Director's Notes...

Open House! Saturday, August 14th, 12 til 4pm

In celebration of Eliot's 200th anniversary this year, Sanctuary Arts and Green Foundry are hosting an Open House. Come tour the classrooms, the bronze, iron and aluminum casting foundry and view our gorgeous sculpture gardens. Light refreshments will be served and Fall brochures will be available.

This Fall we have three new instructors who bring strong artistic skills to classes here. Ceramic artist Rachel Huckins was recently hired full time by the Currier school, and she recommended Trisha Coates, whose work is simply amazing (take a look at her website www.trishacoates.com). She has just joined Bowersock Gallery in Provincetown, where I show my sculpture. Trisha, whose hand-built work exhibits a fresh and quirky aesthetic, also will be teaching wheel throwing techniques.

Robin Neely, a conservation stained glass painter who has worked on major LaFarge and Tiffany restorations, will be teaching glass painting techniques in a weekend workshop here. She studied under Albinas Elskus, who resurrected and revitalized the practice of vitreous painting on glass. Her class is designed for beginners to learn the traditional means of embellishing glass by painting and silver staining and firing in a kiln. Help revive this “lost” art by studying with one of America's foremost glass painting restorationists.

Christopher Volpe (www.christophervolpe.com) worked for about 15 years as a professional writer and taught college English and poetry before falling in love with American landscape painting while teaching a class in art history. Drawing upon the New England landscape, his work has roots in 19th century traditions such as Barbizon and Tonalism yet extends to abstraction through a contemporary 20th/21st century sensibility. I am pleased that Chris will be teaching landscape painting and an introduction to oil painting class here this Fall. He brings both passion and intelligence to the pursuit of oil painting.

Tour Our Sculpture Gardens!

Join me on a “verbal” tour of our sculpture Garden. Let's start with the larger work in the field. Joyce Zarins, a sculptor from Merrimac MA, has fabricated three mesmerizing 8 foot weathered steel maple seedlings that gently rotate with the wind.

She also cut and fabricated three large scale, boldly painted maple leaves that scatter across the field. A shard of blue sky seems to have fallen nearby, but no, it's a fabricated, welded and painted steel structure by sculptor and ceramicist Gary Rathmll of Newton NH.

Antoinette Schultze of Eliot Maine has her subtle “Casa Mia” granite with embedded glass boulder situated in the midst, while Figurative bronze, terra cotta, and cement sculptures by Steven Carpenter, Alan Eves, and Christopher Gowell silently observe.

Now on to the more intimate sculpture garden designed by artist Judy Andrews to display smaller scale work. Atop the stone wall built by Steven Carpenter, with the aid of his dry stone wall class, two bronze half- scale male nudes sculpted by Christopher Gowell, enact a private drama, while a bronze female drummer by Don Severance performs percussive rhythms. An oblivious and blissed out painted terra cotta sculpture by Elizabeth Ostrander of Eastport Maine tilts her face to the sun, “Lighten- Up”, three aluminum figures (cast at our Green Foundry) by Deborah Homer O'Leary, dance in the sunliught. “Happy & Sad”, a bronze abstracted head by David Allard nestles among the leaves, overlooked by Lindley Briggs' stately bronze and aluminum couple in chapeau and helmet.

Along the fence, Cheryl Keim's relief “Joy” resonates that emotion. Nancy Sander's “Egyptian Girls” dance and Jeffrey Briggs “Behemoth” reminds us of the inextricable ties between man and animal. Antoinette Schultze adds a bolt of color with “Indigo”, her ultramarine blue glass and granite piece. Steven Lee's large scale “Ms. Headus” with her planted hat of coral bells looks over at Cheryl Keim's nose-to-nose armadillos and Mongolian artist Ulziibaatar' marble, granite, and cast stone pieces. Oblivious to all the silent witnesses,two men tussle over a sprawling woman in Steven Carpenter's bronze “Impassioned”. Come by and feast your eyes. All exhibited pieces are available and can migrate to enhance your own gardens.

Cheers,

Christopher