Liz Kinder

We just had an email from Liz Kinder - whose baby girl is due in a week! Hooray! Meanwhile, Jack Peter is keeping her busy. Here he is:

We always love hearing from artists. They do incredible things (although not all of them realize it). Liz wrote, "We had an amazing trip to Italy. We flew back 1 day before I hit 36 weeks. I thought I was going to gain the bulk of my pregnancy weight over there, but chasing after Jack Peter and schlepping all of his stuff everywhere kept things under control. I did eat an appalling amount of food."

She also reports a new studio assistant, who she's glad for in many respects. Those of us who work alone know how valuable that (adult) human company is. We hope she gets him trained quickly so he'll be helpful in the studio when that baby comes.

Fran Forman

There's a new artist at the Commercial Street gallery! Fran Forman is a Visiting Scholar at the Women’s Studies Research Center at Brandeis University. She is also a recipient of grants from the Tyre Foundation and the Pufflin Foundation, for 2006, 2007-2008. She teaches workshops in digital montage, and her work has been exhibited widely. Most recently, she was a winner in PX3 Prix de la Photographie Paris and Adobe/Photoworkshop.com.

Fran combines her illustrative and photographic skills with a passion for surrealism, paradox, illusion, assemblage, the non-human world, and the dislocations of time and place.

My images often begin with discarded 19^th and early 20^th century photographic portraits, scavenged from old family albums and flea markets. I collect portraits of people that I find intriguing, ambiguous, or mysterious. I then scan the images, often of poor quality, at a very high resolution, and begin the laborious task of altering the portrait.

I play with the characters as if sprites on a stage. I try out different backdrops and settings, incorporating my photographs or paintings, which I collage and reassemble. My characters go through weeks of revisions, as I move them through many worlds, playing with narrative and composition.

I do not use ordinary paint or brushes: I substitute an electronic stylus and mouse for brushes, light and tablet for palette, the monitor for canvas, and photographic paper for the finished canvas.

The final images are an amalgam of photography and painting with pixels, digitally assembled. Images are then printed on Fujicolor Crystal Archive (silver halide) photographic paper, and printed in editions of ten.

-Fran Forman

See more of her work here (and read more of her bio).

above: The Journey, silver halide print, 28" x 29", $800

Small Treasures - opens November 10th

We've talked about doing this for years.

On November 10th we're opening a Small Treasures show at our Orleans gallery. It will include artists from all three of our galleries - many of whom don't usually work in smaller formats. We've wanted to do this because we love the idea of having paintings be more accessible. Art for all!

Several of the artists we represent have responded with enthusiasm and we're already getting images of what they're creating. As we know about them, we'll post the paintings here. They won't be here for sale until November 10, but you can get a sneak preview. Check the page often.

Artists were only given the guidelines of "small" and "$500 or less" - so it's anyone's guess what will show up!

Think how nicely they'll fit in a gift box (for you).

Links

I've just added a links list. Okay, one person does not a list make - but I don't know of other artists who have blogs. So if you're a Left Bank artist and you'd like to share, email us!

Meanwhile, Sarah's blog is a great place to start - I love her insights and observations. Postings are sparse but worth waiting for!

Newsletter

Are you getting our newsletter? It's, you know, newsy. We send it out once a month or so (although we forgot about it over the summer) and it has upcoming show dates as well as artist highlights and sale information.

You can subscribe here. And you can unsubscribe anytime. It won't hurt our feelings even a little.

Oysters!

The Seventh Annual Wellfleet Oyster Fest is this weekend - October 13 & 14. It's grown every year and is positively not to be missed.

We're doing our bit by featuring lots of extra oysterness at the galleries. We're especially happy to introduce Emily Hiestand's pigment print photographs:

The shells photographed in this series belong to oysters from Wellfleet Bay and the series' title, "Consider the Oyster" is a nod to MFK Fisher's classic 1941 book about the humble bivalve. The photographs were made in ambient morning and afternoon light; the luminosity comes from the shells themselves. You can see more on our website.

In addition to Emily's oysters, we'll have sterling silver oyster jewelry by Jesse Mia Horowitz, ceramic oysters by Allison Evans, prints by Rosalie Nadeau, and chocolate oysters from the Wellfleet Candy Company

Hope to see you out and about!

unsolicited compliments

Someone just walked up to the front desk here at the Commercial Street gallery and said "I just wanted someone to know, this is the first time I've been in here and if I had to go home tomorrow and not see any other galleries, I would be content."

Thanks!