December 2024

WallFlower Wawa

December 4 - December 21

Opening Reception on Arts Night Out

In a mother-son duo exhibition, Wallflower Wawa turns our gaze toward the watchers on the perimeter. Silenced by their own shyness, welling up in tears, passed over for more popular blooms, this exhibition mines figuration’s capacity for introspection. Transforming the Barn Door Gallery in an explosion of color, these paintings and wall sculptures from Nickolas Roblee-Strauss and Jacqueline Strauss seek to understand the melodramas of less obvious party guests. In both artists' work, a sense of exuberance pervades. Color, pattern, and playful reinvention of form make for celebrations. For some it’s difficult not to dance—as figures swivel and sway before us. Still wallflowers peer out from pulsing surrounds with halted commentary, melancholy creatures of celebration’s fringe. Wallflower Wawa invites its visitor to a party, whose somber messaging incites contradictory interpretation. A mix of weeping dancers and twisters on the edge of temptation, the exhibit asks us to look to the perimeter and see what blossoms sprout from the wall.

  • Jacqueline Strauss (b. Amsterdam, 1964) is a textile artist living in rural western Massachusetts. Her soft sculptures explore the spirited nature of seemingly inanimate remnants bringing to fruition a bottomless imaginative population. Playing the wise fool, she probes the puerile medium of stuffed forms for edgie, more complex emotions and shapes. In the past year, she has shown at Greenfield Community College, Greenfield, MA, Club George, Northampton, MA, and the Wendell Free Library, Wendell, MA. Her work has appeared in the local press as well as the Dutch journal Textiel Plus.

    @jezaculear

    jezaculear.com

  • Nickolas Roblee-Strauss (he/him) is an oil painter born in rural western Massachusetts. His practice explores queerness, historicity of the medium, and precarious 21st century experience. He has shown at 440 Gallery and Thomas van Dyke Gallery in Brooklyn, NY as well as the Granoff Center, List Art Center, Joukowsky Institute, and Salon 149 in Providence, RI. He holds a BA in Modern Culture & Media from Brown University, where he was a Royce Fellow and Brown Arts Institute grant recipient. He lives and works in Brooklyn, NY.

    @jezaculear

    nickolasrobleestrauss.com

November Split Level Gallery 2024

“Everyday/Every Day” &

“We’re All Looking for Home, Beauty, and Freedom”

November 2 - November 30

Opening Reception on Arts Night Out

Everyday/Every Day

On the Mezzanine

Everyday/Every Day is a photo-a-day project undertaken by three Northampton, MA women
who have committed to choosing one photograph to post on Instagram. Beginning in December
2021, the women, members of a peer-led photography group, decided that posting a daily photo
was a way to be held accountable and to share their work. During the past almost three years,
the photographers discovered the deeper spiritual value of focusing on the often-overlooked
beauty of ordinary, everyday life. They have found that this practice has sharpened their artistry
and plan to continue.

  • Deb Lohmeyer (She/Her), a self-taught photographer, has lived in the Valley for 39 years. She began taking photos in 1979 with a Pentax K1000 in Southwest Missouri, where she grew up and was inspired to read photography books and experiment with different techniques.

    In the early 2000s she bought a digital point and shoot. She started taking photos for personal use from which she made color notecards. In 2017, with a new digital camera, she renewed her passion by taking classes at Hill Institute in Florence, MA, and The Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, MA.

    In 2019 she formed a peer-to-peer group for women photographers which is ongoing.

    In her black and white photos, she is drawn to the tonal aspects of rural and urban landscapes that, through shadows, light, and mist, express both possibility and memory. In her work, she hopes to evoke and invite the viewer’s emotions.

    @deb.lohmeyer

    https://www.deblohmeyer.com/

  • Joyce Lak (She/Her) is a Northampton native. Since she retired as Head of Procurement and Stores, Physical Plant Department, U/Mass, Amherst, she has been able to continue raising champion dogs and to indulge her passion for photography.

    Joyce has taken photography classes with John Green at Hill Institute, Dede Steele at Smith Vocational School, and Jim Spencer and Marty Espinola, both at the Northampton Senior Center. Joyce is especially grateful to the late Roland Normand, a mentor who was inspiring and more than generous. Roland saved her much effort by guiding her to the Panasonic Lumix line.

    Joyce finds Western Mass a glorious place for nature photography. She especially loves working with macro subjects that offer details too fine and too brief for the naked eye. Her favorite spots for pictures are the Northampton Community Gardens, Look Park, Childs Park and the surrounding rural towns. She enjoys the challenge of taking photos each day without fail, as this group has done for the past three years, comparing each others’ results.

    Camera equipment is a digital mirrorless Panasonic GX85 camera with various lenses. Favorite lenses are an all-around lens, the Lumix 14-140 mm, and a macro lens, the Olympus 60 mm.

    @jlak140

  • Nancy (She/her) was a founding faculty member of Hampshire College, where she taught organic chemistry and related courses from 1970 until she retired in 2008. In addition to teaching, Nancy was instrumental, with other women in the School of Natural Science, in creating the Women in Science Program. She also collaborated in developing the Day in the Lab programs which invited middle school girls and students from underserved schools into the lab for a day of hands-on projects; these included isolating DNA, doing experiments with insects, and making slime and superballs

    After retirement, Nancy and her dog visited nursing homes, rehab centers, and college campuses under the sponsorship of Bright Spot Therapy Dogs.

    Then in the spring of 2017, Nancy enrolled in a nature photography course at the Hill Institute, where she explored new ways of looking closely at the world. She completed three spring semester courses, but COVID-19 closed the classes at the beginning of her fourth semester. During her time there, she exhibited her work at the Hill Institute as well as in several art spaces in the Northampton area.

    On January 1, 2022, Nancy and two friends made a new year’s resolution to take at least one photograph a day and share it on Instagram: no cheating on dates and no skipping. This practice has become a way of life – they are now almost through their third year and enjoying the challenge immensely.

    Nancy’s scientific training informs her approach to photography. Both require seeing with new eyes, understanding and experimenting with light and color, and appreciating structure and composition. Photographing every day has introduced her to new places, new techniques, new friendships, and a greater understanding of the world we all live in.

    @nhnlowry

We’re All Looking for Home, Beauty, and Freedom

On the Lower Level

The work is an interrogation about notions of home, we arrive at a collective human experience. How do people look when they are sad or anxious? What does a photograph of a person sitting on a park bench tell the viewer of the photograph about the stranger? More importantly, what do these conclusions about strangers tell us about ourselves?

Adeyemi Adebayo seeks to critique and understand themselves through their observations of others. They notice that they are drawn to people in spaces that feel familiar, particularly public places. "What can I interpret from what I see?" they ask. Adeyemi is also attracted to people at rest, recognizing that all moments of rest are temporary. They find themselves often in solidarity with the various moods they encounter.

Adeyemi's work explores the human disposition as it is expressed in various states and throughout different periods. A recurring theme in their work is the quiet, contemplative, and subtle yet revealing nature of people as they navigate life. This includes moments like enjoying a day at the beach or fighting for freedom against oppression.

  • Adeyemi is a Nigerian documentary photographer currently living in Massachusetts. In his work, he explores man and his environment, particularly migration, strife, and the notions of home. He is interested in photography alongside other art forms as a means to evaluate dispositions and the human experience critically, both in the presence of bodies and the potential absence of, as they undergo movement, daily life, subjugation, injustice, and prejudice.

    @papaakanni

    paakanni.com

October 2024

In Light of Time

October 5 - October 30

Opening Reception on October 5th

We three artists: Mary Ann Kelly, Laura Radwell, and Carolyn Webb, are celebrating our longstanding relationship to the Connecticut River Valley. Individually, we realize how we have been altered, inspired and influenced by our immersion in this special place over time, recognizing and responding to its unique natural beauty. Over time and in its light, we find individual and profound spiritual allure: the lay of the land, the verdant woods, the plentiful waters. Perhaps this exhibition can also be seen as a gesture of gratitude for a community which seeks to protect its natural resources, promoting preservation, public interaction and access to the shared bounty.

Through painting, sculpture, prints, and drawings, we share our journeys of discovery, for the first time together. This immersive installation, featuring a blend of lines, gestures, color, and symbolic forms, is a creative conversation with each other. The distinctive style of each artist complements the others, flowing between the walls and floorspace to celebrate timelessness, resilience, harmony and grace.

  • Mary Ann Kelly made a quality of life move with her family to Northampton in 1997 from Washington, DC.  Here the rich, natural reminders of transformation, metamorphosis and the aging process inspired her to celebrate these themes in her two- and three-dimensional abstractions.  These artworks enable her to pursue her love of light, gestural line, texture, and colorful patinas while manipulating non-traditional and natural materials.  Each work is a mindful journey in space-making — celebrating the simplicity of form, quiet space, and the wisdom of stillness — evoking contemplative presence and timelessness.

    Mary Ann received her MFA from Massachusetts College of Art in 1987. Since then she has studied with various teachers and was accepted to a residency at Vermont Studio Center in 2002. She has exhibited her work throughout Massachusetts, in Vermont, New Hampshire, Connecticut, and New York City.

    “My love of Japanese aesthetic and calligraphy informs my work, including the concept of Ma.” Ma is the pure, essential void between all things.

    - an emptiness, yet full of possibilities

    - a resting space, or a pause between notes

    - silent intervals that give form

    - and therefore an invitation to breathe”

    www.makellyart.com

  • In the early 1990s, while focusing on growing a small communications business, Radwell began capturing detailed images of surfaces that chronicled erosion and decay, and began a process of manually collaging images of real world objects that she transformed into abstract compositions. This work continued over time, enabling her to harness evolving technologies and to make use of digital art forms incorporating both her images and drawings. In 2014, after a long hiatus, she returned to oil painting, but in ways that were informed by the digital work of previous years. Now Radwell paints “from the inside out” and produces lyrical abstract studies using color, texture, and form that retain landscape’s resonances.

     

    Radwell has exhibited locally and regionally. In 2020, she won First Prize in the New Britain Museum of American Art Annual Nor’Easter Juried Exhibition. Several of her paintings have earned places in juried exhibitions in New York, Connecticut and Massachusetts. She spent six weeks (two artist residencies) at the Château d'Orquevaux in France.

     

    “How does a visual narrative begin?

    Perhaps, in my case, deferring my dream to paint brought a multi-layered storage process of audio/visual observations of natural beauty and the manmade cacophony in the outside world, depositing subconscious recordings of the soft and sweet, sometimes loud and discordant sounds. These contributed to the inventory of impressions collected in my inside world.

    The ultimate result of this process could be described in emotional terms, yet it seems simplistic to describe a creative practice as a reflection solely of emotions; but it is. The world is in chaos, and painting from such a personal place is unavoidable. If the outward expression of the good, the bad, the ugly, the sublime are all mixed together, then what more is there? Having lived with ADHD most of my adult life, I have learned to discipline thoughts and actions in my work life for almost half a century. Now it’s a different time, and the challenge is not to accomplish discrete tasks but rather to let myself be without such careful filtering. In some sense it is an unholy mess, which might explain why the work I’ve done over this past decade varies so much and travels along a spectrum of disharmony and imperfection to serenity and peace. It’s later in my life, and there is much to express; I choose to do it without the pressure of rules. The things I strive to incorporate into my work is a bit of mystery, unpredictability, color, always glorious color, and a touch of light.“

    www.lauraradwell.com

  • Sculptor and printmaker Carolyn Webb has maintained her studio in Williamsburg since receiving her MFA in sculpture at UMASS in 1981. Previously she studied at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts where she was awarded a Scheidt Traveling Scholarship and a post-graduate fellowship in sculpture. 

     

    Other awards include a Massachusetts Cultural Council Grant for Sculpture, an A.R.T. Grant, a Fellowship Residency at the Scuola Internazionale di Grafica, Venice. Her work can be found in the permanent collections of the Pennsylvania Academy, the Hyde Collection, the New York Public Library and the University Museum of Contemporary Art at UMASS among others.

    Growth, renewal, and a fascination with processes that build and destroy form are the basis of her life’s work.

    “My original perception of the world through observation of incremental change is expressed in my work, which is often either built over long periods of time with layers of ink in the case of prints or slow carving or laminating techniques in built wooden pieces.  I regard the practices of sculpture and printmaking as intertwined and complementary, as both are material and process driven. I work in many different media. Each is employed for their distinct tonal resonance in service of the work I envision.”

    www.carolynwebb.net

Listen to their interview on WHMP Radio with host Lary Hotts HERE

October Split Level Gallery 2024

Out of Context: Reimagining the Figure

October 4 - October 30

Opening Reception on Arts Night Out

This group comprises members of the resident Center for the Arts Drawing Group who meet up on Wednesday mornings to create and connect. Together, they are presenting a show of their works titled "Out of Context."

The gallery of figure drawings is a captivating display of the human form captured through the eyes of talented artists. The artworks vary in style, showcasing the diversity of approaches to figure drawing.From quick gesture sketches to detailed, lifelike representations, each piece tells a unique story and evokes a range of emotions. The gallery is a celebration of the human body and the artistry involved in depicting it. As you walk through the space, you can't help but be drawn into the beauty and complexity of the human form, immortalized on paper or canvas. Each drawing invites you to appreciate the skill and creativity of the artists while contemplating the timeless subject of humanity.

Participating Artists:

Ruth Bauman
Harriette Block
Rosetta Marantz Cohen
John Darby
Mary Gilman
Sherri Gionet
Michelle Machinnes
Tom Martin
Scott McDaniel
Elizabeth Meyersohn
Gloria Nicholls
Mary Wilson

Deb Orgera
Pacifico Palumbo
Harriet Pollatsek
Sulafa Roumaya-Elia
Emily Schmalzer
Steve Stankiewicz
Elizabeth Stone
Chris Sullivan
Dominique Thiebaut
Katherine Weinstein
Iris Wheaton

September 2024

Different Lenses:

Exploring Northampton MA and local areas

September 4 - September 28

Opening Reception on Arts Night Out

Exhibiting our work as a group allows for two separate photographers to capture the vibe and atmosphere of the Northampton community in a dynamic way. With its diversity and urban and natural landscapes, our photography provides stories of people, structures, shapes, colors, light and shadow. We both strongly believe in photographs with very minimal editing and no AI. Images, especially with street photography, are moments captured in time that tell a story. The images will speak to the viewer as they exist in the actual moment of capture.

We are very excited to present our work and to continue to explore the many ways in which we can continue to tell the story of Northampton, its surrounding towns and the many diverse peoples, urban, and natural landscapes.

Thank you,

CC and J

  • Jesse Merrick (he/they) grew up in western Mass. and also spent a lot of time during his formative years in New York City with his Grandma. Jesse has been creating art since he was a little kid and is a photographer, filmmaker and art/technology teacher at a local public high school (Frontier Regional), where he teaches photo, video & other classes full-time. Aspects of J. Merrick’s formal training include Film School at Mass Art in Boston, Video Production and Film Studies at UMass Amherst and a M.Ed in Instructional Technology, from MCLA in North Adams, MA. Jesse comes from an artistic family (including a Croatian great-grandfather who was an influential sculptor) who always encouraged his interest in art.

    Currently, Jesse is most focused on photography work, with a special focus on continuing and expanding the traditions of black & white street photography. Famous street photographers such as Berenice Abbott, Gordon Parks, and Vivian Maier, among others, are influences on his photo work. An interest in documenting real-life moments without adding or subtracting anything with Photoshop is explored in J. Merrick”s photo work. Historic, retro, and vintage imagery that displays a timeless quality are also common themes in J. Merrick”s photography. Jesse Merrick lives in Florence, MA, and is thankful for family, friends, and a positive Western Mass. community.

    In the future, Jesse Merrick is interested in creating unique visuals for local businesses and photography related to anti-racism, LGBTQIA+/civil/human rights, and other historical projects. For more information related to buying photo prints, individual or group photography lessons, or collaborating on photo projects, please contact Jesse Merrick.

    www.jmerrickmedia.com

  • Carolina (she/her), of Dominican descent, was born and raised in Washington Heights, NYC. She currently lives in Northampton, MA, with her family. Carolina is truly self-taught, learning by doing and being in the moment with her camera. She explores digital and film photography through books, videos, and, of course, by getting out there and practicing the art of photography.

    Carolina feels that in her photography, she experiences a sense of connection and gratitude with her surroundings. In college, she was obsessed with classic films, abstract art, and graphic design.

    Artistic influences include artists such as Frida Kahlo, Georgia Okeefe, Salvador Dali, Ansel Adams, and many others.

    Carolina got her 1st camera in 2022. From then on, she has been happily capturing images that she feels create

    an emotional connection with the viewer.

    She enjoys street photography, landscape, abstract, and nature photography. Carolina's passion for creativity and her journey into photography is truly inspiring. It’s wonderful how she has developed her skills and followed her curiosity, leading her to capture images that resonate deeply with viewers. Her story and gratitude make her work even more special.

    @carolina_created

August 2024

emerging artist showcase

Five local emerging artists

august 2 - august 29

Opening Reception on Arts Night Out

Art has always gone hand in hand with community, from the first cave paintings to the Eastern Island Statues. Artists of every status represent the physical voice of their community at that time—and emerging artists are stepping stones into the realm of that expression. In this exhibit, the art of each individual artist is not sectioned off, but organized according to how each painting communicates with the other. If artists from different backgrounds can still find connection through different pieces, then we as a community can find connection to one another. Supporting art, and embracing emerging artists, is one of the many ways we can push back against toxic individualism.

-Forrest Graey

  • Debra Hoyle is an artist and writer from Western Massachusetts with a studio/gallery in the small hill town of Conway. Conway sits on the South River, about an hour east of the Berkshires. Currently she is exploring mixed media using collage, monoprints, and acrylics. Her inspirations come from the beauty of the natural world, a love of history, memoir, mark making, color, texture, and the movement of energy. Pieces often begin with an idea and a personal process which then lead into an unplanned, intuitive unfolding. Debra usually works in series, and formal elements such as design, composition, value, and color are always considered. Her many layered pieces invite the viewer to connect with a sense of mystery and discovery. Art is at the core of the way Debra perceives life. She is mainly self-taught and has studied with a number of artists both in person and online. She has also worked in oils, pastels, and watercolors. Some influences are the abstract expressionists and contemporary artists such as Louise Fletcher, Jane Davies, Judy Woods, and Nicholas Wilton. Debra has exhibited at the Hosmer Gallery in Northampton, MA (solo show), Blake and Co., Orleans, MA, The Southern Vermont Arts Center, Manchester, VT, A3 Gallery, Amherst, MA, Northampton Center for the Arts, Northampton, MA, and at libraries in her area. Debra has also had a healing arts practice for over 30 years, and has a degree in art history.

    @debhoyle.art.rockpaperscissors

  • Forrest Graey (she/they) is a hobby artist who enjoys writing and cycling in her spare time. As someone on the spectrum, when she paints she finds it’s easier to cultivate inspiration by giving herself over to hyper-fixations and seeing what inspiration comes from them. While she is not currently painting, she is creating another piece of art in the form of her debut novel, “Bloodwater”.

    You can follow her writing process on Instagram, @author.forrestgraey

  • Kari Giordano is a visual artist and educator working in Berkshire County, Massachusetts. Her primary work is within the digital realm and she creates photographs and graphic design for commercial and personal use. Her current digital photography work, False Moons, comments on our search for social connection and aims to communicate our search for both individuality and group identities, and how we’re driven by instinct, experience, and collective consciousness.

    http://www.karigiordano.com

  • Rosetta Marantz Cohen has lived and painted in Northampton for 34 years. Her art celebrates the pleasures of everyday life in this community and the intimate world of her own painting studio–a converted garage behind her house. She finds humor and solace in very small things, and seeks to convey those feelings in her work.

    @rosettamarantz

  • Ruthie Baker is a photographer and mixed media artist working primarily with analog and alternative photographic processes. Her work combines photography, collage, poetry, and sculpture, exploring how analog photographic processes can be combined with other mediums to create something strange and new.

    Ruthie is interested in capturing the mundane experiences of daily life to examine themes of memory, tradition, self, and family. Her work centers on the emotional significance of modest objects and interpersonal relationships, as well as the fragility of human life.

    She received her Bachelor of Arts in Film and Media Studies from Emory University and is currently a final-year MFA Candidate at The University of Massachusetts - Amherst.

    https://ruthiebaker.art/

July 2024

Hold Me Close, I’m Re-membering How it Goes

Eli Liebman & Lynsey Robertson

July 5 - July 31

Opening Reception on Arts Night Out

The works of Hold Me Close spring from the desire to question an unthinkable and unknowable world and self. The presented work - a body of quilts, a collaborative “newspaper,” and a few ceramic sculptures - embraces a wide range of disparate parts into familiar and quotidian containers. The gentle fabric whispers, clay remembers gesture and gaze, and Nerve Meter gathers a chorus to tell differently the maladies and ecstasies of today. Visual motifs proliferate to play within and against given ways of being. These paths appear at once all too familiar while still strange, enticing yet insidiously alienating. Suppose it went a little differently.

  • Eli likes to question why we are conscripted to live such canalized lives. In an effort to breach these

    artificial banks, Eli spends time learning how to do things and then likes to learn how to do other things.

    Eli works in whichever media make sense for communicating a concept/emotion, yet with particular biases for the tactile ones often with utilitarian histories (namely clay, fabric, printmaking, drawing, and wood).

    elimack.weebly.com

  • Lynsey is an artist working in sculpture, print and sound to explore performance and ritual in the service of re-enchanting matter. They often work with the multiple in media such as cyanotype or clay, to practice devotional attention to matter and sculptural re-interpretation of myth. Lynsey lives and works in Los Angeles.

    lynseyjrobertson.com

June 2024

Run and Return/ רצוא ושׁוב

Jay Smith

MAY 31 - June 28

Opening Reception on Arts Night Out

רצוא ושׁוב (ratzo v’shov) is a Chasidic concept that emphasizes our dual desires and tendencies to “run” to the divine, to cleave to Gd and escape our earthly existence, and to “return” to our mortal bodies and material world, finding divinity where we are. As Rabbi Arthur Green describes it: “Opting for either world…can only lead to prolonging fragmentation. We see spiritual ebb and flow, moments of absence and moments of presence, as central to the human religious situation…can we step beyond conflict and see the thing as rhythm?” (After Itzik: Toward a Theology of Jewish Spirituality, 1971)

As a trans, American Jew living in a country and time where trans bodies are under threat, and where Jews are implicated and engaged in extreme violence, Jay Smith seeks to explore the pull towards and push from their tradition. Smith’s illustrations grapple with their relationship to Judaism, naming explicitly the comfort, healing, and wisdom that their tradition has gifted to them, while at the same time bearing witness to the tradition being twisted to justify death, exclusion, and alienation. They seek to reclaim their tradition from extremists and cultivate protective Jewish magic for their community: trans Jews in diaspora. Their work asks the questions: what does it mean to run to Gd when we are responsible for immense suffering, and what does it mean to return to our own bodies when they no longer feel safe?

  • Jay Smith (they/them) is an illustrator, clinician, and Judaism enthusiast. They have no formal arts education and credit their grandmother Sylvia with teaching them to paint at an early age. Their artwork reconstructs traditional Jewish ritual for a contemporary audience, and creates protective spells for trans bodies and spirits. They currently reside on Nipmuc/Pocomtuc land in so-called Florence, MA with their partner, Clare, and two cats, Gene and Charlie.

    www.mmmjaysmith.com/contact-wells

    @mmmjaysmith

May 2024

COALESCENCE

NORTHAMPTON HIGH SCHOOL EXHIBITION AND SENIOR SHOW

MAY 3 - MAY 29

Opening Reception on Arts Night Out

Come see Coalescence! The exhibit showcases the artwork of students enrolled in intermediate and advanced-level visual arts coursework at Northampton High School! All foundation classes will have work displayed in the school display cases for the month of May and installed by the students themselves.

A curated selection of visual art from art classes taught by Zoe Sasson and Louise Martindell PLUS Senior Honors Art Shows.

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