In Memory of Jean Elizabeth Hosmer
1954-1999
Paintings, Poems and Artists' Books
by Jan Ruby, Margaret Lloyd and Michelle Cotugno
Jan Ruby
June 2-29, 2013
Reception: Saturday June 8, 2-4 PM
Artist's Statement: Jan Ruby
While studying traditional Chinese painting in Taiwan, I learned the importance of experiencing the world around me, taking it in and remembering the feelings of being in a particular place and time. Arriving at my studio, while preparing the inks I will paint with, I concentrate on envisioning the painting I am about to create. Without photographs or sketches to guide me, I have learned to rely on the images that surface in my mind. They are the memorable ones, the ones that remain with me, calling me to paint them. My work is fluid and direct. Later, as I need details, I add them through direct observation of my subjects.
My books are created as vessels in which to contain paintings, drawings, words and ideas. Their surfaces seek to express that moment in time, so precious and lasting that I am driven to hold the vision, finding ways to give it physical form. Working with metals, enamels, board, paint, precious stones and beads, I fashion structures and surfaces. The interior content evolves through time, sometimes during its construction or later once the book is in the hands and mind of its owner.
Margaret Lloyd received a Ph.D. from the University of Leeds in England and chairs the Humanities Department at Springfield College. She is the author of three books, including two collections of poetry. Another collection of poems, Forged Light, will be published by Open Field Press in the fall of 2013. Her honors include a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities, a fellowship to the Breadloaf Writer's Conference, and residencies at Hawthornden Castle (Scotland), the Millay Colony, and Yaddo. Her watercolors (and watercolor/poem pairs) have appeared in Planet: The Welsh Internationalist, Poetry Wales, and Third Wednesday. She has exhibited her paintings at Wistariahurst, the Blizard Gallery at Springfield College, and the Northampton Center for the Arts.
Margaret Lloyd
Artist's Statement: Margaret Lloyd
Watercolor paints and paper are portals through which I negotiate the imagined, on the one hand, and the real on the other. My painting occupies the boundary between the known and the unknown. I work wholly from the imagination, whether the completed image refers to a place in the real world or an entirely new and unknown place, an interior landscape. As I paint, I am searching for and forging the place that will emerge. I am searching for a way to inhabit the place and sometimes to find shelter in it.
I am a Welsh immigrant and have maintained close ties with Wales. I find that Welsh landscapes often emerge in my paintings, largely unbidden. Some of my watercolors are closely connected to the immigrant experience and the haunting of the Welsh past-- the past of my family, myself, and a deeper mythological past visible in the landscape, which is changing inexorably.
My other art is poetry. It was perhaps inevitable that while most of my paintings stand alone, some are connected to poems or text. In combining the written and the visual, my intent is to encourage through juxtaposition a wider range of reverberations and responses to both than is usually felt. Watercolor demands an acceptance of what happens in the moment. Just as in life I have found that yielding often solves the insoluble, so in art yielding to the materials leads me to the image. I am learning that the world does not conform to my wishes, but to another order.
Michelle Cotugno
Michelle Cotugno creates original hand-built clay book-sculptures using stamped and engraved text of poems and other writings.
Photographs by Amy Dane
Paintings by Susan Valentine
Susan Valentine
July 2-30, 2013
Reception (Susan Valentine): Friday July 26, 2-4 PM
Susan Valentine took up painting late in life. Just three years ago, in the summer of her 56th year, Susan's friend, Robin Keller, gently led her to put paint on brush to canvas. She'll never be the same. Now, Susan is a Greenfield Community College art major whose work has been recognized in a national contest. Her oil painting, Daylily 2, won second place in The Artist's Magazine's 2012 Art Competition for Student Still Life/Floral and is featured in the January 2013 issue of the magazine.
While she's new to painting, Susan has had a lifelong love of natural beauty and began practicing graphic design in the mid-1990s when she needed to promote yoga classes she was teaching. Studying graphic design at Greenfield Community College was her initial training in composition. Commenting on her process, Susan said, "Composition is what catches me. I'm a serious gardener. I get into the minutiae of it. I take photos of my garden for the beauty of it, how the sun shines on top of a petal and how that light flows onto another flower."
Many of Susan's paintings depict details of plants and flowers in the garden surrounding her home in Leverett. With her paintings, Susan focuses closely on the relationship of objects to one another, whether it's elements of a flower or one flower(ette) to another. The spaces around objects create support and places of visual rest.
Susan thrives in the collaborative environment of the GCC painting studio. She says, "I take Directed Studies with Penné to have Penné's instruction, as well as studio space and supportive community. It's a great mix in the GCC painting studio, everyone from younger students to those who've taken up painting in retirement, all learning from each other. I'll be learning about value (from light to dark) and saturation (from gray to brilliant) for the rest of my life. One lesson I've learned at GCC is that if there is something you want to do, do it. And, find community within which to do it."
Amy Dane
Amy S. Dane, a native of Longmeadow, MA, suffers from a lifelong travel addiction that has brought her to over 90 countries so far. She enjoys sharing her experiences by giving culturally informative presentations about her travels and exhibiting her photography at libraries, hospitals and galleries. Her entry won "Best in Show" in February, 2012 at the Friends of the Agawam Public Library 2nd Open Juried Photography Show.
In her travels, Dane started to notice the interesting ways and objects that people carry around the world and thought it would make an interesting theme for an exhibition: who carries what, why and how.
It seems so simple. After all, we all carry things, but people from different cultures carry different things in different ways. People carry with their hands, shoulders, backs and heads. Starting with pregnancy, women carry other people. When a child is born, he/she rises up to the arms, back, or shoulders. In most cultures women carry children, but Dane noticed that in Madagascar men were often seen carrying their children. People carry animals, both for food and as pets. They carry umbrellas, packages and wares they buy or sell. The homeless around the globe carry everything they own. On the opposite end of the spectrum, well-off people carry objects for recreation. Dane notices a lot less of this in third world countries whose inhabitants don't have much time for leisure.
In our society we carry our groceries in plastic, brown paper, or nowadays "green" bags. We carry backpacks, pocket books and consumer purchases placed in smart, colorful shopping bags sporting a store or brand's logo. In third world countries the head is often used for carrying -- mostly women's heads. Dane realized that she could design an entire exhibit around people carrying things on their heads. At a train station in rural India she watched how coal was loaded into the engine. Men would supervise the women and load the heavy coal into a basket on the women's heads. The women would then carry those heavy baskets to the engine, walk up a few stairs and tip their heads to spill the contents in the appropriate place and then walk back to the men to be loaded up for more.
The layout of the Hosmer Gallery enticed Dane to group her pictures into different themes. She organizes 5 themes: people carrying food; carrying for work; people carrying other people; carrying for religion/religious festivals; and finally a section she calls OMG. She hopes to further develop these themes and explore the theme of carrying for leisure.
Please visit her website at www.amydaneadventures.com for newspaper articles, cable television shows, photographs and upcoming events.
Gallery Hours
Monday 9-9 ; Tuesday 1-5 ; Wednesday 9-9 ; Thursday 1-5 ; Friday & Saturday 9-5 ; closed Sundays and holidays.
Upcoming Exhibits
| 2013 | August | Hilltown Plein Air Painters | Route 66 |
| September | Paul Hetzel | black & white photography | |
| Rick Miller | black & white photography | ||
| Tristan Chambers | black & white photography | ||
| October | Northampton Arts Council | Be Here Now: Biennial juried show | |
| November | Lynne Feinberg | drawings, sculpture, mixed media | |
| Nancy Haver | watercolors, acrylic & wood engravings | ||
| Olwen Dowling | oils, watercolors & etchings | ||
| December | Marie Welch | miniature paintings | |
| Karen Leveille | watercolor paintings | ||
| Karen Iglehart | oil paintings | ||
| 2014 | May | Northampton High School | Student Show |
| October | Forbes Library | Treasures of Special Collections |
Artists: For general information about selection and scheduling, see
Gallery Policy/Information for Artists.
For further information, phone 587-1013.