The Museums of Old York’s George Marshall Store Gallery begins the 2008 exhibition season with Momentum VI, the annual exhibition which features the grantee and selected finalists of the New Hampshire Charitable Foundation’s Piscataqua Region Artist Advancement Grant. The dock level gallery opens with Marian Baker & Jenny Moore: Paintings and Pots, the work of two Maine artists.
Since its inception in 2002, the Charitable Foundation’s annual grant program has drawn increasing numbers of visual artists and craftspeople to compete for up to $30,000 to support plans that can make a significant difference to the advancement of an artist’s growth. After days of review and discussion, the panel of jurors chose Newmarket artist Kirsten Reynolds as the 2007 grantee. Although there is only one artist to receive the financial grant, the jury also selects a group of finalists whose work is exhibited in the annual “Momentum” exhibition presented by the George Marshall Store Gallery.
As in years past, the jurors have chosen a group of artists whose work represents a variety of media and artistic concepts.
The grantee, Kirsten Reynolds, a Newmarket resident, has been in the region since 1998. She is an artist who uses sculpture and digital images to create installations as theater and large, three-dimensional tableaus that explore how humor, uncertainty and the grotesque can rupture the order imposed by language and architecture. This is the third year in a row that the recipient of this prestigious grant is a graduate of the Maine College of Art.
Kim Bernard, from North Berwick, Maine is a third time finalist. She is a mixed media artist who uses what she refers to as the “forgiving medium” of wax to layer, burn, scrape, embed and transfer in her abstract compositions. She often combines her encaustics with contrasting materials such as lead, the medium she has used to create her organically inspired abstract metal sculptures. Bernard has recently exhibited in Key West, Florida, Boston, Massachusetts and Portland, Maine.
In his multi-media presentations, Ross Cisneros of Milton draws from a number of disciplines that converge and test the relationship between video, performance, and sculpture. The Gallery is grateful to Tweeter’s in Portsmouth for assisting with equipment for Cisneros’s presentation.
This is the first time that an illustrator has been chosen as a finalist. Durham, New Hampshire artist, Dan James, creates illustrations both simple and complex that have appeared in magazines, newspapers, album covers, comic books, children’s books and cartoons.
Douglas Prince of Portsmouth, also a second time finalist, combines, manipulates, and layers digital images, resulting in images where the ordinary is elevated to the extraordinary. Prince is always looking for something he hasn’t seen before. Whether working with the camera, in the darkroom, or on the computer he is looking for juxtapositions, relationships and transformations that create new perceptions.
Another third time finalist, Gail Spaien of Kittery Point, Maine explores her exploration of the relationship between science and pleasure. She creates what appear to be the excerpts from a botanist’s journal with paintings of flowers and pressed flowers on notebook pages. Spaien is also currently featured at the Portland Museum of Art’s “New Natural History” exhibit through May 11.
Showing concurrently in the dock level gallery is Marian Baker & Jenny Moore: Paintings and Pots, an installation combining Jenny Moore’s colorful, imaginative paintings with Marian Baker’s elegant and functional ceramics. Moore paints hue saturated forms that refer to dwellings and people. The conversation between the architectural and organic forms suggests a new reality. The color and forms that Baker chooses for her pots are rooted in nature, reflect the traditions of some English and Japanese pottery and tell of her interest in pattern and mystery. Baker’s ceramics seem to connect with Moore’s work as if they would be the chosen wares of the people who live in the whimsical dwellings depicted in her paintings.
There will be a reception for the artists on Saturday, April 26 from 5 to 7 PM. The “Momentum” exhibition continues through June 1st; the “Baker/Moore” exhibition closes May 28th. Hours are Wednesday through Saturday, 11- 5, Sunday 1-5, and by appointment. The George Marshall Store Gallery is located at 140 Lindsay Road, York. (207) 351-1083. www.georgemarshallstoregallery.org.
