Jan-Pieter van Voorst van Beest

Karen Bushold

Ruth Sylmor

Andrea van Voorst van Beest

Dave Wade

Fran Vita-Taylor

Susan Porter

Alan Sockloff

Diane Hudson

Jim Kelly

Norm Proulx

Dan Dow

Diane Hudson

Fran Vita-Taylor

Diane Hudson

Alan Sockloff

GROUP EXHIBIT
September 26 through November 22, 2014

AW at Engine in Biddeford, Maine

Please scroll down for representative works included in this exhibit.

Jan Pieter van Voorst van Beest

Dan Dow

Andrea van Voorst van Beest

Susan Porter

Ruth Sylmor

Diane Hudson

Jim Kelly

Jane Banquer

Dave Wade

Karen Bushold

Dan Dow

Fran Vita-Taylor

Jan Pieter van Voorst van Beest

Jane Banquer

Jim Kelly

Norm Proulx

Karen Bushold

Ruth Sylmor

Dave Wade

Andrea van Voorst van Beest

Susan Porter

Fran Vita-Taylor

Diane Hudson

Alan Sockloff

Dan Dow

December, 2012

Something Old, Something New: Still Life Photographs
by Alan Sockloff and David Wade

December 7th - 29th, 2012

These two ever-inquisitive photographers explore the exquisite beauty of flowers in distinctly different ways--Sockloff using the blue cast of cyanotypes to create subtle, often haunting images that suggest age in many ways, while Wade's intimate portraits of flowers are intensely beautiful in their simplicity, yet require the viewer to look deeply, revealing much more.

"Underlying this series of cyanotypes," says Sockloff, "are both the respect for one of the oldest of the historical processes, and the use of the dying flower as a metaphor for the aging photographer.

"In use for 170 years," he continues, "cyanotypes represent a challenge to create works of art using a technique with serious limitations.  In my previous work, I've used silver gelatin prints to achieve great precision in representing what my eye has seen, obviously affected by my reaction to the subject.  Cyanotypes, on the other hand, represent a less refined method of creating photographic prints.  The reasons for this are many and include: rougher papers that are hand-coated to absorb the chemicals; the limited number of steps between white and dark blue; the somewhat limited control of contrast; and the grainy texture of the prints."  With this process, however, Sockloff has created a series filled with piercing, yet thoughtful emotion, where the audience feels his musings about the journeys of one's lifetime, and the age and grace of a dying flower.

Wade's photographs will be small intimate ones where the viewer will have to stand close to appreciate the detail, while two very large pieces create a powerful juxtaposition. Wade states that, "My basic premise for creating this exhibit of close-ups is to come to terms with seeing and perceiving things in a more intentional way, rather than just capturing images that casually present themselves. So, I think I chose to focus on things which may be ordinary enough, but when addressed formally with the lens on a plain background, get to speak for themselves and their intrinsic "thingness"... It's kind of cool what they reveal close-up, whether about themselves or about us.

"One of the things that was happening for me," adds this photographer who lived in Japan for twelve years, "is that I was feeling my old Japanese visual sensibilities coming out ... and a little bit of the less is more approach."

"Powerful juxtaposition" may be the operative phrase for this beautiful, thought provoking exhibit by two artists who are using their art and the art of flowers to look beyond beauty and see themselves, their vision, and the span of life and its questions.

October 5th – 27th

Ronnie Wilson, paintings

"Wilson's richly textured paintings spring from her imagination, alive with brilliant color.  They tell a personal story of her spirituality, deep sensuality, wit, and her sense of the mystical.  The viewer takes a journey with her while spending an intimate moment with each painting."

Ruth Sylmor, photographs

“ Paris Walls – re/con/figured ”, Ruth Sylmor’s silver prints at Addison Woolley, bear witness to the present time and our society. From merely evocative images to active figures stalking the stage of the photographer’s “invented” Paris, they draw us into photographic space to observe, question, and play. Equally inspirational to the passer-by and equally unreal, this is a Paris of the imagination. Sylmor’s city of poetic dreams.

September 7th – 29th.

Andrea van Voorst van Beest, a Peregrine Press printmaker - Gouache Paintings and Intaglio Prints

Jim Kelly, mixed media. 

The exhibit at Addison Woolley for this September, one of the best months of the season, will certainly continue the warmth and soft breezes of summer, as well as the vibrant color and energy of life outdoors and on the city's streets and sidewalks. 

Andrea van Voorst van Beest describes her paintings, "The Gouache paintings were done on-site, mostly on the East Coast.  Gouache is a versatile medium which enables the artist to achieve the light, fresh quality of water-color and the richness of oil or acrylic."  And that they do!  A Peregine Press printer, she speaks also of her always observant and often whimsical prints, "Most of the Intaglio prints are drypoints using an alternative material, replacing the metal plate.  With this approach the artist achieves rich and varying tonal values without using acid to bite the plate."

Jim Kelly's large, often abstract works are filled with the brilliant colors of Florida and Maine's blue skies, juxtaposed with a wry street wise grittiness.  "The work for this show," he states, "explores the edges of painting and image making - the tensions, the fusions.  Certainly there is a serious nod to absurdist trompe l'oeil as well as a big thank to street art everywhere."  He gives us edgy color, graphic lines, off beat images in a "twisted appropriation with lyrical structures in down home vernacular."  Audiences will be intrigued to find the photographs lurking in these works.

Jim Kelly

Jim Kelly

Andrea van Voorst van Beest

Andrea van Voorst van Beest

Andrea van Voorst van Beest

August 3 - September 1, 2012

August will be a little different at Addison Woolley .... no photographs!  In Arboretum, Jane Banquer works a singular theme with mutiple interpretations.  Like sculptural forms against the ether, her sensuous woodcuts and paintings of trees are filled with music and motion.  The patterns of intertwining branches, abstract at times,are simply stunning in their beauty.  Banquer is a true master of many mediums. Ink & Pixel by Ed Zelinsky is a riot of color and shapes in drawings, prints and video.  The prints are stills from the 45 minute video of his ipad drawings that invites the viewer to watch as each aspect of each image takes shape, continually morphing into the next brilliant surprise.  Set to the music of Bela Bartok, the video will be running continuously on the ceiling of the gallery.  Ink & Pixel, filled with humor, irony, and an occasional bit of pathos, gives us a peek into the mind of a man who is completely in love with life and the wildly wonderful world around him. 

Ink & Pixel - Ed Zelinsky
Arboretum - Jane Banquer

Jane Banquer

Jane Banquer

June 1 - 30, 2012
Opening Reception, Friday, June 1, 5:00 - 8:00 pm

Todd Watts, "Are We Not Men: Studies for a Frieze, Silhouettes, 1994." Internationally acclaimed photographer, who moved to Maine from New York City, will exhibit a selection of early very large photographs. 

Jeanne O’Toole Hayman, "Figuration" Peregrine Press printmaker, who also paints in oil, draws and works in encaustic.  Will exhibit prints. 

May 4th – 26th, 2012.
Opening Reception, Friday May 4th, 5 - 8 p.m.

"The Secrets That Objects Share"

Victor Romanyshyn, photographs
Fran Vita-Taylor, still life photographs

In May Addison Woolley will visit the world of still life photography with The Secrets that Objects Share.   Fran Vita-Taylor and Victor Romanyshyn will each present new bodies of work that show their unique and vastly different visions of the subject.  Romanyshyn's spare and simple compositions are less about the objects themselves than they are an exploration of the play of light upon them.   They are lit only by the natural light of his studio window at different times of day.

Vita-Taylor creates assemblages containing household objects and bits of plants from her garden, some withered and some fresh.  Her work might examine a personal series of emotions or events in her life, or a philosophical train of thought.  Each photograph has its own story to tell.

April 6th - 28th, 2012

In & Out of Abstraction
Brad Maushart, Robert Moran, Richard Veit, Mary Woodman
Curated by Susan Porter

Opening reception - Friday, April 6th, 5 - 8 p.m.
Artists' Talk - Saturday, April 14th, 2:00 p.m.

After a whirlwind winter of blockbuster shows curated by CMCA curator emeritus, Bruce Brown, gallery founder Susan Porter returns to present In & Out of Abstraction.  Opening with a First Friday reception on April 6th from 5 - 8 p.m. this exhibit features the work of four photagraphers: Brad Maushart, Robert Moran, Richard Veit and Mary Woodman.  Maushart, widely known throughout Maine not only for his photographs, but drawings and paintings as well, also operates the F-8 Gallery in Kennebunkport.  His color abstractions defy the viewer to immediately recognize the unmanipulated objects that comprise his compositions.  Veit's bold structural abstractions reveal the power of black and white to show us form and light often not recognized in our daily meanderings.  Some may remember his widely admired photographs in last year's biennial at the Portland Museum of Art.  Woodman whose award winning photographs have been featured in Color Magazine and other photographic publications gives us a Van Gogh-like view of the ocean that tickles the eye and the imagination, while Moran's hyper-real still life photographs of objects he calls 20th century relics amuse and stimulate memories of the roles these objects may have played in our lives.  Some of the artists will discuss their work in an Artists' Talk on Saturday, April 14th at 2:00 p.m. 

February 2 - 26, 2012
Opening reception: Thursday, February 2, 5:00 - 8:00pm
Gallery will also be open First Friday from noon to 8 p.m.

"Artifacts & Particles"  

Portland Photographers
Caleb Charland and Peter Gruner Shellenberger

"Artifacts & Particles," features the inventive and exploratory photographic work of Caleb Charland and Peter Gruner Shellenberger. While both artists feature several distinctive individual works of their own, they also offer a large and significant collaborative installation of silver gelatin photographs.

The two met less than two years ago when Charland, a young Bangor native with a burgeoning international career, came to the Maine College of Art as an artist in residence. He and Shellenberger, a faculty member since 2001, realized that their instincts for breaking new ground and alternative ways of creating photographs were similar in many ways. Both look to unusual materials and techniques to create the content of their work. Understanding that photography literally means writing with light, Charland, for example, may place a sparkler in a metronome. As the the cinders fly through time and space, he intervenes by blocking the camera's lens in rhythm to such classic tunes as "When the Levee Breaks" to create broken beats of light. Shellenberger often prefers using uranium (radiation and not light) as his mode for exposing light sensitive material for up to 45 days. 

For their first collaboration presented here, both artists created a significant number of 8" x 10" silver gelatin prints in their respective studios at MECA, then swapped their initial efforts for the other to alter however he wished. Shellenberger reports, "This process of sharing ideas has delighted us both. No matter what we may do, we have been surprised by how light goes its own way. Somehow, our pushing light sets it free.

Charland and Shellenberger will discuss their work at the Addison Woolley Gallery in a free public talk at 2 p.m. on Sunday, February 12 at 2 p.m. Snow date will be rescheduled for February 26, the final day of the exhibition.

Peter Gruner Shellenberger, "Room Five Motel Six"
Peter Gruner Shellenberger, "#3 (more than a feeling)"		Peter Gruner Shellenberger, "Autoradiograph Five" (uranium/radiation exposure forty-five days)
Caleb Charland, "Phosphorus and Fishbowl"
Caleb Charland, "Light Sphere With My Right Arm and Cigarette Lighter"		Caleb Charland, "Breakbeat with Sparkler in Metronome (When the Levee Breaks)"

DECEMBER 2 -31, 2011

Jane Banquer
Paintings and Prints

Diane Hudson
Photographs

NOVEMBER 4 - 26, 2011

Holly Meade, “at Work and Play”

Guest-Curated by Jon Edwards

Opening reception - November 4th, 5 - 8 p.m.
Gallery hours - Thursday through Saturday, 12 - 5:00 p.m.
Closed Thanksgiving Day
Please note schedule change for November - no Wednesday hours.

Holly Meade, who lives and works in Sedgwick, was recently featured in Maine Home and Design, with Dahlov Ipcar and Holly Berry (http://www.mainehomedesign.com/the-canvas/1686-beasts-of-print.html).  Meade is well known for her imaginative and magical animal images and children’s books, but the Addison Woolley exhibition, entitled “at Work and Play” will instead feature her human figurative images of ice cutting, farming, and logging, as well as swimming, skating and jump roping. 

Meade earned a BFA in painting from the Rhode Island School of Design in 1978, and began printing from woodblocks ten years ago after working with printmaker Hester Stinnett at the Haystack Mountain School of Crafts on Deer Isle.  Several of Meade’s prints are in the collection of the Portland Museum of Art.  She has illustrated more than thirty children’s books, and the Heliker-LaHotan Foundation has awarded her two residencies on Great Cranberry Island.

Meade describes her artistic inspiration as “the desire to uncover the life beneath our lives, that dimension of spiritual integrity that I believe lives in each of us—an uncovering that will never end and never really uncover.”  Most of her images are centered on a single activity, scene or theme, but she will, for instance, leave traces of the block carving process to add texture, intentionally let the image roam outside the frame, or combine words and images to create pieces that are vibrant.  Her work is strong and bold; her compositions animated and fluid.

Each of Meade’s prints begins with a drawing that she transfers in reverse onto a woodblock. Areas that the she does not want to print are carved away. To produce the print, the block is rolled with ink, a piece of paper is placed over it, and pressure is applied by hand or through a printing press to transfer the image. Once the edition is produced, Meade scars each block so that no more prints can be made, an ancient Japanese tradition followed by many modern printmakers.  The Artist uses oil-based inks, and prints primarily on handmade Japanese papers made of fibers from mulberry trees. Meade uses both wood and linoleum blocks, and in some prints she combines both.  In most cases, she uses fine-grained plywood from Japan for her blocks, but she has also been known to use old pastry and ironing boards, or old wood planks.

Holly Meade

Holly Meade

 

OCTOBER 7 - 29, 2011

THREE PERSON EXHIBIT

Alan Sockloff
Photographs

Norm Proulx
Paintings

Beth Mitchell
Photographs

In his The Shape of Water, silver gelatin photographs, Sockloff explores the random processes of nature's precious resource, water.  He looks for patterns & texture; its tremendous force and its power to soothe.  One can almost hear the sounds of a water fall, a trickling brook ...

Norm Proulx explores the play of light through windows, on objects in a still life, on surfaces.  In his paintings a pear can become animated, expressing emotions and sensuality; a flower appears to dance.

Our special guest, Bethany Mitchell, explores her world with a palpable sense of joy. 
She works in a variety of techniques to create photographs which exude her wonder and excitement, her unique perspective, as she travels around the globe
or just along highway 295.

Alan Sockloff

Norm Proulx

Beth Mitchell

JUNE 3 - 25, 2011

TWO PERSON EXHIBIT

"Digital Detour Ahead"

Dave Wade
Photography

Jim Kelly
Mixed Media

MAY 6 - 28, 2011

TWO PERSON EXHIBIT

Fran Vita-Taylor
"EPHEMERAL NATURE"
Large-scale still life photographs (34" x 22 3/4")

Darrell Taylor
"SURREALLEGORIES: THREE FROM 2010"
Photocollage Murals, 2' x 9' print size

Darrell Taylor, Detail from "The Transfiguration, Assumption, and Apotheosis of
High-End Luxury Consumables" (2010)
Photocollage Mural, 24" x 108"

Darrell Taylor, "Big Gallery Séance: chacun à son goût" (2010)
Photocollage mural, 24" X 108"

"APRIL FOOLS!"
APRIL 1 - 30, 2011

Please join us in a high spirited celebration of all things spring for the opening of a light-hearted exhibit that features photographs, paintings and mixed media by Addison Woolley artists and guests; Denise Froehlich, Rene Braun and introducing Amy Hagberg. 

Addison Woolley artists include; Alan Sockloff, Andrea van Voorst van Beest, Arunas Bukauskas, Dan Dow, David Wade, Diane Hudson, Fran Vita-Taylor, Jane Banquer, Jeanne O'Toole Hayman, Jim Kelly, Karen Bushold, Norm Proulx, Ronnie Wilson and Ruth Sylmor.

The folk, jazz, blues sounds of Ronda Dale and Kevin Attra will keep the magic and joy flowing throughout the evening!

Melonie Bennett

Barbara Goodbody

Diane Hudson

Diane Hudson

"New Work for a New Season"
April 2 - 9,2010

Works by Victor Romanyshyn, Diane Hudson, Alan Sockloff, Andrea van Voorst van Beest, Jan Pieter van Voorst van Beest, Norm Proulx, Jane Banquer, Arunas Bukauskas, Darrell Taylor, Dave Wade, Dan Dow, & Ronnie Wilson

March 5 - 12, 2010

Places in our Memories

Arunas Bukauskas – Photographs
Black and white photographs made on Munjoy Hill, Portland

Norm Proulx – Paintings
Paintings of mills

December 4 - 11, 2009 

              ARTFUL GIFTS!