture, metal sculpture, monoprints, books, drawing, photography - your holga prints are currently exhibited at 215 College Street. What strikes me is a similarity of vision that is clear, focused, and yet at the same time mysterious and dark no matter what material you use.

DG: I had a rich, dramatic childhood. My work comes from my experiences and my memories of them.

I work in different mediums because it never occurred to me that I couldn't or shouldn't. In this I was influenced by my dad. He was the kind of man who tinkered, he fixed cars, kept up a small boat in Sheepshead Bay. Together we made sinkers, melting lead on the kitchen stove, we scrapped barnacles, sanded and varnished the boat. I was the oldest kid, there were no sons, so we did these sort of things together. At the same time he was a very large, difficult, demanding man, very critical, and controlling. I had a lot of practice watching, observing and being sensitive to his moods. When I was fourteen he suffered the first of many illnesses which further added to the drama, (some might say trauma), in our home.

My mom is a remarkable person. She is very cultured with enormous energy, stamina and imagination. She has always encouraged my work. The outings I most remember with her were going to the library and seeing foreign films. I was not so much a Disney kid as a Bergman one. My mom was always reading as was my grandmother to whom I was very close. Being a French Jew born so soon after the Holocaust also had a great impact on me.

RM: Are you playing with time? I'm thinking of the sculpture of the child's shoe, I'm thinking of this little girl in front of the tree frozen in time. I'm thinking of several dark, scary photos of kids at play who seem far older than their years.

DG:As I age time becomes more and more important to me. My memories seem richer, more real than today. The world of today is moving too fast to make memories. It feels transitory to me. I don't know why this is so. The best I can do is to make art, make something solid and real. In its nature photography always references time.


The shoe to which you refer is made of tea bags, encaustic and hawthorns. It was included in an exhibition titled, Fairy Tales and Other Assumptions, my commentary on the War in Iraq. Tea has been my drink of choice and I've saved teabags for many years. At first it was the shades of brown they made when dried that interested me. However, when opened each teabag reveals a particular pattern unique to that tea bag, that period of time. I came to think of them a little maps of time. Incidentally, (or maybe not), it is the used tea from the bags I used to tone the photographs in the current exhibit.


RM: You've lived in New York, you've lived in Vermont: has the bucolic environment affected you?

DG: Moving to Vermont, where I began to grow food, has had tremendous influence on me. You might say it rooted me, nurtured and sustained me body and soul. Interestingly I am in NYC as I write this. Part of me just can't see how people live like this, with the noise and lack of space.

RM: You quote Diane Arbus in your statement at your most recent show: what about her interests you?

DG: I find her comments to be very true. For example her statement that,"every family is really a little creepy". I just find that flat out true and evident. I mean how can any group of people manage to live together without making little agreements, little weird accommodations among themselves which permit them to live together for extended times? My little agreements are unique to me and will quite naturally strike someone else as weird - as will the agreements others have made which are unique to them. I think she really saw things other people didn't see. Also I don't think her photographs caused her suicide. I think untreated periomenopause did - remember there were no anti-depressants in those days.

RM: Do you see any resemblance between yourself and the other Diane Gabriel - I've been googling you - who won best in show at the Circleville, Ohio Pumpkin show with her plate of hulled lima beans?

DG: While I don't care for limas, I'm crazy for fava beans! But thanks for asking!

REVIEW: "Rebirth" at Burlington CCV's Cherry Pit Gallery

by Marc Awodey

There aren’t very many basement galleries in Burlington, or anywhere in Vermont for that matter, but one of the Community College Of Vermont exhibition spaces is both below ground, and paradoxically rich with natural light. It’s an atrium space mostly, and the sun pours down from a glass ceiling a few stories above the gallery. With its entrance on the Cherry Street side of Borders bookstore, the exhibit area has been christened Cherry Pit Gallery. It’s one of the three gallery spaces run by CCV in Burlington. All are ably curated by artist Karen Geiger. For this spring Cherry Pit Gallery has a group exhibition entitled “Rebirth.” It’s a show featuring many of the CCV instructors, and a select group of area artists.

Photographer Ann Barlow’s silver gelatin print Emergence directly addresses the theme of the show. It seems to present a female model uncurling her spine in the late stage of emerging from somewhere, as if she had been coiled up in a ball and is now standing. But that’s simply an assumption of the narrative. What make the image most interesting is Barlow’s linear composition. The negative space around figure’s left arm creates triangles that brace the form like girders under a bridge. The back is a broad, dark mass topped with the small forms of vertebrae, fingers and the model’s top knot which become a focal point.

Clay Feet by Sharon Webster is a whimsical installation of literal clay feet tramping up the side of a shoe hanger. “For me - these feet of clay are useful metaphors for struggle, desire, and aspiration” wrote Webster in an artists statement. The feet are like casts of Bigfoot feet. Webster sculpted the feet out of what seems like the joy of working with the plasticity of the medium. Imperfections and textures give them an organic feel.

The 2009 mixed media painting by Maggie Standley, called Blown Away-Poof! is a melange of hues and brush strokes which meld together to become a strong piece of nonobjective abstraction. A word is scrawled across the painting - does it say “fluence?” It’s hard to tell. Incorporating words with paintings can be problematic, in that, while trying to decipher the text one might overlook the considerable painterly aspects of the piece. Standley's variation of value - adding white to her hues, to fine tune complex chromatic harmonies, should be subject enough without an ambiguous bit of text.

The largest piece in the show is Pin The Crime On The Donkey, by the artist known as Mr. Masterpiece - the moniker is a whole story in itself to be left for another review - and that piece too contains text. In the case of Pin The Tail... the text is so stylized that it’s purely a design element. Mr. Masterpiece is one of the Burlington area’s strongest painters and his hard edged geometric stye is as distinctive as it is well painted.
In her curator’s statement, Geiger wrote: “The purpose of this show was to find a varied group of creative individuals and ask them, what is your concept of rebirth?” Even though few, if any, of the pieces in The Rebirth Show were created to address Geiger’s specific question, the exhibition’s eclecticism reflects the diversity of her artists' answers. “Rebirth” is apparently a very complicated word.