Past Exhibitions

7th Annual EXTRAVAGANZA

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November 1- December 24, 2013
Opening Reception Friday November 1st, 5-8pm

Extravaganza

Our seventh annual EXTRAVAGANZA kicks off early again this year, and runs from November 1st 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, turned wood, handmade books, cards, calendars, ornaments, jewelry, music, new Glass Plate images, chocolates and more!

Twice a year Åarhus hangs a show salon style, not only to take full advantage of the available wall space but also to exemplify the vast array of talent, imagination and the multitudinous manifestations of artistic impulse we have here in the midcoast. The first floor to ceiling exhibition of the year is the hugely popular ‘Radius Belfast’ show, where all artists and artisans alike within a 30 mile radius of Belfast are invited to show their stuff. This show annually dazzles the walls for the month of March and is a great energy lifter for the winter doldrums. The Extravaganza however, our second salon style show, is the holiday hallmark of small works shows expressly and unabashedly focusing on the gift giving season. This show runs for two months and features all of the artists from the four invitational theme shows and the three guest artists shows as well as the craft artists that are featured throughout the year. Artists are asked to consider smaller works for this show so the public can expect to see an overall lower price point. This also gives the viewer an opportunity to recap all the previous Åarhus shows and possibly walk away with a real gem that otherwise may have gotten away or that the artist hadn’t shown during the regular season.

panorama

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, Barbara Andrus, Bernice Arthur, Joe Ascrizzi, Dan Beckman, Mark Bell, Bixby & Co., Martha Briana, Marcie Jan Bronstein, Phyllis Buchanan, Linda Buckmaster, Brendan Bullock, Josh Carlson, Kate Chandler, Kenny Cole, Cinder Conk, Susan Cooney, Al Crichton, Maryjean Crowe, Bill Davis, James Deane, Dean’s Sweets, Gabriella D’Italia, Kris Engman, David Estey, Maureen Farr, Jerri Finch, Sallie Findlay, Alan Fishman, Annadeene Fowler, George Fowler, Free Seedlings, Jacob Fricke, Elizabeth Garber, Harold Garde, Carol Gater, Gawler Sisters, J.T. Gibson, Ellen Goldsmith, David Jacobson, Jeffrey Jelenfy, Karen Jelenfy, David Johnson, Kevin Johnson, Jody Johnstone, Judd Jones, Susan Jones, Mia Kanazawa, Mark Kelly, Hannah Kreitzer, A. C. Kulik, Valerie Lawson, Marc Leavitt, Betsy Levine, Joel Lipman, Little Letterpress, Carol Logie, Stuart Loten, Richard Mann, Barbara Maria, Jennifer Marshall, Sandy McGaw, Kate McLeod, Holly Meade, Cathy Melio, Kate Mess, Metaphor Bronze, Leslie Miller, Ed Moffitt, Hanako Nakazato, Nire Art, Novel Jazz, Toki Oshima, Leila Ostby, Alex Portela, Robbi Fritz Portela, Jane Ploughman, Ben Potter, Phil Prince, Joan Proudman, Rebekah Raye, Abbie Read, Wesley Reddick, Willy Reddick, Julie Rose, Rural Electric, Ashleigh Russell, Eleanor Salazar, Erica Schlueter, Betty Schopmeyer, Mike Silverton, Carol Sloane, Karin Spitfire, Toussaint St. Negritude, Tandem Glass, Mary Trotochaud, Nance Trueworthy, Larry Unger, Glen Veevaert, Simon van der Ven, John Vincent, Dayle Tognoni Ward, Patricia Wheeler, Whiffletree, Andy White, J. Fred Woell.

Come join the fun, meet the artists and help kick off the Seventh Annual Holiday Extravaganza with an opening reception Friday November 1st from 5-8 pm.
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Sticks, Stones and Bones

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Sticks, Stones and Bones
October 1 –27, 2013
Opening Reception Friday October 4th, 5-8pm

L-R Barbara Andrus, Kevin Johnson, Abbie Read

L-R Barbara Andrus, Kevin Johnson, Abbie Read

Åarhus Gallery steps humbly into in the autumn season with a show entitled, Sticks, Stones and Bones. Please join them for an opening reception Friday October 4th from 5-8pm.

Making things from basic and accessible materials harvested from our immediate environment is a most human and noble thing to do. Noble indeed, because we may have become the humans we are today because of it and we likely owe our very survival to it up until just a few short centuries ago when things started getting all technical and complex. These days we can hardly turn our heads without it involving some sort of electronic device. It is unfortunate that so many of us have lost this compulsion to dabble in the realm of the sublunary because the outcome can be…. really cool.

The upcoming show at Åarhus will display a wide variety of artworks that, in one way or another involve or interpret these most basic ingredients.  So rattle your bones and rock on over to Åarhus for, Sticks Stones and Bones … it’s nothing to shake a stick at. The show runs from October 1st through the 27th.

Artists showing work will be: Barbara Andrus, Joe Ascrizzi, Brendan Bullock, J. T. Gibson, Kevin Johnson, Mark Kelly, Hannah Kreitzer, Richard Mann, Ben Potter, Abbie Read, Wesley Reddick, Willy Reddick and Andy White.

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Jaap Eduard Helder and Jody Johnstone

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July 2- 28, 2013
Opening Reception Friday July 5th, 5-8pm

Out Here Like This

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

Åarhus Gallery is pleased to exhibit the work of Jaap Eduard Helder of Belfast and Jody Johnstone of Swanville to open the summer guest artist season for the month of July. The show runs from July 2nd through the 28th, 2013. Please join us for an opening reception Friday July 5th, 5-8pm.

Jaap Helder began painting in Holland where the landscape of industrial shapes and colors of post World War II reconstruction became an integral part of the imagery for his paintings. Helder was influenced by Escher, Mondrian, Karel Appel, and American jazz, which began his attraction to the United States, where he settled after extensively exploring his native Europe. Helder eventually landed in Maine and became acquainted with several artists, including John Hultberg, who further influenced and encouraged his work.

To put words to Jaap Helder’s paintings; If it were possible to visually bisect the recognizable, the perceptible space that may be used to disengage it’s parts, is what Helder paints. Even the texture of his paint creates a surface viscosity appearing to be imbibed with color emulsion from a photograph, exquisitely estranged. It entices us to see that which is between the tangible and the notional; “I draw the viewer into an imagined landscape, into a colorful, dynamic world that hovers between the abstract and the representational.”

For Jody Johnstone, pottery and woodfiring are inseparable from each other, and from her as well, in fact they’ve become her way of life. She’s never done anything else since returning from a two-year apprenticeship in Bizen, Japan with National Living Treasure, Jun Isezaki. Jody now conducts two eight day firings a year with a crew of four in the 24 foot long, 800 pot capacity, anagama kiln she built back in 1997, “ 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 ……”

Seeing and handling Jody’s work is to witness talent and tireless dedication to a craft, and there will be no mystery why we view her as a living treasure right here in Swanville, Maine.

Johnstone_Sculpted-Vase

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

Jody 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.

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

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Sublime-Monotony-pana-big
 
Sublime Monotony
May 2-June 2, 2013
Opening Friday May 3, 5-8pm

D'Italia_Black Finery

Gabriella D’Italia
Black Finery
pieced cotton sateen, batting, hand-quilted & embroidered
64” x 64”

With the monotonous winter having continued on, and on, the piles of snow and frozen ground having withered down to mud and then igniting into spring, Åarhus Gallery thought it would be appropriate to have some fun with what is at times a monotonous if not paradoxical condition, this human condition with it’s contradictions of the mundane: everyday we eat, drink, sleep… our hearts beat continuously all day, everyday; the near definition of monotony being the lifeblood of our very existence. The tides ebb and flow tirelessly, apparently from an infinite horizon. Everyday the sun goes down and then, lo and behold, everyday the sun comes up. And if we listen, we may find our noble oxymoron, an altogether separate, deafening silence becomes our virtual reality. That which at first seems extinguished, wearisome, routine, repetitive, becomes singularly new, becomes beauty, becomes the flame. In a paradoxical world, our world, neither is either, without each other… and together they reveal a divine truth: The Sublime Monotony.

The show will feature the works of Marcie Jan Bronstein, Gabriella D’Italia, Clint Fulkerson, J. T. Gibson, Stew Henderson, Kevin Johnson, Mark Kelly, Marc Leavitt, Karen MacDonald, Richard Mann, Wesley Reddick, Willy Reddick and Kate Russo.

Art writer Britta Konau hails our current show as “one of the strongest shows I have seen at Aarhus”… Read the review at the Free Press Online.

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Forest for the Trees

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April 4- 28, 2013
Opening Reception Friday April 5th, 5-8pm

Forest-panorama

 

Mary Barnes Trees mixed media on mylar 42" x 50"

Mary Barnes
Trees
mixed media on mylar
42″ x 50″

Please join Åarhus Gallery for an opening reception Friday April 5th, 5-8pm for a show entitled Forest for the Trees which runs April 4th through the 28th.

With spring finally here, and with National Arbor Day and Earth Day happening in April we at Åarhus have decided to branch out and have a tree show of our own entitled, ‘Forest For the Trees’. You are all familiar with this (partial) idiom, as meaning the inability to see the big picture due to over-attention to details. This show may forgo exemplifying any lessons learned from that wise old saying, and instead just have a good time with the tree as subject matter for art making. So if you have a firm handle on the big picture or if you want to bring a magnifying glass and focus in on the details, shake a limb over to Åarhus and leaf your troubles behind.

Featured artists include; Michael Alpert, Mary Barnes, Kenny Cole, Susan Cooney, Al Crichton, Kris Engman, Jerri Finch, Alan Fishman, David Johnson, Kevin Johnson, Mark Kelly, Richard Mann, Ed Moffitt, Ben Potter, Wesley Reddick, Willy Reddick, Carol Sloane and Kay Sullivan.

 

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5th Annual “44N 69W: Radius Belfast” 2013

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February 28th through March 31st
Opening reception Friday March 1st, 5-8pm
Showcases local artists and supports food pantries
Åarhus Gallery to Donate to Food Banks and Celebrate Art in the Community

Radius-panorama2013-800

radius-2010Please join Åarhus Gallery for an opening reception Friday March 1st, 5-8pm for the kick-off of the fifth annual ’44N 69W: Radius Belfast’ Show. An all encompassing exhibition celebrating the local creative energies of Maine residents from children to centenarians, amateurs to big wigs, living within a thirty mile radius of Belfast. The show runs from February 28th through March 31st 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 285 pieces of art were exhibited floor to ceiling to the delight of hundreds of visitors, friends and loved ones with consequent sales enabling a generous donation 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.

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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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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

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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