January Gallery: Brattleboro-West Arts Member Exhibit

The January the Gallery at the Garden will feature nine members of Brattleboro-West Arts. The show features a diverse collection of works, including photography, metal sculpture, hooked and braided wall hangings, collage, large-scale prints and paintings in gouache, acrylic, and oil.

The exhibit includes work by Gene Parulis, Ron Karpius, Steve Lloyd, Kris McDermet, Walter Slowinski, Jen Wiechers, Janet Picard, Sharon Myers and BWA’s newest member, Kay Curtis.

Brattleboro-West Arts is comprised of approximately three dozen artists who create their art and make their homes within the watershed of the Whetstone Brook. Members represent disciplines as diverse as violin making, glassblowing, textile art, metalworking, stone sculpture, painting, pottery, basket making, woodworking and jewelry.

Visit www.brattleboro-west-arts.com for more information about Brattleboro-West Arts, including profiles of the artists in this show as well as BWA’s other members.

Kay Curtis

Being an Artist is a practice. I have been making art since I was seven. I have always known that seeing pictures is a way for me to understand and collect my world. I began in 1970 on the East Coast producing a line of hand made block printed cards. I moved in 1975 to the West Coast where I supported myself for 25 years as an artist. In 2000, I returned to New England to begin anew.

I often work in sets and gather that which interests me inside a structure of rules. Window Painting was a technique I invented in 1990 as I moved from block printing to painting.

My palette was influenced by growing up on the islands of Jamaica and Puerto Rico as a child. I am showing three paintings from a show “Which Hat Over What Fence?” In which I looked at what I choose to do with my life. I affirmed my understanding that being artist is a declaration. I say it, so I am.
Kay Curtis lives in Brattleboro, Vermont where she divides her time between art, children and advocacy. She is currently on staff at the River Gallery School in Brattleboro.

kaycurtis.com | curtisk@together.net | 802-258-7470

Ron Karpius

I enjoy celebrating my clients’ unique interests and personalities in the form of metal sculpture and paintings that range from micro-miniatures to large-scale murals.

Stephen Lloyd

Since receiving an architecture degree, I’ve pursued that profession in North Africa, New York City, Maine, and Connecticut before moving to Vermont.
Although I began drawing in childhood and watercolor painting in college, acrylic painting has been an interest only since 1998. Since then I have exhibited in CT and Brattleboro. The acrylics employ architectural references in their geometry and graphite linework.

Kris McDermet

My greatest interest is in combining the two-four art/craft forms to make interesting shapes for the wall or floor-rug braiding, rug hooking, wet felting, and free motion quilted backgrounds. The colors, designs and textures of hand dyed wool, silk, and combined fibers compliment the 4 mediums and I have developed techniques to create endless design and textural possibilities. The delicacy of the hooking and wet felting can be set off by the boldness of the braiding. For some pieces, the hooked/braided pieces are hand sewn onto a quilted silk background to create another texture.

I hope my work may simply tell a story, or show diversity with themes in nature, native cultures, or the arts while incorporating the use of open space in the pieces to create added interest.

www.krismcdermetrugs.com | kmcdermet1@gmail.com | 802 579-9002

Sharon Myers

This piece is part of a series exploring the impact of women undergarments on sexuality and brutality in society towards women throughout history.

Gene Parulis

Gene Parulis has been absorbed in photographing the world for fifty years. The two poles of his life have been teaching and traveling, and photography has occupied a central place in both passions. He has exhibited in galleries in the USA and Europe, and his photos have appeared in a number of magazines, books, and websites. He has collaborated with writers particularly with regard to illustrating themes of spirituality as well as personal and professional development. He is currently at work on multimedia projects, among them explorations of the theme of Orpheus and Eurydice and Greek Street Art. He recently showed his documentary on Albert Martin, a New Englander who fell at the Alamo, at the John Brown House in Providence.

“When I first began dabbling with Photography fifty years ago, I hardly realized then that the unexpected magical door in the wall had actually swung open, and that I was entering a world of marvels with endless opportunities to explore and discover. Photography has deepened my appreciation of the natural and human worlds, enlarging both my senses and heart while continually widening my field of contact. As a photographer, I am dedicated primarily to things that uplift the spirit and to the creation of works that, to paraphrase the painter Barbara Hepworth, reveal an affirmation, acceptance, and intensification of life. Our evolving world of digital imagery has heightened this dynamic approach and put within our grasp exhilarating new means of expression, what I think of color, form, and ideas at the command of ingenious algorithms. We are in closer contact than ever with wonders and this is what my photography celebrates.”

Janet Picard

I like to think of my work as expressionistic yet representational. I’ve always been influenced by the Fauves. Powerful colors, unusual compositions, mixing reality and abstractions. When I start a painting, it comes from a combination of a mood I have, some kind of subject I’ve been pondering, an idea for something new, interesting, different but yet beautiful to look at. I strive to make “modern” art but love to bring forth a traditional painterly style.

Walter Slowinski

Recent explorations include encaustic images of the beloved clarinet I have played for decades and slight reworkings of the quirky birds that started showing up on my clay vessels a few years ago. This summer’s camping gear included, for the first time, an easel, canvases and a basket full of tubes of paint. Every moment is a new opportunity to see things fresh, to celebrate, to re-invent.

orchardstreetpottery@gmail.com | walterslowinskipottery.weebly.com

Jen Wiechers

Encaustic painting offers layer upon layer of possibility. In both process and product, the medium encourages a dance between intention and happenstance. For Jen Wiechers, this lesser-known medium offers a very comfortable, versatile physical interface full of interweaving layers and unplanned effects.

Using a combination of bees wax and dammar resin, oil pigment sticks and various found objects, her Encaustic paintings are a collage-like ensemble of texture, color and form, embedded and revealed through many layers of additions and subtractions. As Jen puts it: “I never know what it will become when I begin. It’s like I’m going on a journey and I have no idea where I’m going and when it will end… and I LOVE that! The discoveries and surprises are a lot of why I love doing it.”

Jen’s pieces combine vivid color and gentle forms, and suggest ambiguity and movement. Each finished painting is only finished when she feels it reflects back to her parts of herself. “I’d like to think that the incredible joy I feel when creating the paintings is captured in each of them.”