Author Archives: althewebmaster

Heart

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January 31- February 24, 2013
Opening reception Friday Feb 1st, 5-8

Wes-Heart Cart2_2013-800

Wesley Reddick
Many Are the Wounds to a Sensitive Soul
paper, lead, wood, nails
15″ x 15″ x 8

Åarhus Gallery warms up mid-winter with a show titled, ‘Heart’, which runs from January 31st through February 24th.

With Valentine’s Day thoughtfully placed in the heart of February we tend to associate ‘Heart’ with warmth, coziness, and sweets in a heart shaped bright red box. Some of the artists showing their work for the ‘Heart’ show may be thinking outside the box of chocolates and delving into aspects of the heart that are not so sweet. Oscar Wilde said that hearts live, by being wounded,… maybe that’s why we give chocolates on Valentine’s,  they help us feel better. Please join us for an opening reception Friday February 1st, 5-8pm.

Featured artists include; Kenny Cole, Al Crichton, Maryjean Crowe, Mike Fletcher, J. T. Gibson, Sarah Hewitt, Kevin Johnson, Mark Kelly, Karen MacDonald, Richard Mann, Cathy Melio, Tom O’Donovan, Joan Proudman, Abbie Read, Wesley Reddick, Willy Reddick, Mike Silverton, and Simon van der Ven.

Gibson_Stent_2

J.T. Gibson
Will a Stent Prevent a Broken Heart?
aluminum, rivets and neoprene mesh
10″ x 8″ x 1.25″

Here are some of our thoughts on ‘Heart’…

The root of a person’s thoughts and emotions, especially love or compassion ,….we’ve come to call heart. Epictetus said that we are born into essential goodness and endowed with natural intuitions about what is good and worthy and what is not. This endemic moral capacity …. we call heart. The heart, our constant rhythmic companion that never rests, though it may skip a beat now and then, delivers our life’s blood to where we need it, when we need it, even on a whim. Sea Biscuit, the race horse who became a national icon for hope and perseverance during the great depression, had a heart that was two and a half times larger than the average race horse, though when we say, “That horse had heart!” we’re not noting the size of his ventricles, but how hard he worked to come from behind and win. Never do we have more heart though, than when we give it everything we’ve got, and cross the finish line, imaginary or actual, long after the hoopla is over and everyone else has gone home.

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Gypsy Caravan CD Release Party

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Saturday February 16th at 7:30
Postponed until Saturday February 23rd
$7 Suggested donation

promo-pic-3-maxÅarhus Gallery in Belfast is pleased to be hosting Gypsy Caravan’s CD Release Party on Saturday February 16th at 7:30. This local band last played at the gallery to a delighted audience during the 2012 Free Range Music Festival. The band, featuring David Clarke on lead guitar, Wayne Delano on saxes, Dan Clarke on rhythm guitar and Max MacFarland on acoustic bass performs in the gypsy jazz manouche style, building upon the traditions of Django Reinhardt’s music while getting inspiration from modern players such as Bireli Lagrene, John Jorgenson, Robin Nolan and Frank Vignola.

Hot, gypsy jazz…what better way to warm up a cold February night? A $7 suggested donation at the door includes cider, tea and snacks. Their new CD “Douze Chansons” featuring 12 original songs will be available for purchase.

www.gypsycaravanband.com

Willy Reddick in group show at Harlow Gallery

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Grey_Horse

The Kennebec Valley Art Association is pleased to announce its first exhibition of 2013 at the Harlow Gallery. On view January 18 to February 9, 2013, ingrained presents the work of five Maine printmakers: Martha Briana of Northport, Anthony Kulik of Belfast, Donna Parkinson of Freeport, Willy Reddick of Belfast and Sarah Vosmus of Bowdoinham.

Meet the artists at an opening reception on Friday, January 18 from 5-8 pm.

Pervaded by the powerful presence of the Maine forest, the Harlow Gallery’s ingrained brings together five printmakers working in uniquely different styles and processes. Whether physically carving into the grain for a woodcut or collecting samples and sketches, the artists are working in connection to the woods. The prints exhibited speak to the breadth, methods and personalities of individual artists working in the printmaking medium, ranging from traditional to experimental. This exhibit goes from intricate and detailed to the boldly abstracted patterns and colors; to intimate wall-hung works to space commanding ceiling hung works and three-dimensional constructions. The Harlow is excited to bring together these artists in a compelling and vibrant exhibit of contemporary printmakers in the still months of winter, connecting viewers to what it means to be “ingrained”.

Call for Art: “44N 69W: Radius Belfast” 2013

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March

Feb 28- March 31, 2013
Opening Friday March 1, 5-8
44N 69W: Radius Belfast

radius-2010Call for Art:  “44N 69W: Radius Belfast”  2013
Aarhus Gallery once again toasts our vast creative community by opening its walls to Maine residents of any age or training, living within a thirty mile radius of Belfast, to show their stuff – artwork, that is – in our all-encompassing 5th Annual show entitled “44N 69W: Radius Belfast”.  From potters, painters and welders, to musicians, knitters and mobile makers, all work falling within the gallery’s fairly liberal view of ‘decency’ will be presented on the walls, floor, or ceiling, as the case may be.
The show runs from February 28 through March 31, 2013.
An Opening Reception will be held Friday March 1st, 5-8pm.

  • Works in all media are eligible and will be for sale.
  • Please have work ready to hang; picture wires or sawtooth hangers properly affixed to work. Sculpture pedestals can be made available.
  • Work must have been made within the last two years by any resident living within 30 miles of Belfast (as the crow flies).
  • Drop off is at Aarhus Gallery, 50 Main Street, Belfast, during open hours 11-5:30pm, Thursday February 21st through Sunday February 24th.
  • Up to three entries per person, maximum size 30” including frame. All works will be shown at our discretion.
  • Sorry, no mail entries can be accepted.
  • There is a $5 entry fee per piece, a portion of all proceeds will be donated to local food banks.
  • Sales: Artists will receive 50% and Åarhus Gallery will donate 20% of total sales from the show to Food Banks within a 30 mile radius of Belfast.
  • Unsold work must be picked up April 4th through April 7th.

Belfast Free Range Music Festival

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Saturday April 27, 2013

Free-Range-Header
The Belfast Free Range Music Festival is a grassroots, volunteer powered celebration of original music that takes place annually in downtown Belfast, Maine. Participating musicians travel from near and far, representing a wide range of genres and musical backgrounds, everything from rock to bluegrass, a capella vocal groups to hip hop. In its first three years, the festival has hosted 91 local, regional and nationally touring acts in multiple venues including our local movie theater, Legion hall, arts center, galleries (including Åarhus), and even a church sanctuary.

http://freerangemusicfestival.com/

11:45 Clio and Chloe (Midcoast, Maine)

Clio and ChloeChloe, fourteen, began teaching herself piano when she was eight years old. As well as this, she plays guitar and ukulele. She prefers to play by ear, and has been coming up with songs since she was ten. Chloe has performed at various open mics around the midcoast, been featured on the radio, and has provided music for fundraising events.

Clio, seventeen, began piano lessons when she was six years old, and hasn’t stopped playing since. When she was eleven, she chose to focus primarily on composition. Ever since, she has been recording original songs, and recently released her debut album, “Little Sister,” onto iTunes.

 
1:45 Ethan Andrews (Belfast, Maine)

Ethan AndrewsEthan Andrews is a self-taught musician who has been writing, recording and performing his songs between everything else for half a lifetime.

He grew up in New Hampshire and Ohio, went to college in New York City to study art and spent the next 17 years there, performing (in a band, as a solo artist, and later in a street brass marching band), delivering packages by bicycle, refinishing antique woodwork, taking photographs of traffic intersections for auto insurance claims, working as an electrician, painting paintings, and otherwise preparing himself for a career in journalism, which is what he does when he is not doing music.
 
ethanandrews.bandcamp.com

 
3:45 Alhan Middle Eastern Music Ensemble (Maine)

Alhan
The members of ALHAN bring many varied musical backgrounds to their exciting interpretation of Middle Eastern Music. The group features Eric LaPerna; riqq and darbuka, Tom Kovacevic; oud, nay and vocals, Madeleine Hanna; lead vocals and frame drum and Michael Gallant; violin. All of the members have studied with some of the leading performers of Middle Eastern Music in the world today, including Simon Shaheen, Bassam Saba, Michel Merhej and the late Alan Shavarsh Bardezbanian. They strive to convey authentic versions of the music with a contemporary flare. Their approach combines the diverse characteristics of the music, intricately composed and full of improvisation and ranging in mood inspired by vibrant timbres, sublime melodies, and spirited dance rhythms. They offer a truly rare opportunity to experience these rich and beautiful traditions of the Middle East.

 
5:45 Samara Lubelski (NYC)

Samara LubelskiAs a member of Hall of Fame, the Sonora Pine, Tower Recordings, Metabolismus, and most recently Chelsea Light Moving (with Sonic Youth founder Thurston Moore), songwriter-singer-multi-in
strumentalist-improviser-engineer Samara Lubelski is not what anyone could call ‘pigeonholed’ in the climate of contemporary music. She has split her time between Germany, and her Lower East Side home base, playing and recording with a who’s who of the art-punk and freely-improvised folk scenes.

Her most recent solo record, Wavelength, was released by DeStijl in 2012.

http://www.samaralubelski.com/
http://freerangemusicfestival.com/albums/samara-lubelski-wavelength/

Åarhus Sixth Anniversary

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June 4- 30th, 2013
Opening Reception Friday June 7, 5-8pm

6th-annivlo

With Åarhus coming up to it’s sixth anniversary, the partners take a Belfast moment to examine the past six years and try to explain why on earth we do this. But as it turns out, other people have been able to express this whole crazy art thing better than we can:

“… the ultimate aim (in art making) is to create an environment that would allow the miracle of empathy to take place, …” —Kwame Dawes, professor of English, poet, Guggnhiem Fellow

“There are more valid facts and details in works of art than there are in history books.” —Charlie Chaplin, cinema pioneer

“The Function of Art is to disturb, Science reassures.” —George Braque, creator of Cubism with Pablo Picasso

“Imagination is more important than knowledge.” —Albert Einstein, you know who he is

“whether attempting to make art is noble or selfish, the fact remains that I will do it nevertheless.” —James Sturm, award winning graphic novelist, ‘Golem’s Mighty Swing’

“Do not imagine that art is something which is designed to give gentle uplift and self confidence. Art is not a brazzierre. At least not in the English sense. But do not forget that ‘brassierre’ is the French word for life-jacket.” —Julian Barnes, author of ‘The Sense of an Ending’

“After half a century of study, I’ve come to the conclusion that even under the electron microscope, art, like life, has no underlying purpose.” —Ethel Dagmar, PhD, Director of the Museum of Science and Civilization, Copenhagen, Denmark

At any rate, in celebration of our sixth anniversary, we invite the public to join us Friday June 7th for an Anniversary show reception, from 5-8. Come, for what ever reason you like, meet and converse with local artists, art appreciators, and a whole bunch of normal people too! Or just have a cracker.

The show runs from June 4th through June 30th and features artworks by Åarhus partners: Kevin Johnson, Mark Kelly, Richard Mann, Wesley Reddick and Willy Reddick.

We will resume summer hours with this show starting in June and will be open Tuesday through Sunday 11am-5:30pm and Mondays by chance.

Willy at desk

July

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Jaap Eduard Helder and Jody Johnstone
July 2- 28, 2013
Opening Reception Friday July 5th, 5-8pm

Jaap Eduard Helder

Out Here Like This

Jaap Eduard Helder
Out There Like This
acrylic on paper
7.5″ x 6.5″

Bio
Jaap Eduard Helder was born in 1950 in the industrial town of Velsen Holland. The landscape of industrial shapes and colors of post World War II rebuilding, became an integral part of the imagery for Jaap’s paintings.

Helder went to the classical school to study Latin, Greek, German, French, and English but his interests were primarily in the arts and music. He started drawing and painting classes accompanied by his father, a portrait and landscape painter. Helder was influenced by Escher, Mondrian, Karel Appel, and American jazz, which began his attraction to the United States. He traveled around Europe and was inspired in particular by Israel and its landscape before finally settling in the United States and moving to Maine.

In Maine, Helder became acquainted with several artists who influenced and encouraged his work, including John Hultberg, an artist who had worked in Paris, New York, and on the West Coast. In the late 1980s, Helder continued to paint, exhibit, and sell paintings. In 1993 he was included in a group show called “The Painter’s Theater”, organized by George Lloyd. The show included such artists as Robert Colescott, Richard Merkin, Trevor Winkfield, and John Hultberg.

In 1998 Helder moved to Eastern Maine, where he continued to paint. The unspoiled, raw beauty of the Down East landscape, where the blueberry barrens meet the rugged coastline of the Atlantic Ocean, is a strong source of inspiration for his most recent work. He currently lives in Belfast.

Helder’s paintings are in numerous private and corporate collections.

Artist Statement

For most of my life, painting has been my passion. Through art I can express the wonder and the curiosity I feel about the world I live in. My work is an intuitive improvisation on nature and on the impressions of daily life. Through a process of psychological realism, visual elements are restructured into an abstraction of the landscape and the figure.

Living in coastal Maine, I am inspired by the raw beauty of the landscape and the Atlantic Ocean, the worn surfaces I see around me, especially the ships in the harbors with their many layers of industrial paint, scratched and marked and worn down by the elements.

Through the relationship of colors, forms, and marks, through rhythm and balance, and the physical and psychological work of painting, each picture develops into a unique expression. Using visual suggestions, I draw the viewer into an imagined landscape, into a colorful, dynamic world that hovers between the abstract and the representational.

Jody Johnstone

Johnstone_Sculpted-Vase

Jody Johnstone
Sculpted Vase
stoneware, anagama fired, unglazed
7” x 6 1/2” x 6”

Bio

Jody Johnstone first became interested in pottery when she was in her early twenties living and working in Japan. It was a few years later that she took a pottery class and worked towards her goal of becoming a full time potter. Eventually she was offered a chance to apprentice for two years with Bizen master Isezaki Jun. She moved to Swanville, Maine in 1996, designed and built a 24-foot long Anagama tunnel kiln and began making pots. She has shown all over New England, including CMCA in Rockport, Maine, the Worcester Center for Crafts in Worcester, Mass. and the New Hampshire Institute of Art, Manchester, NH. Her work has been included in numerous publications, many private collections and is in the permanent collection of the Corning Community College in Corning, NY.

Artist Statement

I built my anagama kiln in 1997 after returning from a two-year apprenticeship in Bizen, Japan with National Living Treasure, Jun Isezaki. My kiln is 24 ft. long and holds about 800 pots. I do two eight day firings a year. The kiln is stoked by a crew of four. Each firing requires about 6 cord of wood which is a mixture of local Maine hardwoods: ash, beech, maple, oak and a little birch and scrap cedar and poplar from local sawmills. Most of my pots go into the kiln with at least the outer surface unglazed and rely on clay body, natural ash deposits, loading and flame patterns and placement in the kiln to achieve a wide range of effects. Flatware is generally stacked with rice straw between the pieces to achieve further decorative effects.

I fell in love with pottery and woodfiring together and to me they are inseparable. I’ve never done anything else. I want my pots to be both strong and soft, to embody my sense of beauty and rightness. The long firing adds richness and depth, and introduces just the right element of chance and mystery to keep me from trying to be too precise with my work.

Woodfiring is a lifestyle too and the anagama fills the needs I have to make lots of pots, to stack wood and do other physical, mind-clearing work, and to sit and enjoy a quiet shift with the kiln. I relish the community of potters and firing friends that gather around the kiln twice a year. I enjoy the rhythms of the process and the scale that I work on as it makes me feel connected to the seasons, strong and competent.

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Patricia Wheeler

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July 30- September 1, 2013
Opening Reception Friday August 2nd, 5-8pm

Wheeler_10th Moon Harmony of Bees

Patricia Wheeler
10th Moon Harmony of Bees
limestone clay on board with acrylic paint and cold wax
48″ x 48″ x 3″

Åarhus Gallery is pleased to have as their guest artist for the month of August, Patricia Wheeler of Deer Isle. The show titled ‘Reciprocity’ runs from July 30th through September 1st. Please join us for an opening reception Friday August 2nd, 5-8pm.

Patricia Wheeler’s mixed media paintings are the perfect object because they feel just right, in a way, essential. Her colors are confident and organic, beautiful, but of necessity not pretty. As if there could be no other color that works for that shape in that space: familiar and comfortable to the eye experienced in the journeys of old souls. Patricia’s handsome textures are carried through lovingly and though they’re sometimes scratched, or excoriated like petroglyphs, they speak of groundedness and humanity, and so as in archeology, we come to know ourselves through this well handled surface. An image of a boat, a raven, a person, things we understand easily… numbers and words inscribed can become the personal details, or the mystery to the story of life and spirit. And there are lines to rely on; a useful limitation maybe, and patterns to remind us of a recurring thought, that feeling we remember of an object gone by that we connected to sometime before in our lives, that felt … just right. Patricia says of her work: “Through mixed media painting, I explore concepts of human interaction with the earth. My search is spiritual….”

Patricia graduated from Rutgers University with high honors in studio art and has since exhibited in New York, Philadelphia, Boston, Santa Fe, Oregon, Florida and Maine. She has taught at the Haystack Mountain School of Crafts and the Center for Maine Contemporary Art, as well as in Oregon and Wisconsin. She has been selected for numerous artist residencies including at the Sitka Center for Art and Ecology in Otis Oregon and the Oregon College of Art and Craft in Portland. She lives and works in Deer Isle Maine with her husband J. Fred Woell.

Also showing will be the work of Aarhusians Kevin Johnson, Mark Kelly, Richard Mann, Wesley Reddick and Willy Reddick.

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Willy Reddick

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Sustenance
September 3-29, 2013
Opening Reception Friday September 6th, 5-8pm

Chard, acrylic on paper, tin, brass rivets, 5.5" x 8"

Chard, acrylic on paper, tin, brass rivets, 5.5″ x 8″

Åarhus Gallery is pleased to have one of their own, Willy Reddick, as their guest artist for the month of September with a show entitled, “Sustenance”. This show runs from September 3rd through September 29th, 2013. The public is invited to an opening reception Friday September 6th, 5-8pm.

Willy Reddick has been painting and making things since she was a little tike. Being raised by two artists she may have had little choice, but now that she’s over a half century past tikedom she chooses to dedicate herself to making things…. and we’re glad she does. Weighing in at only 5 foot two inches tall, Willy was compelled to make big paintings of large scale motifs, such as excavation equipment and dump trucks. She painted the middleweight boxing championship crown in the bottom of Marvin Hagler’s swimming pool, and painted a life size mural of a humpback whale on the wall of a museum. From there, she worked with the technically demanding R and D departments of the toy world, hand painting prototype toys. But that was in years past, these days Willy is concentrating her talents on modestly sized white line wood block prints as well as highly rendered miniature paintings depicting her immediate environment, specifically, something dear to her heart,… and stomach; her garden vegetables, the chickens she keeps for eggs, and the pastel hued eggs themselves. For this reason, the title “Sustenance” makes perfect sense, but the title also alludes to something more subtle, more connected to the soul than to the nutritional calling of the living body, and that is the call to create, the call to revere in the tantalizing beauty of the very things that give us life. Our food can not only fill the stomach and nurture our blood, it can also, if given the chance, nurture our sense of belonging to a wondrous and brilliant world of nature and life that we must take in, that we must reciprocally wholistically sustain…. or perish.

After painting tens of thousands of things over the course of her life, Willy is now a colorist at the top of her game. Her adept subtleties with the color pallet, creating hues so unassuming and seemingly naturally occurring, that they can easily belie her gifted sense and consummate skill in color mixing and conceptualizing. And because Willy’s work is endearing, friendly, and approachable, we can be charmed into smiling over some of this countries most skillfully rendered, exquisitely detailed botanical miniature paintings. So come to Åarhus, and though you may be looking over Willy’s head, you won’t be able to over look one of the state of Maine’s best kept secrets,… Willy’s inspired work.

Showing with Willy will be Åarhusians Kevin Johnson, Mark Kelly, Richard Mann, and Wesley Reddick.

Åarhus Gallery is located at 50 Main St. Belfast and is open Tuesday through Sunday 11am-5:30pm, and Mondays by chance. For more information and a slideshow of the current exhibit visit www.aarhusgallery.com or call 338-0001.

Rooster in the Grass_

Rooster in the Grass #1
white-line woodblock print
7″ x 7″

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Holiday Extravaganza at Åarhus Gallery

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It is never too early to start thinking of presents. Admittedly, the holidays are a month away, but wouldn’t it be nice to cross a few items off the list soon? One inspiring place to begin is Åarhus Gallery in Belfast, which makes small, relatively affordable art and craft items available in its sixth annual “Holiday Extravaganza” until December 24.

Read the full article in The Free Press Online