Past Exhibition: Jake Romano
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Digital ExhibitionsJames W. Foley Memorial Community Center, formerly Rochester Community Center.
150 Wakefield Street, Rochester, NH 03867 (Suite 135) We offer digital shows featuring extraordinary and thought-provoking works on a large 4K UHD LED display. The purpose is to connect visitors to emerging trends occurring in international contemporary art. Visitors can view these presentations in the museum's suite during regular hours of operation. |
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Kathleen Robbins / February 2022On view February 7 - March 4, 2022
Click here to view the virtual exhibition Kathleen Robbins earned her MFA at Massachusetts College of Art where she was later an adjunct faculty member. Kathleen is a resident of the Button Factory Artist Studios in Portsmouth, NH. Many of her landscapes reflect the Seacoast area and recently, the Maine coast. Professional experience includes her work over the past decade as an art therapist at Exeter Hospital.
Learn more at kathleenrobbinsfineart.com. |
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Harriet Bellows / February 2022On view February 7 - March 4, 2022
Click here to view the virtual exhibition Harriet Bellows received a BFA and a MFA from the School of Art and Design at Alfred University. Upon graduating she established and operated a studio in Alfred, NY. During that period her work was selected and purchased for Permanent Collections by the Smithsonian American Art Museum/Luce Foundation, D.C. and the Mint Museum’s Allan Chasanoff Ceramic Collection of Charlotte, NC.
Bellows has traveled extensively throughout the United States, Canada and Mexico with visits to Rome, Florence and Milan, Italy. She has lived in New England and the Southeast maintaining studios in Boston, MA, Seattle, WA, Raleigh and Durham, NC. Her artwork has been selected for numerous national juried exhibitions and invitationals. In 2010 she retired from a thirty year career as a professional pilot and continued her art work. In October 2015 she was awarded an Artist Fellowship at the Virginia Center for The Creative Arts (VCCA). Bellows currently maintains a residence studio and project space outside of Alfred, NY. Learn more at harrietbellows.com. |
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Spenser Macleod / January 2022Spenser Macleod is an artist based out of Portland, Maine, where he lives with his fiancé and daughter. Spenser earned a BFA in Illustration from Maine College of Art and currently creates murals, paintings, and commissioned design and illustrative works all over New England.
"My work is heavily inspired by an array of vintage pop culture and advertisement. I enjoy the vibrant colors, juxtaposed shapes, characters and typography of the past and use it in my own work to enthusiastically engage with my audience in regards to today's culture and influences." Visit www.spensermacleod.com to learn more. |
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Justin Moll / January 2022Naive & Surly by Dr. Wolfenbergen
Reception: Thursday, January 6 (6-8pm) Click here to view the virtual exhibition Justin Moll, also known as Dr. Wolfenbergen, is a designer and illustrator hailing from greater Philadelphia. Justin creates low-fidelity artwork imbuing a quirky, misanthropic aesthetic that draws influence from historic advertising art, traditional tattoo flash, badly-drawn skulls, terrible typography, and photocopiers. His work has been recognized by the American Institute of Graphic Arts (AIGA), The One Show, Graphis, Communication Arts, and more.
Learn more at www.justinmoll.com. Instagram: @dr.wolfenbergen |
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Dan Beauvais / December 2021Dan Beauvais is a New Hampshire based tattoo artist. This collection, specially created for this exhibition, features fantastical animals and beings in Beauvais’ classic-inspired style. Beauvais is inspired by many artists including Derek Hess, Pus Head, and Jim Woodring and studied art at Manchester Community College and the New Hampshire Institute of Art, both in Manchester, NH. Beauvais has exhibited his work at Wrong Brain and the Dover Children’s Museum, both in Dover, NH and Jim’s Tattoo in Seabrook, NH.
“If I can bring joy to someone with my art, which often times comes from a neurotic, obsessive, self loathing type place, and connect with some other weirdo out there, that is a victory. I really like the quote by Cesar A. Cruz, “Art should comfort the disturbed, and disturb the comfortable.” Learn more at @danbtattoo |
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Mark Bolton / December 2021NH Now: Images from Rochester in 2020
Reception: Thursday, December 9 (6-8pm) Click here to view the virtual exhibition Mark Bolton is an award-winning New Hampshire based photojournalist. He has over 30 years of experience in the newspaper industry, his sports photography has been featured nationally and family documentary work exhibited in New England hospitals. Mark teaches photography at New Hampshire Technical Institute and owns/operates Mark Bolton Photography.
New Hampshire Now is a two-and-a-half-year project to photographically record life in New Hampshire. Nearly 50 photographers traveled throughout the state between 2018 and 2020, making thousands of images that collectively create a 21st-century portrait of life in New Hampshire. The thousands of images created during this project form a powerful visual archive of both the ordinary and extraordinary events of our time. The book features nearly a dozen photos by Bolton, highlighting the City of Rochester. Visit www.markboltonphotography.net to learn more. |
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Cooper Dodds / November 2021Jumper: Flying in the Heartland
Reception: Thursday, November 11 (6-8pm) Click here to view the virtual exhibition Cooper Dodds (b. 1990) is a photographer and book artist living in Lebanon, New Hampshire. He received a BFA with honors in Studio Art from Carleton College (Northfield, Minnesota) in 2013. His first monograph, Jumper: Flying in the Heartland, was published by Daylight Books in 2019.
Considered the birthplace of American ski jumping, the Midwest has championed the art of flying for over a century. Each winter a Five Hills Tournament draws skiers from across the globe to some of America's most notable ski jumps in Minnesota, Wisconsin, Michigan, and Illinois. Thousands of fans pack local ski clubs to witness jumpers launch themselves from scaffolds that rise menacingly above the flat Midwest landscape. A former jumper himself, Cooper Dodds traveled the tour for five years creating large-format color photographs that highlight this transplanted Nordic tradition. |
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Andrew Dow / October 2021"Song Dynasty and Crystalline Glazing"
Reception: Thursday, October 7th (6-8pm) RSVP Click here to view the virtual exhibition Andrew Dow is a multi-disciplinary artist based in Farmington, NH. Working in ceramics, stained glass, painting, and photography, Dow’s art career began after he was injured serving in the military in Iraq. Dow earned a BFA from the New England College of Art and Design and is a juried member of the League of New Hampshire Craftsmen.
Song Dynasty and Crystalline Glazing showcases Dow’s porcelain ceramics inspired by Song Dynasty forms and his extended study of crystalline glaze formula creation. The results are expertly crafted, gorgeous pieces that are finished in one of a kind glazes. Visit instagram.com/renaissance_man_andrew_dow to learn more. |
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Ryan Adams / September 2021"Sometime, I'll Have Some Time"
Reception: Thursday, September 9th (6-8pm) Click here to view the virtual exhibition Ryan Adams is a Portland Maine artist, born and raised, where he lives with his artist and designer wife and their two daughters. His background in traditional graffiti led him to creating large-scale mural work as well as hand lettered design and signage. His signature ‘gem’ style of work is a geometric breakdown of letterforms with shadows and highlights included in order to create depth and movement throughout the pieces.
His pieces tend to be bold, colorful and clever; often including statements within. Currently, Ryan co-owns and operates a hand painted signage business, designs for a brewery, paints murals all around the country and exhibits his work as often as possible.
Visit www.ryanwritesonthings.com to learn more. |
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Spencer Worthley / August 2021"Somewhere Else, Another Time"
Reception: Thursday, August 12 (6-8pm) Click here to view the virtual exhibition Spencer is a nonfiction filmmaker, photographer and writer from rural Maine. He has contributed to films and made photographs for many different people and organizations. He currently lives in Los Angeles where he plays in a band and produces documentaries. Each photograph is Fuji instant film and unique.
"We were often in some body of water—the bay, the pond, the lake—or in motion between. Hair dripping, rushing back to reality in salt-stained clothes.
We were a patchwork family, briefly occupying an actual family’s home. I was the stand-in for the daughter, renting a room with a bed too short for my legs, pink sheets, and crayon drawings on the walls. We were overworked teachers and assistants, sweating, swearing and underpaid. And if not dying in the classroom, then briefly lazing in the yard or driving toward the sea; trading stories while wandering the coast, watching the dusk-light and fireflies fade into stars. A stream of fellow artists filtered through the door, bringing beer and conversation or pulling us off on some adventure. They all laughed loudly—perhaps to ward off the exhaustion or the fact that we were all going broke. And each one left a mark, an idea, some piece of themselves I still carry. At the end of the summer, polaroids lay strewn across the dash, were piled on the kitchen table. Others remained clamped between the pages of books. They had collected dust and imperfections, each one carrying some trace of our story." Visit www.spencerworthley.com to learn more. |
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Nate Twombly / July 2021Nate Twombly is a freelance illustrator who likes to create detailed, fun illustrations based on New England, history, music, nature, cabins, camping, and sometimes robots and monsters. Nate earned a BFA in illustration from the New Hampshire Institute of Art. He currently lives and works in New Hampshire and accepts commissions for original works.
Visit www.natedraws.com to learn more. |
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Ayan Nag / June 2021Ayan Nag is a freelance artist and illustrator based out of Bangalore, India. He has been working in the industry for the past 8 years and has worked for companies like Passion Pictures, Savage (Procreate), Future Publications (Imagine FX), Gigabyte, HEX Entertainment, Technicolor, and more.
Visit www.artofayan.com to learn more. |
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Boyan Moskov / May 2021"Approached By Surprise"
Boyan Moskov is a New Hampshire based ceramicist who likes to experiment. Originally from Bulgaria, he studied art in Troyan from the ages 13 -19. He always enjoyed working with ceramics, and when he graduated, there were good jobs in production pottery, where he started his career. He worked with several production companies and eventually started his own. In 2007 he moved to America with his wife, to her hometown in New Hampshire. With production pottery, he didn’t feel like he was expressing himself artistically, so he decided to focus on sculptural pieces that allowed him to experiment more. "I like experiment all the time. After I finish a piece I’ll pick it apart - perhaps I like the clay body, but not the glaze; or I like the shape but not the texture; or I want it to be bigger to really show the detail. Then I start working on the next piece and I focus on the elements that I want feature. If you look at my work over time, it’s all very different, but you can see my hand in all of it. You can see how the different elements transform over time, change, and sometimes come back into focus."
Moskov works out of his home studio in Contoocook, NH and studied art at Troyan Art School, Troyan, Bulgaria; Sofia Art Academy, Sofia, Bulgaria; and Lunevad, Linkshopping, Sweden. He has exhibited nationally and internationally and was the featured artist and cover of Ceramics Monthly. Visit facebook.com/boyanpottery or @boyanpottery to learn more. |
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Rebecca Klementovitch / April 10 - 30, 2021Rebecca Klementovich is an abstract painter living and working on the seacoast of New Hampshire. Rebecca graduated from the Fashion Institute of Technology in New York City, where she specialized in fashion illustration. Rebecca was a textile designer and fashion art director for 22 years.
Fashion illustration gave her the background for the gestural and bold color palette for landscapes and abstracts. Rebecca employs deliberate mark making to convey her respective interpretations of rural landscapes. After relocating from New York City to New Hampshire, Rebecca has been redeveloping her painting style and color palette. Her work has been exhibited in a variety of venues including Newport Art Museum, Canterbury Hill Studio, and Patricia Carega Gallery. Rebecca is a member of the Arts Advisory Team for the Rochester Museum of Fine Arts.
Visit www.klementovich.com to learn more. |
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Stephen Godlieb / March 20 - April 9, 2021Originally from Jakarta, Indonesia, Stephen Godlieb studied painting at the New Hampshire Institute of Art and received a Bachelor of Fine Arts. Godlieb’s work has been exhibited nationally in both solo and group exhibitions including Merge Arts in Manhattan, NY, the Robert Lincoln Levy Gallery in Portsmouth, NH, the Spectrum Art Fair in Miami, FL, and is held in numerous public and private collections internationally. His work was published in the Arts Issue of IDIR Magazine and featured in Studio Visit Magazine. He was awarded Outstanding Upcoming Painter by Seacoast Magazine and curated the exhibition Swimming with the Lights Off at the Riversea Gallery.
"The human figure draws into my imagination so I can express abstraction fully. The people around me, including my friends and family, are usually my references for my paintings. I chose to paint mostly human figure and portrait. Many of my ideas come from my surroundings combined with process of working with the meaning of its words. I encourage my subjects to try to provoke thought and mood through gaze because I'm not interested in presenting the viewer with an ambivalent or pleasant painting, I prefer emotive strength. I'm interested in abstract concepts; the paint as a medium and how my medium operates on the paper with the figure as the scaffold for my ideas I tend to treat color within the medium quite aggressively showing highlight the realism of the figure while also adding paint marks that blend into the background so some spaces become abstract. I believe my pursuit as a painter is to straddle the line between figuration and abstraction."
Visit www.sweetgraphik.com to learn more. |
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Stacey Durand / February 27 - March 19, 2021"Where I’m From"
Stacey Durand studied printmaking and art education at Montserrat College of Art and received her Masters of Art in Teaching Art from Salem State College. After living on the North Shore for nearly ten years, Durand return home to New Hampshire, settling in the Seacoast where she lives and works. She is currently the gallery manager of the Lamont Gallery at Phillips Exeter Academy. Durand has shown her paintings and collages in a number of galleries throughout New England and her work is in private collections throughout the country. "My work has been very much influenced by the places I have lived and the communities I have called home. Over the years I have explored many seacoast and mill towns in New England and find myself drawn to the regional character of these coastal communities. These neighborhoods are often filled with old homes and buildings that are packed together tightly, creating interesting, crowded arrangements and compositions. I fell in love with the way these buildings relate to each other; the houses on some streets are nearly on top of each other they are so close, the power lines cross the sky and zigzag over the streets to connect the buildings, and the tilted telephone poles lean into the warped houses.
These overlapping homes and quirky neighborhoods have been the subjects of my work as I am drawn to the layers and connections that these environments create. I work from photographs of actual communities; I explore the streets looking for interesting compositions and try to find overly exaggerated examples of the types of buildings and neighborhoods that I find compelling. I then layer and overlap images I have taken to find connections between the buildings that do not exist in the real world. These newly created collaged landscapes become slightly abstracted compositions. Within this process of removing buildings and neighborhoods from their original context and combining them with different environments, I create new connections, relationships, and ultimately new communities. I then enhance and alter these collages through many layers of acrylic paint, image transfers, and graphite. I continue to wrap the image from the front of my paintings onto the sides of the piece giving the impression that the landscape extends beyond what is created on the front surface of the painting. By using this technique, I want my paintings to be viewed more like an object rather than a traditional painting hung on the wall, enabling the viewer to interpret these newly created communities with some familiarity and personal connection to their own neighborhood."
Visit www.staceydurandart.com to learn more. |
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Broadie / February 5-26, 2021Prince George's County, MD Graphic Artist, Broadie, shows his love for digital art by applying his skills learned while attending Bowie State University, a Historical Black College (HBCU), majoring in Fine Arts. He blends his skills in graphic design and love of mixed media, bringing about a perfect marriage of his two passions. My inspiration has been birthed from the richness of Black History, the past, present and possibilities of the future.
"Art opens my mind to be limitlessly creative, allowing me to visually present my innermost beliefs and feelings. I embody “art as self-expression” to the fullest, expressing and sharing all that is me: my inspirations, fears, and joys; my culture, sexual desires, and loves; my past, present, and future. I challenge the boundaries of traditional mixed media art using square color schemes, along with various techniques that incorporate digital painting, vector, 3D, and photo-manipulations."
Follow @bbrody04 on Instagram to learn more. |
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Emmanuel Hernandez / January 22 - February 4, 2021"Lights & Movement"
Born in Carolina, Puerto Rico, and also being of Dominican descent, Emmanuel Hernandez has been exposed to different creative endeavors. He was exposed to music at age 11, listening to Bachata music and learning how to play guitar by ear. Later, he formed an independent record label to help other artists. Along the way, he purchased an analog synth which led him to begin composing music. His curiosity for photography peaked with the mediative nature of landscape and cityscape photography. “Art is my way of life. It is on my mind and soul day and night. It has helped me slow time down and appreciate my surroundings and at the same time create new ones.”
Hernandez currently lives in Manchester, NH and studied at the Berklee College of Music. He is inspired by the works of Ara Güler, Manuel Garcia, Susumu Yokota, and Stanley Kubrick. His work has been recognized by both the Monochrome and ND Awards for excellence in photography. Visit linktr.ee/EHValleyPhotography to learn more. |
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Julie Gray / January 8-22, 2021This series was made possible by a grant from the Ellis-Beauregard Foundation
Julie K. Gray is a Maine-based interdisciplinary artist who primarily works in photography, sculpture and needlepoint. She earned her BFA in Photography from Rhode Island School of Design in 2005 and has since earned her MFA in Studio Art from Maine College of Art (2012). She has exhibited widely in New England as well as NYC, IL, TX, NJ, FL and Canada. She is also currently a student of mediumship, working with mentors based in Lily Dale, NY. "Ten years ago, I had a near-death experience after falling down some stairs and receiving a severe concussion. I could hear my parents and brother describe what was happening to me in frantic screams, their voices became fainter and fainter as I seemingly traveled down a dark tunnel. There was no light at the end of this tunnel, though, and when I eventually came to after minutes without breath, this vast emptiness I experienced shook me to the core. It took me a few years to be able to process and speak about this experience openly, then it took a few more years to be able to address it within my art.
I visited Lily Dale, NY (the largest Spiritualist community in the country) five years ago and have never been the same, continuing to visit each year during the summer seasons when they open their gates to tourists and those who wish to receive messages from their dead loved ones. I’ve always been sensitive to seeing/hearing spirits growing up, but have always explained these experiences away-maybe there was a carbon monoxide leak in that Providence apartment? And maybe when I was a child I just had an overactive imagination? However, after spending time in Lily Dale, I no longer explain these experiences away, but embrace them. And honestly, after my near-death experience, I need to believe that there’s something more after we die. My artwork addresses mortality, mourning culture and the psychological space of “limbo,” thematically. In order to speak about the intangible subject of mortality through my work, I have come to use more symbolic means of addressing the subject. Humor and kitsch in my photography, as well as the use of naïve, childhood craft materials help such weighty subject matter become accessible to the audience. In these past years, I have taken photographs (both digital and medium format film) around the grounds of Lily Dale (my visits only lasting a few days here and there), and it’s been a great source of inspiration in general. This year, I booked a two-week trip to visit during the off-season in October/November with the support of the Ellis-Beauregard Foundation. This body of work is the result of these two weeks spent on the grounds." Visit www.juliekgray.com to learn more. |
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Jake Romano / December 19 - January 7, 2021Jake Romano has been painting digitally since 2012. He has had no formal training in illustration but in his time spent studying graphic design in community college, he discovered that illustration and design are two sides of the same coin of visual communication. They both use color, shape, composition, and emotion to speak to and convince a viewer.
"My favorite sense is sight and my approach to creating is as simple and as complicated as painting what I see and love in the moment. And I am always in love with one thing or another: the unnatural, the digital, the introspective, fast food, and always, always, always with color.
God has given us sight, color, and nature to bring us joy while we are here. I want to understand these gifts, to experience them from every angle, and to create with them. In turn I seek to understand my own purpose and my own emotions as an artist and to find a fuller joy that I can share with others." Visit www.jakeromano.com to learn more. |
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Daniel Fleming / December 5-18, 2020"Our sense of self, and our understanding of ourselves, has never been more important than in the present day. Not only are we rushing to keep up with a deluge of daily news and events, but with the current pandemic and various states of lockdown spreading throughout the world, our proximity to our “selves” and, perhaps more importantly, our ability to escape from our selves, has been reduced in ways never before experienced.
While many seek to lead others to a conclusion they support, I too am exploring my own reactions to the subjects and events my paintings address, organically reaching an understanding that was not there when the painting started. Through experimentation, automatic painting, and chance, scenes emerge, almost as an abstraction that is slowly focused and formed into the surreal landscapes and figurative groupings recognizable throughout the last few years of my work." "While I have an interpretation and understanding of my paintings, I want each viewer to use the symbols, objects, and titling I have used to interpret and understand the subject from their own perspective. In doing so, each viewer not only becomes more in tune with the narrative presented, but they also reveal truths about themselves and their own beliefs that they may otherwise overlook.
We can be told what to feel and what to see and try to truly feel that ourselves or we can take control of the narrative and understand our own perspective. I, and my paintings, seek to promote the latter." Visit www.dflemingart.com to learn more. |
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Joseph Podlesnik / November 23 - December 4, 2020Joseph Podlesnik is trained mainly in drawing and painting and it is this experience which seems to influence his approach to photography.
For Podlesnik, the camera lens depicts perspective too easily, which is why he captures and makes photographs which often frustrate readable perspectival space. For him, the photographic image is not only a window through which to see the visible world, but also a maker of flat surfaces which stunt or block logical space. He sees photography and pictures not only as documentation, but as commenting on or reenacting perception itself. Podlesnik lives in Phoenix, Arizona and exhibits his work nationally and internationally. He is currently Visual Arts Adjunct Faculty at Stockton University in New Jersey, and is Program Coordinator/Facilitator for the Digital Photography Cornell Certificate Program. He has also served as Lead Faculty, Associate Professor of Art Foundations for the Art Institute of Pittsburgh - Online Division. He received his MFA in drawing & painting from Cornell University.
Visit www.josephpodlesnik.com to learn more. |
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Durkish Delights / November 9-20, 2020Durkish Delights is Mike Durkee: a muralist and graphic artist from New Hampshire. He currently resides in Alton, NH with his wife and children. He also has two cats, one dog, and an array of chickens and ducks. Mike graduated from Chester College of New England with a Bachelors Degree in Fine Art.
His process combine hand drawn, vintage style text, and cartoons with images sourced from vintage books. He also zooms into Google Earth and collaborates with strangers to create art. Mike has worked with clients such as Comcast, Ovation TV, Noodz, The Rochester Museum of Fine Arts, and many more. He has been featured on various podcasts, radio shows, and public speaking engagements.
Visit www.durkishdelights.com or follow @DurkishDelights to learn more. |