Past Exhibitions

November 7th – December 24

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Extravaganza
November 7th- December 24, 2014
Opening Reception Friday November 7th, 5-8pm

The eighth annual EXTRAVAGANZA kicks off early again this year, and runs from November 7th through December 24th
. This jam-packed show features smaller artworks and a wide range of creative craftwork priced with gift giving in mind. Works in a dazzling variety of mediums, from over 70 talented Maine artists from throughout the midcoast and beyond will be exhibited, including: pottery, poetry and painting, collage, etching and photography, woodblock prints, blown glass, fiber arts, handmade books, cards, calendars, ornaments, jewelry, music, Glass Plate images, chocolate and more!

Artists who have shown in the gallery and in the crafts section over the past year will be featured, along with some newcomers and the Åarhus partners. Artists included will be: Michael Alpert, Susan Amons, Suzanne Anderson, Bernice Arthur, Joe Ascrizzi, Dan Beckman, Mark Bell, Bixby and Co., Martha Briana, Phyllis Buchanan, Linda Buckmaster, Kate Chandler, Kenny Cole, Cinder Conk, Constance Cossette, Maryjean V. Crowe, Nicholas Cullen, Bill Davis, James Deane, Liz Deane, Dean’s Sweets, Gabriella D’Italia, Rachael Eastman, Kris Engman, David Estey, Sarah Faragher, Maureen Farr, Sallie Findlay, Stephen Florimbi, Kathleen Newton Foote, Annadeene Fowler, George Fowler, Free Seedlings, Jacob Fricke, Elizabeth Garber, Harold Garde, Jemma Gascoine, Carol Gater, Gawler Sisters, J.T. Gibson, Ellen Goldsmith, David Jacobson, Jeffrey Jelenfy, Kevin Johnson, Jody Johnstone, Hilary Kahrl, Lynn Karlin, Mark Kelly, Bennett Konesni, Hannah Kreitzer, A. C. Kulik, Valerie Lawson, Eric Leppanen, Betsy Levine, Joel Lipman, Little Letterpress, Carol Logie, Karen MacDonald, Richard Mann, Barbara Maria, Sandy McGaw, Kate McLeod, Cathy Melio, Kate Mess, Metaphor Bronze, Leslie Miller, Hanako Nakazato, Nire Art, Novel Jazz, Toki Oshima, Leila Ostby, Alex Portela, Robbi Fritz Portela, Jane Ploughman, Rebekah Raye, Abbie Read, Wesley Reddick, Willy Reddick, Liv Kristin Robinson, Julie H. Rose, Rural Electric, Ashleigh Russell, Eleanor Salazar, Erica Schlueter, Betty Schopmeyer, Johan Selmer-Larson, Jeanne Seronde Perkins, Patricia Shea, Mike Silverton, Karin Spitfire, Toussaint St. Negritude, James Strickland, Tandem Glass, Mary Trotochaud, Nance Trueworthy, Larry Unger, Glen Veevaert, Simon van der Ven, John Vincent, Whiffletree and April White.

Come join the fun, meet the artists and help kick off the Eighth Annual Holiday Extravaganza with an opening reception Friday November 7th from 5-8 pm.

DSC00348

Åarhus Gallery is located at 50 Main Street, Belfast and is open Tuesday through Sunday 11-5:30, Mondays by chance, Friday nights til 7 for the month of December, and will close at 3pm on December 24th. Call 207-338-0001during business hours for more information or visit www.aarhusgallery.com for links to the artists and notice of special events.

Michael Alpert and Jemma Gascoine

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Life Studies (Architectonica chipolana) 2013 silver-gelatin photographic print 8x10”

Life Studies (Architectonica chipolana)
2013
silver-gelatin photographic print
8×10”

Michael Alpert and Jemma Gascoine
September 30 – November 2, 2014
Opening Reception Friday October 3rd, 5-8pm

Michael Alpert
BIO

Michael Alpert was born in Bangor, Maine, in 1945. He received a B. A. from the New School for Social Research (1968) and a M. L. S. degree from the University of Maine (1972). Alpert has worked for most of his adult life as a writer, publisher, and visual artist. In 1979, under the imprint Theodore Press/ Sarah Books, he began to publish letterpress books with significant texts and artist’s books that focus on the structural / visual side of book-arts. Alpert has also been the occasional designer and production manager for books published by Stephen King’s Philtrum Press. Alpert oversaw the 1997 production of Stephen King’s The Plant, the first e-book published on the Internet by a major author. Awards granted to Alpert’s publications include the Stephen Harvard Prize for Excellence in the Book Arts, presented by the Baxter Society in 1990 (for a Theodore Press/ Sarah Books edition of Gluck’s Orfeo ed Euridice) and First Prize for Book Publications from the New England Museum Association in 2005 (for A Maine Portfolio, published by the Center for Maine Contemporary Art). Since 1995, Alpert has been employed as Director of the University of Maine Press. A collection of Alpert’s personal writing, titled A Night-sea Journey, was published by Constance Hunting in 2000.

In the late 1990s, Alpert shifted his primary artistic attention from book-arts to photography, after decades of interest in photography as an art-form. Since 2001, Alpert’s photographs have been exhibited in nine one-person shows. Based in Bangor, Alpert continues to work as a publisher, author, and visual artist.

STATEMENT
Life Studies

“Life-Form Studies” might be a more accurate name for this series, for all the photographs in it are portraits of invertebrate fossils from the American South. Still, “Life Studies” also seems to fit: Although my subjects have long been dead as individuals (and many have long been extinct as species), my overarching goal is to study Life.

Like the sixteenth-century Mannerist painter known as Parmigianino (as envisioned in John Ashbery’s poem “Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror”), I wish to “rule out the extraneous / Forever.” Through narrowly delineated compositional means (influenced by Parmigianino’s youthful panel), my photographs depict the extraordinarily beautiful shells of ancient mollusks as they have fared in their travels through time.

My intention, however, is not simply to document objects. Art is often a mirror (convex, or otherwise), and making art is often an act of veiled self-portraiture. With this in mind, as I continue to work on this collection of images, I am also exploring the qualities and limitations of perception, the location and circumference of empathy.

Jemma Gascoine
BIO

Jemma Gascoine, Blue Lips Vase, 7" x 13.5"

Jemma Gascoine, Blue Lips Vase, 7″ x 13.5″

Jemma Gascoine, born in 1973 in Surrey, UK has been creating and selling her ceramic sculpture and her utilitarian work since 2001, when she moved from London, England, to a village on the Piscataquis River in the North Woods of Maine.

In 1999, she began studying with Barry Guppy in London, after her workday at the Arts Council of England. Guppy had taught alongside Lucie Rie and Hans Coper at Camberwell College of Arts. The tactility of clay and the movement and physicality of throwing on a potter’s wheel are what drew Gascoine to pottery initially.

Gascoine strives in her functional wheel-based work for beauty of form and feel. The work helps her to hone the skills she needs to build her sculptural pieces. She creates these works using altered, augmented, and adapted wheel-thrown parts.

Gascoine’s 2012 solo exhibition at the University of Maine Museum of Art entitled ‘SlabWaltz’ highlighted her dance in the studio between deconstructed and bisected thrown vessels, mounted on fifteen-inch tiles. These bas-relief sculptures were hung on the walls of the gallery, while Gascoine’s three-dimensional pieces were displayed on podiums. The forms and motifs of the three-dimensional work were echoed in the wall-based work. This ‘echoing’ created a tension that alluded to the age-old dialog between ‘art’ and ‘craft’.

Gascoine’s work can be seen at her studio/gallery in Blanchard Township, at the Center for Maine Craft in West Gardiner, and the North Light Gallery in Millinocket. The many shows that she has participated in are listed on her website.

STATEMENT

I build my utilitarian work with stoneware thrown on a potter’s wheel, which I then adapt, alter or augment. I make models in preparation for my sculptural work. They help me refine my ideas. My sculptural work is often a nontraditional reconfiguring of my functional work in a way that I find arresting. Over time I am creating a repertoire of signature motifs that I reuse.

I am firmly in the realm of contemporary art. Weight, feel and texture is important but form is fundamental. I use color to reinforce the statement I’m making with form. My work is a studied exploration towards a style, mood or theme that I am trying to convey, towards what I am curious about or towards what I find beautiful.

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Julie H. Rose

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Specimen 140703, felt, handspun yarn, stainless steel, linen, silk, 8" x 10"

Julie H. Rose
September 2 – 28, 2014
Opening reception Friday September 5th, 5-8pm

We are pleased to have Julie H. Rose of Belfast as our guest artist for the month of September. The show runs from September 2 through the 28th with an opening reception on Friday September 5th, 5-8pm.

… a fascinating and immensely satisfying feast for the mind and senses.
~ Britta Konau for The Free Press

Julie has had a varied artistic career thus far, but working with fiber has been a constant, if not curvilinear, thread in her life. Raised by two textile designers, she was given free reign with the family art supplies as well as being introduced to sewing and crocheting at an early age. After receiving a BFA from the School of Visual Arts she worked as a commercial illustrator in New York City for Gourmet and Cuisine magazine, while also playing guitar in various punk bands. A few years later, trying to escape the rat race, she moved to Maine to raise sheep for wool and to spin and weave. Later, needing a break from raising sheep, she worked as a tattoo artist and a knitting designer. Through all her varied endeavors she has continued to knit, spin, dye, crochet and sew… exploring the world of fiber. And for her show at Åarhus, that is what she has done. Her shadow boxes contain lovely embroidered, felted, and sewn morsels mounted on silk and hand printed fabrics. They may remind you of edible plants and cocoons, or they may tug at the strands of our ancient memories and evoke the fragile skeletal remains of unknown and delicate organisms, from before the rat race.

Åarhus invites the public to race on over for the opening on the first Friday of September and join in a few threads of conversation with the artist herself.


Specimen J30-4, linen, silk, glass beads, monoprint, 8" x 10"

Specimen J30-4, linen, silk, glass beads, monoprint, 8″ x 10″


 

Julie_H_Rose_panorama

 
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Marc Leavitt

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Composition IV-Collected Image oil on Canvas 40" x 30"

Meditations on Color
July 29 – August 31, 2014
Opening Reception Friday August 1st, 5-8pm

Åarhus Gallery is pleased to have Belfast artist Marc Leavitt as their guest artist for the month of August. The show runs from July 29th through August 31st with an opening reception on Friday August 1st, 5-8pm.

Marc Leavitt is an artist who investigates, examines and studies, images, text, signs and music, with a paint brush and color. His research manifests as multilayered abstract paintings, but only after days, sometimes weeks of analysis of color relationships which in turn require more visual discussion and particularization. Predetermined colors that seem “wrong” together create excitement in the heart of this artist, this color psychotherapist, because they present the artist with a meaty problem to be worked, explored, layered and refined to be made “right”. Marc leavitt’s oil paintings exude a scrumptious attention to detail, layer over meticulous layer.

Marc’s paintings and works on paper have been placed in U.S. and international collections and featured in Architectural Digest and other publications. Selected local juried exhibitions include, the ‘I-95 Triennial—From Connecticut to Maine’ at the University of Maine Museum of Art, and CMCA’s ‘Art to Collect Now’.

Åarhus invites the public to meet the artist and share in his meditative observations of color, language, and the grid in his first solo exhibition with the gallery.

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Hilary Kahrl and Eric Leppanen

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July 1- 27, 2014
Opening Reception Friday July 4th, 5-8pm

Hilary Kahrl, Bicycles= Personal Freedom, Love, Susan B. Anthony, stoneware

Hilary Kahrl, Bicycles= Personal Freedom, Love, Susan B. Anthony, stoneware

Hilary Kahrl
BIO

Hilary Kahrl began with painting. It was not until the last semester of her senior year in college in 1999, that she took a class in ceramics. She fell in love. She then sought out ceramics centers everywhere she lived. Her pursuit led her to study at Pottery North West in Seattle, Eagledale Ceramics Center on Bainbridge Island WA, The Hui No’Eau Visual Arts Center in Makawao HI, Portland Pottery Supply in Portland ME and Active Canvas Arts Center in Bangalore India, where she became an artist in residence and a charter member of the Bangalore Potters Guild. Upon moving to Saint George, she had the tremendous good fortune to apprentice with master ceramicist, George Pearlman. That apprenticeship came at a propitious time when Hilary felt certain in a particular artistic vision, and George had the knowledge and the tools to help Hilary’s work move forward. Since working with George, Hilary has worked as a production potter with Arrowsic Island Pottery, and established her own ceramics studio on Islesboro, called Dark Harbor Pottery.

Hilary uses the surfaces of her pots as painting canvases, to tell stories in the round. She hopes to infuse her forms with whimsy and color, and she hopes that when she gives her pieces to her kiln, that a certain magic will happen when fire meets clay, and things move and rearrange a little so that she can stand back and relinquish control, and let the work be a part of the world as well as a part of herself.

Eric Leppanen
BIO

Eric Leppanen, True Grit, reclaimed paint on panel, 36" x 36"

Eric Leppanen, True Grit, reclaimed paint on panel, 36″ x 36″

Leppanen is an artist living and working in Belfast, Maine near friends, family and with his wife Linda and two amazing children Brogan and Zepherin. He was born in 1970 and grew up on the beach in Owls Head, Maine. He attended Suffolk University where he studied business and marketing. Leppanen experimented with art and studied it on his own. Upon graduation he immersed himself in the corporate banking world and spent 16 years in various business and finance roles.

His love and expression of art was put on hold. He was “released” or laid off from the corporate world in 2009. He was given a gift, an afterlife and since leaving that world he found his passion again and continues to paint and create prolifically. Leppanen is now self­employed, running a successful Cleaning & Property Care business aNeatNook by day and creates by night. Leppanen has been sharing his work at galleries, schools, and businesses throughout Maine.

STATEMENT

“Artist giving old paint a new life”

I am a Maine­born artist and consider myself to be an action painter who recycles old paint – giving it a new life and purpose. I create a constellation of different effects with paint. My experimental art is a combination of taking ideas and materials, adding in energy and emotion, and then letting the paint flow. I work to create visually stimulating texture and depth by directing the paint’s interaction with the forces of nature, yet I find that it is a process that requires both precision and serendipity. I hope my work connects with you and inspires thought and emotion. Please “do” touch artwork.

Eric Leppanen, Seismic, old paint on reclaimed panel door, 36" x 78"

Eric Leppanen, Seismic, old paint on reclaimed panel door, 36″ x 78″

Åarhus Gallery Celebrates its Seventh Anniversary

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Åarhus Gallery, June 1st 2007

Åarhus Gallery Celebrates its Seventh Anniversary
June 3-29, 2014
Opening Reception Friday June 6th, 5-8pm

Did you know that 999,999 divided by 7 is exactly 142,857, and that happens to be exactly the number of crackers that have been served at Åarhus openings over the years? Not that the Åarhus partners are fanatical about details or anything, but as sure as there are seven colors of the rainbow, seven systems of mathematical catastrophes and ‘Sweet 7’ is Åarhus’s favorite Sugababes album, the Åarhus Gallery doors have been swinging now for, you guessed it; SEVEN years!

So whether you have to hike the seven hills of Constantinople or sail the seven seas, or just row across from Searsport, come join the Åahusians in celebration of our seventh anniversary, Friday June 6th for an Anniversary show reception, from 5-8 and meet and converse with local artists, art appreciators, and a whole bunch of normal people too! Or just have a cracker or two, or seven if you like.

The show runs from June 3rd through June 29th and features artworks by Åarhus partners: Mark Kelly, Richard Mann, Wesley Reddick and Willy Reddick.

 

Details: Wesley Reddick, Mark Kelly, Richard Mann, Willy Reddick

Details: Wesley Reddick, Mark Kelly, Richard Mann, Willy Reddick

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Sky

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Drew Fales, White Rubber-Powered Free Flight Stick and Tissue Plane, balsa, Japanese tissue, music wire, paint, aluminum tubing, plywood, 16" wingspan

Drew Fales, White Rubber-Powered Free Flight Stick and Tissue Plane,
balsa, Japanese tissue, music wire, paint, aluminum tubing, plywood,
16″ wingspan

May 1 – June 1, 2014
Opening Reception Friday May 2nd, 5-8pm

The dawning sky has a way of leading us into our mood for the day… and the night sky beckons us to wonder.

That astral dome which lies so silent above us as we stand on the surface of the earth, holds the heavens and presents to the world a universe of celestial bodies. And the colors of the light those shimmering globes do so humbly fling across the galaxies, our poor utilitarian human eyes cannot see, other than narrow bands of the rainbow, a pallid sampling in contrast to the entirety of the extraterrestrial splendor the sky does otherwise avail to us, the unwitting observers.

No wonder we want to fly a kite, or an airplane, or peer centuries into the past sparkles of stars. And is it a wonder that we name a bird capable of effortless ascent to the upper atmosphere, a vulture, as if in jealous contempt?

Of all the thousand things, the sky, it would appear, is our limit…

Kevin Johnson, Daydream Interrupted, photograph

Kevin Johnson, Daydream Interrupted, photograph

Rachael Eastman Silence 2 oil on canvas over box panel 12" x36"

Rachael Eastman
Silence 2
oil on canvas over box
panel
12″ x36″

Featured artists include: Susan Amons, Marcie Jan Bronstein, Kenny Cole, Rachael Eastman, Drew Fales, Sarah Faragher, J.T. Gibson, Ralph Hassenpflug, Kevin Johnson, Mark Kelly, Freddy LaFage, Richard Mann, Cathy Melio, Wesley Reddick, Willy Reddick, Liv Kristin Robinson, Johan Selmer-Larson, James Strickland.

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Paper

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David Estey, Scrutiny, acrylic & graphite on Yupo, 24" x 18"

April 3rd-27th, 2014
Opening Reception: Friday April 4th, 5-8pm

Please join us for a show entitled ‘Paper’, which runs from April 3rd through April 27th with an opening reception Friday April 4th, 5-8pm.

Paper…. plentiful, prosaic, powerful. Our ‘Paper’ show, plain and simply is… artworks that speak of paper. This would include but is not limited to: works on paper, works about paper or works made of paper.

Curiously, the earliest use of paper we know of is the wrapping paper for a delicate bronze mirror from about 180 B.C. unearthed in China. But paper as we know it, didn’t become used by the common person until after the1840’s when mass produced wood pulp paper, the steam powered printing press, the fountain pen and the mighty pencil came on line all at about the same time. This perfect storm of technological advances caused ground shaking shifts in the 19th century economy and societies of the world’s industrial nations. Why? Because paper is pretty stupendous stuff. It enabled (and still does enable) the common people to express their ideas for the world to reflect upon. Not the least of which are the quiet revelations of a child upon seeing a family likeness in their scibbles on a piece of newsprint, the quick sketch of a problem solved on the back of an envelope, or the poetry in the stark simplicity of a paper cut.

So tear on down to Åarhus and un-wrap your mind around… Paper. It just might give you something to draw from.

Featured artists include; Daniel Anselmi, Constance Cossette, Maryjean Crowe, David Estey, Mark Kelly, Bennett Konesni, Karen MacDonald, Richard Mann, Leslie Miller, Ben Potter, Abbie Read, Wesley Reddick, Willy Reddick, Dyan Ross and Kari Van Tine.

Click here to read the review by Britta Konau in The Free Press.

Maryjean Viano Crowe, Beauty and Terror, cut paper on plexiglass, 30" x 44"

Maryjean Viano Crowe, Beauty and Terror, cut paper on plexiglass, 30″ x 44″

6th Annual “44N 69W: Radius Belfast” 2014

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6th Annual “44N 69W: Radius Belfast” 2014
showcases local artists and supports food pantries
March 6th – 30th, 2014
Opening Reception Friday March 7th, 5-8 pm

Please join us for an opening reception Friday March 7th, 5-8pm for the kick-off of the sixth annual, ’44N 69W: Radius Belfast’ Show. An all encompassing exhibition celebrating the local creative energies of Maine residents from children to centenarians, amateurs to bigwigs, living within a thirty mile radius of Belfast. The show runs from March 6th through March 30th and will be packed with work from potters, painters, welders, woodcarvers, mobile makers, sculptors and knitters. Artworks celebrating and illuminating this vast creative community will be on view and for sale with a charitable percentage of sales and entry fees going to food banks within a thirty-mile radius of Belfast. Last year a record 300 pieces of art were exhibited floor to ceiling to the delight of hundreds of visitors, friends and loved ones with consequent sales enabling donations to be made to some of the 40 soup kitchens and food pantries within the thirty mile radius of Belfast under the auspices of the Good Shepherd Food Bank.

Radius Show 2014

Radius Show 2014

Eat

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February 6- March 2, 2014
Opening reception Friday February 7th, 5-8

Nicholas Cullen, Taproot, photograph, 19" x 13"

Nicholas Cullen, Taproot, photograph, 19″ x 13″

Please join us for our mid-winter exploration of food in a show entitled ‘Eat’, which runs from February 6th through March 2nd with an opening reception Friday February 7th, 5-8pm.

Eat. We all do it, multiple times a day. We spend a fair amount of our time on earth thinking about what to eat, when to eat and where to eat. There is no better time than winter in Maine, when everything is frozen, to cook up some comfort food for the proverbial heart and soul. Åarhus has gathered together a casserole of artists from the midcoast to mull over their thoughts and ruminations, and spit it out in a variety of media for a show entitled, EAT. So stroll in to Åarhus Gallery for a little taste of Eat, it just might give you something to chew on.

Featured artists include; Josh Carlson, Maryjean Crowe, Nicholas Cullen, Kris Engman, Stephen Florimbi, Mia Kanazawa, Lynn Karlin, Mark Kelly, Richard Mann, Toki Oshima, Wesley Reddick, Willy Reddick, Julie Rose, Patricia Shea, Mike Silverton and Susan Tobey White.

Willy Reddick, Tuscan Kale, acrylic on paper, tin, brass rivets, 5.5" x 8"

Willy Reddick, Tuscan Kale, acrylic on paper, tin, brass rivets, 5.5″ x 8″

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