A group show of 18 local artists.
Artist Reception is Saturday, December 6th from 5-7pm.
The show will run from 12.6 - 1.4.26. Come out and support local artists.
Locals No. 2 brings together 18 regional artists . Each year we highlight a new group of artists for our Holiday Show. Choosing is ridiculous. There are hundreds of amazing artists, and I often don't even know how to begin. But begin I do. There is no overriding theme. And I often feel like i am winging it. The challenge is bringing together these artists and presenting a show that feels cohesive. And there are surprises along the way. There are artists all over this Valley, and we are fortunate to have a vibrant and rich community of artists. It is a gift to get to visit artists in their spaces and select work for this show. You can preview a large selection of the show online. Hope you can visit.
PARTICIPATING ARTISTS
BAILEY BOB BAILEY
After all, isn’t all art just a color delivery system? I like to think this is the job of an artist, to deliver the goods. Color should come to us via surprise and wonderment, integrated into our lives like billboards or blue cake icing. The experience of color – whether the whitest of whites or a dirty baby blue – demands its own subtleness and intensity. I constantly think I’m in a new color phase, leaning on it like a pillar, giving me both direction and comfort.
My work often starts from a eureka moment. Instigated by an idea or a drawing, immediacy seems to be its bones. The canvas covered, I methodically start to fix the bad parts, literally bit by bit, slowly killing the painting as I go, until all seems lost. Then, as before, out of the blue a resurrection takes place; a final decision awakens into a wholly unique experience, the artwork transcended. It now becomes a tool, a history of surprise. After studying sculpture at Virginia Commonwealth University, I attended Skowhegan and was twice a fellow at The Fine Arts Work Center of Provincetown, where I made my home for thenext thirty years. I moved to the land of tall trees in 2024, now living and working in Hadley. I have shown extensively throughoutthe U.S., a bit internationally, had a mid-career retrospective atProvincetown Arts Association and Museum in 2016, and am now represented by The Schoolhouse Gallery in Provincetown, and the Ethan Cohen Gallery of New York City/Beacon, NY..
Logan Ray Bishop is a teaching artist, printmaker, and poet based in Stafford, CT, from
Clearwater, FL. He teaches at Holyoke Community College, works with Community
Partners in Action as a Prison Arts assistant, and assists with fine art printmaking at
Milestone Graphics. He has a BFA from USF and an MFA in Studio Art from the
University of Connecticut. Recent exhibition venues include the Alexey von Schlippe
Gallery of Art, ART06870 Gallery, ArtSpace Hartford, Ely Center of Contemporary Art,
EAPD Puerto Rico, the Stairwell Space, and the William Benton Museum of Art.
Most of the time I think about art practices as revolving around living within a place andits history, building a home there, forming roots, and making during the in-betweentimes of teaching, or the other myriad of ways artists piece together a way of life.Making is a healing center. My images are visual interruptions of depression, slivers oflight shining through, and time oaths that transform suffering into a contained field.
Being raised in a Catholic family always has me seeking some myth to attach to. I seek
to make images that remind me of prayer and are transformative, yet intense enough
they feel detached from religion entirely, and the images become new and bizarre.
Working monochrome for me allows the drawings to have those sensibilities
SHANA DEATEY
Strawberry Milkshake was the print that opened the door to what became my newest series. I had made a strawberry patterned woodcut and had been printing it on large paper and fabric. I loved the idea of containing the pattern within a boundary or vessel, and found what I was looking for in a glass of floating strawberries, achieved by pressing the inked woodcut face to face by hand onto the inked linocut image of the glass. I loved the idea of this same glass being used again and again for different drinks. Rinse, pour, sip, repeat. And so followed the orange beet juice and the iced coffee.
Jar of Pills is the culmination of this series. I wanted to create something ridiculously large and slightly obscene for what it was representing. These new prints make me think of Valley of The Dolls and Woody Allen’s Sleeper, with some Warhol and Oldenburg vibes, and if I’m lucky, a little bit of Marimekko and Orla Kiely.
Ashley Brown Durand is an artist + designer in Northampton, Massachusetts. The themes in her work are simultaneously personal and universal, exploring a range of human emotions. She draws upon a family history of quilting, as well as influences ranging from the protest flags of the Women’s Suffrage Movement to 90's diy zine culture. She has designed and produced work for Schoolhouse Electric, Anthropologie, and Urban Outfitters, along with dozens of independent retailers, and has sold pieces to clients all over the world.
She is currently focused on larger textile works, meticulously piecing tiny squares to spell out a short bit of poetry or a fleeting feeling. This process is slow and methodical; the forced slowness sometimes frustrating, but ultimately central to the final piece, both visually and emotionally. She is also really enjoying turning these labored-over textile works into easily accessible paper prints. By transferring the work into something that feels less precious but still powerful - something that can be folded and stuffed into an envelope, then tacked up on a wall - she extends the ideas out further, reaching more people.
Ashley lives in Florence with her partner Justin. She works in a cozy sun-filled home studio with their small dog and two cats always curled up nearby.
CATHY DURSO
Searching, collecting
My transition to motherhood has been very difficult, and my family's challenges were compounded by the fact that my daughter was born in February 2020, right before COVID-19 was declared a pandemic and the first lockdowns began in the US. Being in isolation for so long with a baby-turned-toddler forced me to spend a lot of time looking down, rather than out at the world around me. The drawings displayed here came directly out of that experience. They express the search for hope during a difficult time. The collaged elements are shaped like rocks and are brightly colored, like little treasures that one might find on a walk in nature, offering a physical representation of optimism.
I Can't Stay Here
When I spend time in nature, I am continually transfixed by the feeling that I am glimpsing another world beyond our human world, which comes to me when I can really slow down and tune into the rhythms of nature – the movement of the sun and clouds, patterns in water and on land, animals going about their lives. These drawings express a still and quiet power beyond what is immediately visible. One might say I am expressing a “mystical” experience, which can be overwhelming, hence the title of the series: I can't stay here. The drawings in this series were made based on experiences I had in Iceland, Norway, and different parts of the US.
Cathy Durso is an artist based in Springfield, MA. Her paintings, drawings, and bookbinding work have been exhibited throughout the US, and her artist's books are held in the Special Collections of libraries throughout the US. She grew up in northwestern Connecticut and received her BFA from the Art Institute of Boston. Cathy spent time living in the Boston area and in Minneapolis, MN. In 2020, she became a mother and relocated back to Massachusetts.
TARA GORMAN
Hi, I'm Tara. I live in western Massachusetts and I like to work with miniatures, food, and the occasional flower. My day job is with a local produce company which means I spend a lot of time searching for the perfect specimens to document at home.
I guess we can think of these photos as a collection of short stories about women living their lives. The mysterious and the mundane.
These scenes were composed on a little sewing table in the corner of the bedroom. Was it a pain schlepping produce and flowers up from the kitchen and back down again? And did the cat occasionally get in the way because he's obsessed with glitter cardstock? Yes and yes. Still, working on these images was a delightful experience…an exercise in problem solving, with tasty results. (If you have never had romanesco, it is delicious. Roast it with halved lemons and toss some capers and chopped garlic in there, too. Those lemons will caramelize and their juice squeezed over the finished dish is divine.) Thanks for stopping by. Don't forget to eat your vegetables.
ANYA KLEPIKOV
“I created these paintings on behalf of a fictional self-taught artist, Tassie Laidlaw. Tassie was the protagonist of an Appalachian musical by Preston Lane and Laurelyn Dossett called “Radiunt Abundunt” (Triad Stage, Greensboro, North Carolina, 2016), for which I also designed the scenery. In the story we find out that Tassie had set her family’s trailer on fire before “following the call” to paint and live alone in the mountains. She calls herself Mother Radiunce, and her paintings, nailed to trees, are “sermons” through which she communicates the gospel of the Cathedral of Radiunt Abundunce. Tassie’s art environment is “discovered” by Karen, an art historian. When painting these I followed playwright Preston Lane’s indications of subject matter and Tassie’s particular spelling.” -Anya Klepikov
Born in Sevastopol, Ukraine, Anya emigrated to the Boston area at the age of eleven. She is a scenic and costume designer for live performance (MFA, Yale School of Drama 2008). Anya makes art around the edges of design and teaching (currently at Williams College).
Shona Macdonald was born in Scotland and currently lives in Western Massachusetts. Selected solo exhibitions include McDonough Museum of Art, (2023), Zillman Art Museum, (2020-21), Brattleboro Art Center and Museum (2018), Roswell Art Museum, (2011), Tarble Arts Center (2015), Gridspace, (2014) Engine Room, Wellington, New Zealand, (2010), Proof Gallery, Boston, MA (2009), Reeves Contemporary, NY, NY (2008), Den Contemporary, LA, CA, (2007) and Galerie Refugium, Berlin, Germany, (2002.) Two person exhibitions include the Ballina Art Center, Ireland (2022), Dayton Art Center (2018,) and Linden Sculpture Garden (2012.) She has shown in over 100 group exhibitions across the United States, UK, Australia, and Canada. Reviews of her work are included in Art in America, Art News, LA Times, Chicago Tribune, Chicago Sun Times, Sacramento Bee, and Boston Globe. She has been an invited Visiting Artist at over fifty institutions, including The University of Wyoming (2023), Georgia State University (2007), the University of Alberta, and the University of Calgary, Canada, (both 2002). Shona Macdonald is a 2009 recipient of a Pollock-Krasner Foundation award. Selected artist residencies include UCross, Ragdale, VCCA, Roswell, Kimmel Harding Nelson, and internationally, at Can Serrat, Spain, Ballinglen and the Tyrone Guthrie Centre, both in Ireland.
thick, hazy, cleer, blew explores the effects of weather as ephemeral, mundane records of our daily lives. In addition to weather and forecasts, this body of explore the atmosphere and atmospheric perspective. Titled, ‘The Vapors so Whiten,’ this series pulls imagery out of layers of dusty pigment applied to toned paper. Small in scale, these works depict cars driving in and out of visibility on roads with no beginning or end. With no points of reference, it is often uncertain in which direction the vehicles are heading. In the ‘Car, Eyes’ series, floating cars bob amidst unidentified bodies of water; adrift, they are rendered useless. I engage with qualities of atmosphere through slow and muted approaches. The laborious, hand-made nature of the work leads to a more embodied experience of what the weather means and how it affects us physically and imaginatively, while the indecipherable atmosphere I conjure from multiple layers of pencil marks coupled with hazy imagery leads, ultimately, to a kind of disorienting opacity.
Michael Melle is a multi-medium artist living in Plainfield, Mass. He grew up in Pittsfield, served 4 years in the Air Force including a year in Viet Nam. The GI bill enabled him to attend and graduate from UMass. Amherst, earning a BFA degree in Painting. He has created works of marble, stone, cement, metal, and wood, with oil painting ever present throughout.
For the past 30 years Michael is best known for his lifelike, figurative sculptures, constructed with natural materials.The figures have been exhibited at The Berkshire Botanical Garden in Lenox, Arrowhead in Pittsfield, Art In The Orchard in Easthampton and on the grounds of The Clark Art Institute in Williamstown.
Receiving his first tubes of oil paint at 16, Michael has been painting for nearly 60 years. This passion to paint has twisted and turned through his long life in art. He has shared many pieces at group and solo shows, most recently at New England Visionary Artists Museum in Northampton. Painting and drawing are intrinsic to his identity as an artist
etching and etching align processes, Kevin has been making prints since 2010 and
serves as faculty at Zea Mays printmaking in Florence Ma, and is currently the shop
technician at Smith College in Northampton Ma. His work has been exhibited both
nationally and internationally including at the International Print Center of New York, The
Editions/Artists Book Fair, and the Trois-Rivieres International Contemporary Print
Biennale in Trois-Rivieres Canada.
NORA RIGGS
Nora Riggs (b. 1972) lives and works in Northampton, Massachusetts. She completed her BFA at RISD in 1994 and her MFA at Indiana University in 1996. After Graduating she moved to NYC and worked for many years as a night security guard at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. This immersion in the works of art history has had a deep and lasting effect on her art practice. She has exhibited in New York, Los Angeles, Georgia and Massachusetts.
In my work I draw and paint highly structured assemblies of remembered and imagined objects and scenarios. These works explore the ways the mysterious and capricious accretion of memory and artifact is organized into a narrative of self.
GARRETT SANDERS
My work explores how place and time hold sentiments that are often inexplicit yet deeply felt. Just as certain dreams can move us spiritually without ever fully revealing their logic, our reflections on specific moments and locations can echo with a similar quiet intensity. The ephemeral nature of memory is like grasping a ghost; through making work, I attempt to give form to these fleeting impressions.
Creating work becomes a way of actualizing memory—to feel it again, to understand it differently, or to gain unexpected insight. Each piece becomes an archival object, solidified into existence, anchoring experiences that might otherwise dissolve. In this process, I discover that the self is not separate from its surroundings. Instead, identity flows into and is shaped by the environments, times, and emotional atmospheres we inhabit.
Garrett lives and works throughout the Connecticut river valley in western Massachusetts. Much of his work is created in his studio just over the canal here in Holyoke. He works across multiple mediums as a painter, mixed media artist, sculptor, and potter. After graduating with a BFA in Painting from UMASS Amherst in 2018, Garrett has continued developing his practice alongside a busy schedule working as a carpenter, handyman, invasive plant manager, and odd job doer- experiences that often find their way into his work.
Sara Siegel is a Western Massachusetts-based writer and artist who weaves together humor and whimsy in a variety of mediums.
The pieces in this show represent moments in 3 different explorations all originating from studies of two Icelandic horses, gifted to me by my father, (whose horseback riding days were over). The studies were in charcoal and pencil and back in the studio they became color filled oil paintings. The relationship and spaces between two horses made the landscape come alive and suddenly my work was transformed from previous abstract relationships involving the suggestion of trees,skies, water, the rectangles’ edge, lots of color, and many painted lines affirming the reality of the picture plane into “figurative painting.” I started to ask “what would happen if” questions of the work. (I write these words and shudder—how did I ever let in the figure? There were rules about that…)
What would happen if I inserted a human into the horse and landscape space? What would happen if I focused on a horse and rider and the rider was the iconic George Washington? And what if I invented a space for George and his horses, Blueskin and Nelson, to explore? How can my friend, co-collaborator Joanna Dunn, and I reimagine George in Emmanuel Leutz’ Delaware Crossing in an annotated Zoom Jam? Questions begat questions and image research and museum visits and many shared discussions with Joanna eventually landed me at the feet of the inimitable Edward Hicks, 19th Century Quaker painter, famous for his Peaceable Kingdom oeuvre.
Edward Hicks filled his paintings with animals, strange children/angels, romantic riverscapes, tiny background scenes with Quakers and Native Americans all in a very compressed, sometimes menacing, sometimes sweet space. He used painterly conventions as a beginning and then threw it all away, insisting on his world and reality. I am currently borrowing permission from Edward Hicks as I make my latest pieces. Why not put a cougar in the foreground? Add a moose. And then a figure. How do we all hang together in these 2 dimensional worlds? These are the new problems that I love to solve as I play with materials and create.
CHRIS SULLIVAN
Sullivan considers himself neither and abstract nor a realist artist, but simply a
painter, creating conditions which cause a viewer to be involved and interested
enough to look harder, longer and deeper into relationships. Visual and otherwise. In seeking definition, his paintings deliberately contrast color, light, spaces,imagery and paint handling to arrive at an unplanned and at times surprising resolution and balance.
Sullivan received an MFA from the San Francisco Art Institute and BFA from
Massart, Boston. Recent shows include Triennial Exhibition, Hampden Gallery,
UMass Amherst, Painting Center NY, and "New Painting" at SITE: Brooklyn Gallery,
NY. Sullivan was awarded the 2022 Mass Cultural Council Grant for Painting and
Guggenheim Museum Curator's Choice Award. His work has been shown in
Amsterdam, Tuscany, New York, San Francisco and Boston.
LEE TOTMAN
My work reimagines a growing collection of early 1900s nude photography postcards of women through the tactile, traditionally feminine medium of embroidery.
These images, once created under the male gaze and circulated as objects of desire, are reclaimed stitch by stitch. By translating them into thread, I blur the line between object and subject.
The process of embroidering these postcards slows the act of looking, transforming what was once considered exploitative imagery into portrayals of care, labor, and reflection.
Lee Totman is a fiber artist based out of Western Mass. She received a Bachelor's degree in studio art, with a concentration in printmaking, in 2016. The through-line of her work has always been experimenting with ways to draw with thread, whether coated in ink and printed, or through embroidery.
Totman works in the field of interior design by day, and as a lover of old things, accidentally became a collector of Victorian-era nude postcards. Her most recent work has focused on carefully rendering these objectified mementos into thoughtfully embroidered portraits, using the traditionally feminine "craft" materials of linen and thread.