November 15 to February 4, 2008
PASTELANDSCAPES: Paintings by Nancy E. von Hone, is the title of a featured exhibition of pastels at The Westboro Gallery, which will be on display from Nov. 15, 2007, through Feb. 4, 2007. An opening reception for the show will be held from 2 to 5 p.m. Sunday, Dec. 2, in the gallery, just off the rotary at 8 W. Main St. The exhibit will include new works from the artist’s “Tibet: The Top of the World” series and her “Sunsets” series.
“I am drawn to landscapes that convey a strong sense of space and movement,” Ms. von Hone says. “Within that space I’m particularly interested in the interplay of color and light in a landscape. Color and light, space and movement are the cornerstones of the composition and execution of my paintings and provide both the harmony and the tension in them.”
While landscapes are her favorites, the Boylston resident occasionally chooses other subjects. “I work from my own photographs, striving to make my paintings bring out what the camera cannot. I always have a camera at hand, so the subjects of my paintings reflect my New England roots and love of travel to out-of-the-way places. Painting encourages me to see my surroundings with new eyes,” she says. “It has made me an intentional, rather than casual, observer, and I am constantly on the lookout for inspiration for my paintings from the world around me.”
Ms. von Hone works in both pastels and watercolors, but in recent years has focused her attention to pastels. “Most of my pastel paintings begin as rough sketches on a lightly sanded paper,” she says. “The painting develops through many layers of pastels to create the rich depth and strong sense of atmosphere in my pieces. The pure pigmented colors of pastels are a joy to work with.“
A graduate of the University of Rhode Island with a BA in Urban Affairs and of the Sloan School of Management at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Ms. Von Hone is the administrator for an academic department at the University of Massachusetts Medical School in Worcester. Primarily a self-taught artist, Ms. Von Hone explains, “Early tutoring by my father, and then several years of study with Worcester Art Museum instructors Ella Delyanis and Bill Griffiths, have contributed to my artistic expression. I approach my art work as food for my soul — a refuge from the chaotic demands of everyday life. The sense of 'calm in the storm' that I feel while creating my paintings is the same sense that I hope my paintings bring to the viewer.”
An active member of The Westboro Gallery for six years, Ms. von Hone also has exhibited in numerous regional juried exhibitions and group shows. Her solo shows include Quinsigamond Community College Gallery, University of Massachusetts Medical Center and SPAC Gallery in Shrewsbury. Affiliations include Pastel Painters Society of Cape Cod and ARTSWorcester, where she has sat on the board of directors since 1999. Her paintings are in many private collections.
October 28 to January 1, 2008
Pottery, Tapestry, Watercolor: Three Mediums, One Artist, works by Carol Mecagni, will be featured in The Westboro Gallery's large satellite exhibition space at Tatnuck Bookseller & Café through Jan. 31, 2008. An opening reception will be held 2 to 5 p.m. Sunday Oct. 28, along with a pottery demonstration by Ms. Mecagni. Works by other gallery members will be on display concurrently.
Ms. Mecagni is a visual artist who started out painting with watercolors, has been a free-lance tapestry weaver, an illustrator of children's books, and who currently concentrates on her interest in pottery. In whatever the medium of choice, she uses the same visual language: the beauty of the natural world – flowers, leaves, hills, rocks — all with an emphasis on texture, pattern and shape.
The Hopkinton resident, who has taught art in various public and private schools, always has maintained a studio, first at the Fort Point area, then at the Boston Center for the Arts. After teaching at Hopkinton High School for 10 years, she retired in 2003 to devote her time to hand-building and throwing pots at the wheel and experimenting with glazes in her own clay studio. She continues to use watercolor as a sketchbook for her pottery designs, but spends most days at the potter’s wheel making decorative utilitarian objects.
“I love the process of making art in the medium of clay,” she says. “It gives me the freedom to make a three-dimensional 'canvas' of any size and shape and then decorate on that surface as I feel inspired. I also love the solitude I find working with my hands in the studio and discovering another layer of myself.”
As a teen-ager, the Quincy-born artist-artisan often helped her printer father with quick sketches needed for print jobs. While attending the Massachusetts College of Art where she trained as a painter, she worked as a sign painter and window decorator. She later earned an MFA at Southern Illinois University in painting and printmaking and has 30 post-master’s credits.
She has exhibited widely in Central Massachusetts and in diverse settings, from DeCordova Museum , Corning (NY) Museum of Glass and Maison de la Culture in Montreal , to Boston Symphony Hall Gallery, Famous Barr in Chicago and Flint Institute of Art in Michigan. Besides her membership at The Westboro Gallery, her work is at Craftworks, Northboro; Potter’s Loft, Boylston; Nature’s Gallery, Brimfield; and in many private collections.
September 5 to November 11, 2007
“This work is a bit of a departure from my other recent work in that it’s more autobiographical than I usually exhibit,” says Russavage, who works in textiles and fibers with related embellishments such as beads, embroidery and found objects to create wall quilts and other arts pieces. “During the making of the work for this show, I and some of my close relatives had some serious health issues. Then I lost both my last surviving grandparent and my mother in the space of six weeks early this spring, so that changed the way the show came together.
“While it is still influenced by my travels and my world view, the show is a bit more introspective than I’d planned. My subjects became more poignant, my images hopefully more emotive. Still, having seen art exhibitions this past year with work generated by survivors of Hurricane Katrina and other natural disasters, and by people affected by war, poverty, environmental concerns and other losses, I suppose inconsolable is a common theme.
“And really,” she adds, “artists have a long history of taking as their subjects those things that have them broken-hearted or grief-stricken – whether they are singing about their lost love or depicting the devastation of natural or manmade disaster.”
Russavage, a former Westboro resident who recently moved to Easthampton, comes from a traditional quilting background and continues creating those works as well. She is a Pennsylvania State University graduate, trained as a horticulturalist and floral designer, has earned an MBA, and runs her own interior plant and floral design business.
jo lived for 10 years in Australia, working both “in town” in various consultant roles for horticulture and business, and “out bush” in aboriginal communities. Describing herself as a very tactile person, which is expressed in her works’ layered textiles, raw fabric edges and exposed knots, Russavage has gone a step further: Aboriginal women in the Australian bush taught her how to collect, prepare and dye fibers with natural dyes, and jo continues to dye her own fabrics with plant extracts from anil (indigo) to zinnia flowers.
“Through my travels I’ve come to really appreciate indigenous arts from all over the world,” she says. “There’s such an elegant simplicity to much of it, and so much meaning and energy in each piece. I’ve tried to convey more with less in my work as a result.”
March 11 to May 13, 2007
Wood is the shared theme and medium used in entirely different ways by two artists featured in a new show opening at The Westboro Gallery on Sunday, March 11.
Joel Tro, who creates hanging wood assemblages out of found objects, and Jeff Butler, whose carvings release the birds he sees within found wood, blur the lines between their more traditional roles in the gallery as wall and three-dimensional artist respectively and unleash their imaginations to present a joint exhibition of works playfully titled “Woodicisms & Impossiburdities.”
Their works will be featured in the spring exhibition, to run March. 11 through May 13, at the gallery, situated just off the rotary at 8 W. Main St. An opening reception is planned for 2 to 5 p.m., Sunday, March 11, with a snow date of March 18.
Tro’s assemblages are often whimsical and off-the-wall, literally if not figuratively. He and his wife Ellen, a potter, troll flea markets because, he notes, “found objects are the best way to recycle and create unusual compositions. I enjoy discovering time-worn scrap materials — wood, metals, etc. — rich with traces of earlier uses, and transforming them without changing them.”
His intelligent and witty themes, originating from cleverly juxtaposed unrelated pieces, have been reflected in his part of the exhibition’s title, “Woodicisms.”
A New York City native now living in Shrewsbury, Tro earned a BFA from the Fashion Institute of Technology, having studied also at the New York School of Interior Design and the Art Students League, and was a freelance designer for many years, as well as design director for Leshner Corporation. In that position he worked closely with designers Joseph Abboud, Alexander Julian, Eileen West, Dan River Mills and Collier Campbell in London. Retiring in 2001, he renewed his interest in three-dimensional art and a fascination with art deco design. Tro’s logo design was chosen to adorn the Shrewbury Public Library book bag.
He has exhibited at the Trofeo Gallery in Seattle; in Greenville, NY, and with the Northboro Artists’ Guild. Tro was juried in to The Westboro Gallery last May.
Rather than the accurately detailed, life-size and sensitively rendered stand-alone pieces he is known for, this time Butler offers fantasy birds bordering on the absurd, some suspended in air and mobile with the currents.
“My style varies depending on what I’m trying to portray, whether the piece will be painted or have a natural finish, and where the initial inspiration has come from — whether it’s a limb or root of a tree trunk I’ve found, a particular bird I’ve observed — or imagined — or simply a shape I’ve seen which could be leaves, clouds, paper, anything.
“The majority of this current series is of imaginary flying creatures, impossible and-or absurd, thus the name Impossiburdities,” Butler said, explaining the made-up word that defines his part of the joint exhibition.
A Westboro native, current resident and member of the gallery for about five years, Butler attended the Rhode Island School of Design and has been involved in carpentry, cabinet and furniture making, store display, and fabrications of dioramas, museum and zoo exhibits. While many would describe him as a wood sculptor, he calls himself a bird carver. Self taught as such, Butler has won awards at the National Decoy Show on Long Island; the International Decoy Show in Clayton, NY; and the World Championship Bird Carving Exhibition in Ocean City, MD. He has also exhibited at the Fitchburg Art Museum, Depot Square Gallery in Lexington and the Worcester Center for Crafts.
Both artists’ works are represented in private collections from coast to coast. Their show will run concurrently with the spring exhibition of new works by the other gallery members.
June 3 to August 20, 2007
Works interpreting the elements wind, water, earth, fire, metal and wood will be the central theme of the annual all-members' show at The Westboro Gallery.
June 7 to June 17, 2007
The summer schedule will also feature a display of works June 7-17 by the recipient of The Westboro Gallery’s second annual Therese M. Bacharz Art Scholarship, which is awarded along with a small stipend to a deserving graduating senior at the Westboro High School commencement who plans to continue studies in the fine arts.
December 2 to February 25, 2007
Born and raised in The Bronx, NY, Eugene Epstein early on developed interests in photography, pastel painting, woodworking and the natural sciences. All but the last were put on hold for a half century upon his entering college and eventually becoming an ophthalmologist.
His medical practice in Worcester spanned 36 years. “After retirement,’’ Dr. Epstein says, “all my former pursuits were passionately rekindled.”
The results were not long in coming. He earned the distinction of Copley Master in black and white photography by The Copley Society for having won three major awards in the venerable Boston art association’s juried exhibitions. “And when I was not in the darkroom, I could be found in my workshop producing furniture and reproductions of Sam Maloof rockers and chairs.”
Pastel painting followed. At the Worcester Art Museum, he studied with well known instructors such as Bill Griffiths and Kat O’Connor, and he discovered portraiture which, he says, was refined locally with the help of Charlotte Wharton and with other prominent portraitists/pastel painters: Daniel Greene, Paul Leveille, Connie Pratt and Rosalie Nadeau.
While acknowledging that he has had a number of commissions, Epstein, a Worcester resident, admits, “I am still searching for a ‘style’, as no one style seems to fit all subjects.”
Dr. Epstein’s show will run concurrently with the winter exhibition of new works by the other gallery members.
September 10 to November 12, 2006
Hopkinton resident and award-winning sculptor Michael Alfano will feature his work at The Westboro Gallery starting September 10th in an exhibit portraying three important themes in his art: “Mind, Body, Heart”.
“My signature style is surrealistic, based on the figure, with philosophical and spiritual tones playing off of the form, especially the face. My main intentions are to elicit thought as well as emotion from the viewer, while providing aesthetic pleasure.”
Alfano typically sculpts in clay, then casts the final versions in either bronze, a copper blend, resin, or hydrostone. By using materials other than bronze, many of the sculptures are surprisingly affordable for high quality fine art.
In addition to Westboro, Alfano’s sculptures are shown at other galleries primarily in the Northeast, from Provincetown to the Berkshires, and from Newbury Street to Fifth Avenue. He regularly wins awards in his native New York and the Boston area. In 2005, he earned the Cambridge Art Association Artist of the Year Award for Sculpture, juried by Boston Globe veteran art critic, Edgar Driscoll, for his Torsos of Positive and Negative Space that will be shown in “Mind, Body, Heart”.
Also on display will be a bust of a young girl, Paulina, an example of Alfano’s commissioned portrait work. Some of the notable figures he’s sculpted include Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Anwar Sadat and the poet Walt Whitman. Last October, at a private gala in the New York Metropolitan Museum of Art’s famous Temple of Dendur, Alfano unveiled his portrait of Arnie Snider III, a surprise retirement gift from Deerfield Management, the hedge fund group Snider founded. He is currently working on full-size sculptures of Mother Clelia Merloni, the foundress of the Apostles of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, and Daniel Weadock, the former President of Sheraton Corporation for the International, a private golf club in Bolton Weadock owned.
Alfano’s commissions also include public monuments. Most are too large to exhibit in the gallery, but the show will include a maquette of his September 11th memorial located in Norfolk, MA and Clifton NJ. He will also show a fragment of a Children’s Holocaust Monument he recently sculpted for Temple Emanuel in Great Neck, NY.
“Mind, Body, Heart” will include one monumental size work— Peace Offering—a functional bench that features a dove conveying the hope for peace and whose tail transforms into a hawk, representing hostility. The dove's wings become large open hands that welcome two people to sit down and discuss their differences. Peace Offering is one of a number of works that express Alfano’s Soka Gakkai Buddhist practice, with the intention of contributing to peace and culture.
Alfano studied figure sculpting from the model at the Art Students League in New York City and has been working professionally for over a dozen years. His influences include Dali, Michelangelo, and Rodin. “Art offers a special way for me to create change in the world. For the most part, art is outside the daily concerns of life. As an artist, I can communicate about topics that are not part of routine conversations. My art speaks to universal elements and emotions of life and entices viewers to consider an issue differently. Throughout history, in literature, drama, and visual mediums, art has transformed abstract ideals into demonstrable improvements in the world. That is why I sculpt.”
June 8 to August 20, 2006
This show will run concurrently with the special exhibits.
June 8 to June 18, 2006
Rebecca is the first recipient of The Westboro Gallery's Therese M. Bacharz Scholarship Award, named for the gallery's founder.
June 22 to August 20, 2006
A collection of playful copies and reinterpretations of great works of art.
July 13 to July 16, 2006
Several artworks in the Summer All-Members' Show at the gallery will provide the inspiration for floral interpretations created by garden club members using mostly fresh blooms from their own summer gardens. Participating with arrangements are Carla Wright, Sharon Drellich, Dorothy Flynn, Leigh Emery and Linda Maloy, all of Westboro.
This is the second time the 8-year-old not-for-profit gallery and the Westborough Garden Club, founded in 1932, have joined together for such an event. They both share a community spirit; sponsor special events; express their creativity in various ways, one in long-lasting and permanent two-dimensional and three-dimensional media, and the other in ephemeral and seasonal plant material; and each funds a scholarship to a graduating local high school student. Throughout the town of Westboro, the gallery's artists and artisans also show their works at several satellite locations, while the garden club funds, designs, plants and maintains 11 community plantings.
March 12 to May 21, 2006
Fire and Water, a joint exhibition of pottery by Carol Mecagni and watercolors by Robin Fleming, will be the new featured show at The Westboro Gallery March 12 through May 21. An opening reception will be held from 2 to 5 p.m., Sunday, March 12, at the gallery, situated just off the rotary at 8 West Main St.
Whether in clay or on paper, the works of both exhibitors present a shared love of nature. Each enjoys hiking and the great outdoors and, while the potter always carries a watercolor set wherever she travels, the watercolorist’s passion is working with her hands to turn her garden into a living sculpture.
Carol Mecagni’s inspiration for this exhibit stems from nature in winter when plant life is contained or growing inside closed forms. Plant forms, potted floral motifs, textures from tree bark or the bands of muted color in an overcast landscape can be seen. These ideas are transposed onto pots by using various techniques such as scrafffito, stamping, or Japanese brushwork drawn into and onto the clay. Pots are fired in the kiln up to four times to achieve the result she seeks.
“I love the process of making art in the medium of clay,” she says. “It gives me the freedom to make a three-dimensional ‘canvas’ of any size and shape and then decorate on that surface as I feel inspired. I also love the solitude I find working with my hands in the studio and discovering another layer of myself.”
As a teen-ager, the Quincy-born artist-artisan often helped her printer father with quick sketches needed for print jobs. While attending the Massachusetts College of Art, she worked as a sign painter and window decorator. She later earned an MFA at Southern Illinois University in painting and printmaking and has 30 post-master’s credits from Worcester Center for Crafts. A Hopkinton resident, Ms. Mecagni has worked as a tapestry weaver and illustrator, and continues to paint in watercolors. She taught art at Hopkinton High School for 10 years, retiring in 2003 to devote her time to pottery. She opened her own clay studio to hand-build and to throw pots at her wheel and experiment with glazes.
She has exhibited widely in Central Massachusetts and in perse settings, from DeCordova Museum, Corning (NY) Museum of Glass and Maison de la Culture in Montreal, to Boston Symphony Hall Gallery, Famous Barr in Chicago and Flint Institute of Art in Michigan. Besides The Westboro Gallery, her work is at Craftworks, Northboro; Potter’s Loft, Boylston; and Nature’s Gallery, Brimfield. She is represented in many private collections.
Robin Fleming, of Westboro, gains inspiration from working in her own garden: “I am deeply influenced by nature and love curving, flowing line and form,” she says. “My art work tends to spring from nature’s shapes, colors, movement and growth.”
Born in Princeton, IL, and growing up in the Washington, DC area and Annapolis, MD, Ms. Fleming studied art and linguistics at the University of Maryland, graduating with a BA in English. She continued learning, taking publication design and art classes at the Montserrat College of Art, Worcester Art Museum and Worcester Center for Crafts, while raising her three children.
She has worked as a graphic artist, publication designer and illustrator, having illustrated herbal and holiday cards as well as a home health-care textbook. Since 2000, upon earning her teaching certificate from Framingham State College, she has been an art educator in the Framingham Public Schools. In 2005 she earned her Master of Art Education degree from Framingham State. In her spare time, the artist enjoys singing and gardening.
Recently, in the process of creating a water garden and patio at her home, she became fascinated with landscape design. She loved working with the various manmade materials, boulders, and garden plantings chosen for their colors, shapes and textures. “It is a delight to find that, even as I grow and change with my garden, my garden is influenced by my experiences with art as well,” she says. “Hopefully, we are both benefiting.”
November 27, 2005 - February 12, 2006
Opening reception: Sunday, November 27, 2005, 3:00 - 6:00 PM
View photos from Barry's opening reception.
Gentle landscapes with soft lighting dominate the art of Dr. Hanshaw, who maintains studios in his Boylston home and at his summer address on Lake Morey, in Fairlee, VT.
Initially working solely in pastel, recently he took up painting in oil. “Pastel, a drawing and a painting medium, has malleability, spontaneity, and richness of color, ideal qualities for painterly landscapes,” he says. “Oil permits a comparable and perhaps a greater versatility, especially with respect to range of values.”
Many of his works, when not painted plein-air, are created in the studio from memory. He is inspired by the skills of famed artists he admires, among them skies in J.M.W. Turner’s paintings and how waves crash against the rocks in Winslow Homer’s late Maine seascapes. Dr. Hanshaw notes, however, that his greatest influence historically was the impressionist Claude Monet’s mastery of composition as well as color and the nuances of changing light.
That’s not to say his contemporaries don’t count. “I have been particularly influenced by the work of Massachusetts artist Joseph McGurl,” he says. “He, more than any other living artist, has demonstrated to me the wonderful qualities of oil in executing fine detail, value range and nuances of color. Watching Joe execute a sky over a Cape Cod marsh was for me a life-changing experience,” he says of the artist with whom he took a particularly rewarding workshop. He also singles out Gil Dellinger, a California master pastelist whose interpretations of the Big Sur and of the Rocky Mountains Hanshaw describes as “breathtaking.”
Born and brought up in Scarsdale and, later White Plains, NY, Barry Hanshaw exhibited early artistic talent, but the challenge of biology won out. Creating art was essentially put on hold for several decades while he went through college at Syracuse University and medical school at State University of New York at Syracuse on scholarships, interned in Cincinnati, became a captain in the U.S. Air Force during a two-year stint in Japan, and finished his residency at University of Rochester Medical Center. Among his many subsequent academic appointments in an illustrious medical career were teaching at Harvard Medical School and becoming provost of University of Massachusetts Medical School.
During stolen moments, he was producing barely one or two paintings per decade, until 1988, when his wife Marian, a pianist on the music faculty at the College of the Holy Cross, suggested that the dean relieve stress and renew his artistic soul by taking courses at the Worcester Art Museum School. He did just that. For 11 years he studied with Ella Delyanis, Alexander Farqharson, William Griffiths and Charlotte Wharton. In those classes his creativity, bottled up by years of time constraints, was uncorked and became an unstoppable gusher; he started spilling out a painting a week. Before too long, he was exhibiting a growing body of work and taking additional workshops throughout New England.
These days, the father of five grown children is professor of pediatrics and dean emeritus at University of Massachusetts Medical School. Because it is hard to retire from what he loves to do, Dr. Hanshaw, at 76, continues to practice medicine part-time at the WPI Student Health Center, where he also teaches UMass resident pediatricians and internists. Incredibly, he manages to paint prolifically. Well over 200 of his paintings are in private and institutional collections. He has participated in 10 one- and two-person shows, most recently this summer at Tower Hill Botanical Garden, Boylston, and he has exhibited in juried exhibitions and a number of galleries. A member of The Westboro Gallery for five years, Dr. Hanshaw is affiliated with many art associations and is a corporator of the Worcester Art Museum.
“My wife says I’m obsessed by my art, and she’s right,” he said, smiling. “It is my passion.”
June 2, 2004 - August 28, 2005
The Westboro Gallery is observing its seventh year as a cooperative. In celebration, the new summer show will present members’ work throughout the entire space. An opening reception for the exhibit will be held from 5 to 8 p.m. Thursday, June 2, 2005, at the gallery, 8 West Main St., just off the rotary in downtown Westboro.
Artworks on display will include a variety of media, among them oil paintings, acrylics, watercolors, monotypes, multimedia pieces, woodcarvings and marble sculpture. Artisan works will include ceramics, jewelry, weavings, decorative tiles, and more.
March 5, 2004 - May 22, 2005
"Mary’s Contrary Garden," an exhibition of computer-enhanced photographs by Mary Harrington, will be the new featured show at The Westboro Gallery March 5 through May 22. An opening reception will be held at the gallery on March 5 at 4:00 – 7:30 p.m, with a snow date of March 12.
This exhibit, a gentle breath of spring air during a snowy winter, features evocative works created from photo images of flowers growing in the artist’s own garden, as well as that of her mother, an avid gardener. "The New England growing season is just too short, and I love capturing flowers at their peak bloom," she says.
The artistic process begins with a 35 mm Nikon camera fitted with a macro lens. "The macro lens is perfect for photographing flowers. It allows me to get in close, and renders beautiful detail," Ms. Harrington explains. "But I don’t want my artwork to look like a seed catalog," she adds, pointedly. "Using Adobe Photoshop I am able to use the vivid colors and textures of the blooms to create images that can be enjoyed all winter long."
She achieves engagingly unique effects by scanning her images into the computer program, manipulating and enhancing them, and finally, printing the works on art paper. Some pieces are created using both original photos and scans from old periodicals, post cards, vintage portraits, junkyard finds and attic treasures. She often uses Celtic knot designs as a framework for backgrounds created from her photographs. Her work is in a number of private collections.
Mary Harrington earned a B.S. cum laude in Media Communications from Framingham State College and has completed courses in art and design at the Worcester Art Museum. The former copy/photo editor, free-lance writer and magazine photographer was recipient, as a newspaper photographer, of a Massachusetts Press Association Best Spot News Photo award, as well as a Harte Hanks Honorable Mention for best feature photo in the children’s category.
Represented by The Westboro Gallery for the past year and a half, and also a member of Craftworks in Northboro, Ms. Harrington works full time as a communications director for a trade association, has two grown children, and lives in Westboro.
November 28, 2004 - February 20, 2005
"Explorations," an exhibit of oil paintings by Gloria Carter, will be featured at The Westboro Gallery Nov. 28 through Feb. 20. An opening reception with the artist will be held at the gallery, 8 W. Main St., 3:00 - 6:30 p.m. Sunday Nov. 28 to coincide with the second annual Village Stroll, sponsored by The Westboro Downtown Business Association. A snow date for the reception is 4:00 - 7:30 p.m. Saturday, Dec. 4.
The show's 20 works display the artist's progression from classical realism to what she terms a mosaic-like pointillism. Early training in oil painting was with renowned classical artist Robert Douglas Hunter of Boston and his influence—the softly blended edges and fidelity to local color—is evident in the show. Nevertheless, she notes, "I wrestle with an internal conflict. This technique is not emotionally accurate for me. It does not convey the surge of joy or excitement I feel when I spot a llama, chocolate ears cocked to distant sound, or a toddler, skin gleaming, at play on a beach. I need more color, pure color. Gradually, I am responding to this need in a style more akin to pointillism."
This is why the show is titled "Explorations." "I am still working on developing my own personal style," she explains. "So far, the mosaic-like effect has been most satisfying. A series of six fruit miniatures in this exhibit more closely resemble mosaics or stained glass windows and for me, this new style that is emerging is becoming more accurate." In addition, she has returned to her first love, oils, after painting in watercolors for many years.
Gloria Carter recalls growing up in the bucolic setting of her parents' farm in Cabot, Vermont, surrounded by animals, "pale blue mountains, majestic elms, fields of emerald grass, valleys filled with lush clover. I've been away from Vermont for 35 years, but these images and sounds still touch my heart—blue mountains speak to me in my dreams. Yet each day I am faced with the question, how am I to translate this emotional response and these exquisite images into paint on canvas? It is a process that has alternately perplexed, exhausted and exhilarated me all of my life."
Mrs. Carter earned a BA in psychology from Framingham State and a master's degree in counseling psychology from Assumption College, having chosen the field in order to have "a better grasp on the meaning of life and for personal enrichment." She studied drawing at the School of the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, oil painting at the Worcester Art Museum School, and took watercolor workshops in Rockport with Ferdinand Petrie, and in Kennebunkport, Maine, with Carl Schmalz. She also painted scores of commissioned pastel portraits of children. The artist and her husband have resided in Westboro for three decades, where she has raised four children and paints in her home studio as well as en plein air.
The artist has exhibited in many juried shows, among them the Fitchburg Art Museum Annual Regional Area Exhibition and the Arts Center at Southboro's "Group Show: Award Winning Artists." Among her several solo shows were those at the former Digital Equipment Corporation, The Davis Gallery in Sterling Millworks, Sterling, and the Westboro Public Library sponsored by the Arts Lottery Council.
Her works are in several corporate and public collections. The former Shawmut Worcester County Bank purchased a sizable collection of watercolors, as did the former Digital Equipment Corporation. In addition to The Westboro Gallery, Mrs. Carter is represented by Art Effects Gallery in Northboro.
September 11, 2004 - November 14, 2004
"Visions," an exhibit of prints and drawings by Andy Volpe, will be featured at The Westboro Gallery Sept. 11 through Nov. 14. An opening reception will be held Sept. 11 from 4 to 7:30 p.m. at the gallery. The artist will give an introductory talk at 5:30.
Influenced by masters such as Durer, Rembrandt, Homer, Escher and Gerald Wise, Volpe says he creates in what he describes as a "semi-realistic" style: "I try to employ character, personality and feeling into my work," he says. "I’m trying to show people that you can see ‘color’ in black and white. I find it more challenging and masterful to remove color from the object, break it down to basics, shapes, geometry, shading and gradation."
While the preferred medium for expressing this is graphite on paper, he is also a printmaker, doing etchings, engravings, linocuts and xylographs (wood engravings). "Occasionally I’ll work with lithography. I’ve worked in traditional stone, aluminum sheet, and the new polyester plate, a nontoxic technique."
The Grafton resident’s favorite subjects New England landscapes, ships and birds: "My interest in birds of prey began in childhood while growing up in Sturbridge, but it developed heavily during college," he says. One of the few non-biology majors at Westfield State to take a course on ornithology, Volpe graduated cum laude in 2000 with a degree in fine arts, and has volunteered at Tufts University School of Veterinary Medicine’s Wildlife Clinic for the past three years.
The award-winning artist’s work has been featured in a number of exhibitions, among them the Blackstone River Gallery in Woonsocket, RI, and the Arts Center of Southborough’s annual juried art show. He was involved in city art projects through the Westfield Community Development Corporation and, in Worcester, the Highland Artist Group and the Festival of Trees organized by the Junior League. In 2001 one of his works appeared in newspaper advertisements for art classes at the Worcester Art Museum, where he had taken printmaking and computer graphics classes and was a teacher’s assistant for its youth art classes and programs for area schools.
Volpe has given workshops on wildlife art at Lancaster Memorial Center Elementary School, a one-day class on Renaissance art for children at Higgins Armory Museum, and has taught summer courses in Southbridge at L’Atelier de Christine, the studio of Christine O’Brien, with whom he had studied privately for many years.
Currently employed as a silk screen printer at Jansson/Chase Printing in Milford, Volpe also volunteers at Higgins Armory Museum, providing research and public demonstrations on historical combat techniques and Roman legionary living history presentations.
June 5, 2004 - August 22, 2004
WESTBORO—"The Animate Vegetal," an exhibit of paintings by Jean Pascoe, will be featured in a new show at The Westboro Gallery June 5 through Aug. 22. The opening reception will be held from 4 to 7:30 p.m. June 5 at the gallery, 8 W. Main St.
"My work explores the energy, presence, and animation I see in the natural world," the artist explains. "While I find myself increasingly interested in abstraction, much of my recent oil painting, such as the works in ‘The Animal Vegetal,’ is representational still life." Despite describing these works as "fairly conventionally realistic," she says the aim is to convey "something of a sense of mystery, sometimes exuberance, sometimes unease." Many of them investigate the notion that vegetables and other natural objects can be seen as having a kind of personality or consciousness.
The New York native, a part-time urgent-care physician in Southborough, grew up in Westchester County: "My parents were not artistic, per se, but they owned and ran a company that made Alvar Aalto’s furniture in this country, and their showroom also carried modern design, such as the jewelry of Alexander Calder."
After earning a B.A. in studio art at Smith College, she returned to New York, starting a career in magazine and book publishing, and concurrently studying printmaking with Seong Moy at the Art Students League. Gradually, however, medicine became a new focus: "I took all the pre-med science courses I hadn’t taken in … and went to med school at UConn (Farmington) 10 years after graduating from college."
A New York City internship followed. But art remained in the picture. While doing her residency in internal medicine at Providence’s Miriam Hospital, Dr. Pascoe took drawing classes at the Rhode Island School of Design. She later moved to the Boston area, working in urgent care before settling down to practice primary-care internal medicine in Southborough. Art has partnered with medicine ever since.
Her work has been shown in the Worcester District Medical Society Art Exhibit at UMass Memorial Medical Center – University Campus, and at the Groton Public Library. Juried shows include those at the Cambridge Art Association, the Danforth Museum in Framingham where she also had a solo exhibit in its museum school gallery, The Center for Arts in Natick, and the Arts Center at Southborough. Her paintings were hung in the "Invitational Salon Exhibition of Small Works" New Arts Program of Lehigh Valley and Berks, PA, and as part of "Mini Works on Paper" at Jacksonville State University in Alabama. Besides The Westboro Gallery, her affiliations include Round Room Gallery in Framingham, the Monotype Guild of New England and the Cambridge Art Association.
Dr. Pascoe also studied at the Danforth Museum School, Arlington Center for the Arts, Cambridge and Boston’s centers for Adult Education, and the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, in Boston, to which she intends to return for a summer class in intaglio printmaking. "In the last year or so, I’ve rediscovered printmaking, mostly monotypes so far, but I’m starting to get back into ‘multiples’ methods." Not surprisingly, considering her profession, she adds, "I’m interested in hazards and safe use of art materials, about which there is considerable misinformation out there."