Pop Up with Pine Tree Pop-Up Curated by Elena Sarni

Pine Tree Pop-Up will be taking over Pop Up for two weeks beginning Thursday, May 24 through Monday, June 4. Check back soon to learn more about curator, Elena Sarni, her inspiration, her artists, and her work.

May 24 to June 4

Pine Tree Pop-Up is curated by Elena Sarni. It will feature the work of roughly thirty-five regional artists and fine craftsmen and will showcase a variety of mediums, including painting, printmaking, ceramics, metalsmithing, woodworking, basketry, and textiles. Styles range from contemporary to traditional.

Pine Tree Pop-Up will be at Pop Up on Maine Art Hill at 5 Chase Hill Rd. in Kennebunk from May 24 to June 4. The gallery is open every day at 10 am. For more info about Pine Tree and Elena Sarni, follow these links to her social media sites.

PINE TREE POP-UP FACEBOOK

PINE TREE POP-UP INSTAGRAM

To read more about Pine Tree Pop-Up’s Artists follow their links below.

  Abigail Halpin

Ann Thompson 

Blocked Co. 

Catherine Worthington

catQuat

Christopher Volpe Fine Art

Digs 

Dina Andretta

Elizabeth Ruskin Ceramics 

Emily Diaz Norton

 Emily Percival

 Erica Moody|Fine Metal Wares 

Fat Cat Pots 

Gabriel McNeill

Jacobs Woodworking 

Judith Schneider

Kate Mess Jewelry 

Kelly Shows

 Kennebunk Basketry

LinoCave

Naomi Grace McNeill Jewelry 

Northern Rose Found

Ocean Fire Pottery

Perfectly Nice

Pretty Flours

S.E. Hall Furniture and Design

SEH Studios Fine Art

Steady Light Candle Co.

Susan Schwake

TetherMade

William Mitchell Serigraph Prints

Wolfgang Ertl

Artist Kathy Ostrander Roberts

Kathy is an established Maine artist working in the ancient medium of encaustic. She combines beeswax, powdered pigments, and dammar resin into her ocean-inspired paintings on birch wood panel. She is the owner and operator of Mousam River Gallery, a Maine based art studio.

Ostrander shares, “My goal is to represent the essence of Maine coastal waters in encaustic painting, by capturing scenes from the coastline of Southern Maine and translating them into vibrant representations of movement and color.  Through layering and sculpting of the medium, I create depth and intrigue. My hope is to spark memories and longings for Maine’s rugged shores in the hearts and eyes of the viewer.”

Kathy lives and works in Kennebunk, Maine, and is an avid sailor. Kennebunk, however, is not the only place that influences her work. Monhegan Island, Port Clyde, and Boothbay are also some of her favorite places to find inspiration.

With over 30 years of experience working in the arts, she is a member of the Pastel Painters of Maine, Kennebunk Art Guild, Maine Women in the Arts, International Encaustics Association and the New Hampshire Art Association. Kathy has exhibited at numerous shows throughout New England.

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Pop Up Artist Peter Brown from Meadowlark Designs

Featured Artist, Peter Brown from Meadowlark Designs is the guest artist for Pop Up beginning Tuesday, June 19 through Monday, June 25.

Peter Brown is an artisanal woodworker who designs and makes unique furniture and other woodwork by hand. His technique focuses on traditional joinery for its enduring strength and beauty. Each piece is finished by hand using all natural oils and waxes. He currently designs and builds for a fine furniture company and select boutiques as well as for individuals. Juried shows include Maine Boats Homes and Harbors, Portland Fine Crafts, and Laudholm Nature Crafts Festival. His studio workshop is Meadowlark Designs located in Lyman, Maine and is open to visitors. Appointments are suggested. 

“I want my work to engage people’s senses in a variety of ways. In addition to being functional, I want my work to be visually enchanting and invite touch as well. I use subtle curves and angles to create appealing dynamics with linear spaces that surround a piece. Occasionally I like to create illusions such as a table top that appears to float or a shelf that seems suspended. Also, I’ll use various tapers and edge treatments to make various elements appear heavier or lighter in the context of the piece. Of course, paramount is how I use the unique character found in the wood itself; its grain and other natural features. These are the brush strokes in my work, and the natural oils and waxes I use in my finishing process bring out the beauty and richness of the wood with a silky smoothness. This is what makes people want to experience its touch and feel.”

Check out his website

https://www.meadowlarkdesigns.net

Pop Up Artist Wendy Newcomb

Featured Artist, Wendy Newcomb is the guest artist for Pop Up beginning Tuesday, June 19 through Monday, June 25.

Wendy Newcomb’s paintings represent a visual journal of her life in Maine. They reflect her love of Nature and her participation in it. A recurring theme in her work is the way in which light falls upon objects and the landscape; how it defines and creates patterns and adds drama to a scene. She prefers early morning or late afternoon light for its golden hues and long shadows. The element of water is also particularly interesting to her with its constant motion, its transparencies and how it interacts with the land and sky.  Recreating her visual experience, she wants to give the viewer a sense of being in that moment with her.

Check out her website

http://wendynewcomb.com

Pop Up Artist Garry D Harley

Featured Artist, Garry D. Harley is the guest artist for Pop Up beginning Tuesday, June 26 through Monday, July 2.

Garry Harley is an American artist, born in Denver, Colorado and raised in Nebraska who currently lives and works in Concord, Massachusetts, USA (west of Boston). He is a trained architect and his OP-ART prints and paintings have been selected for display in the last two Faber Birren National Colour Award Show’s conducted by The Stamford Art Association.

Check out his website

http://garryharleystudios.com

Pop Up Artist Christopher O’Connor

Featured Artist, Christopher O’Connor is the guest artist for Pop Up beginning Tuesday, July 3  through Monday, July 9. Read on to learn more about his inspiration, his process, and his work.

July 3-July 9

Ever since I was a child I wanted to be an artist. There was always something magical, alchemical about the process of conjuring up an image with the simplest of means. I loved how colors could be mixed and in the process create new colors. How brushes and pens could be wielded to create whole new worlds. How when you didn’t have the words to express yourself you had color and shape and light and shade. Drawing and painting seemed like the most natural thing in the world to do.

Over the years I have found myself drawn to a diverse range of artists and styles. I have played and experimented with many and in the process I have come to understand that the artworks that I am most captivated by all have similar qualities – a strong compositional sense, layered coloring, a vibrant surface quality, restrained intensity – add to these the dogged determination to work on a piece until it is finished and you have works of art that are enduring and endlessly engaging. It is with these considerations that I approach my practice of making paintings.

With my current body of work, my intention is to create works that elicit a quiet sense of balance and calm in the viewer. Pictorial compositions that contain a solid architectonic syntax have always made an impact on me. Through the use of vibrant coloring and rigorously constructed compositions, I strive to compose paintings that conjure up an immediate visual impact, one that slowly gives way to engagement with the detail and structure implicit in each painting. It is through the surface quality of the paint and within the distilled composition of the painting that the intention of my work is revealed.

O’Connor will be showing his work at Pop Up on Maine Art Hill at 5 Chase Hill Rd. in Kennebunk from July 3 to July 9. The gallery is open every day at 10 am. For more info about Christopher O’Connor and his work, follow this link to his website. www.christopheroconnorpainting.com

Pop Up Artist Chris Ploof

Due to unforeseen circumstances Chris Ploof will not be joining us at Pop Up this summer.

We encourage you to read on to learn more about his inspiration, his process, and his work.

Hailing from a small town in Massachusetts, award-winning master jeweler Chris Ploof was once a skinny boy lurking around the local living history museum, watching awestruck as the craftspeople manipulated what had previously seemed unyielding: glass, tin, iron.

After traveling the world trying hands-on careers that spoke to his historical influences and technical skills, Chris found himself back on his boyhood path, attempting to make a forge improvised by a 55-gallon drum, some fire bricks, and a hairdryer. Eventually, his knowledge seeking lead him to jewelry making classes. At last, he was home.

Chris has studied with many well-known artists and apprenticed under a master goldsmith. He has an insatiable curiosity and drive that lead him down long roads even after the challenges at hand have been met.

The Santa Fe Symposium has chosen Chris twice to receive the Industry Leader Award, He has a series of instructional videos through Interweave, his work is on the cover of Showcase 500 Rings: New Directions in Art Jewelry (Lark, 2012) and in countless other publications, and he travels frequently as a consultant to the jewelry industry. His studio is located in Massachusetts, where he works with a carefully chosen, fun team of like-minded talent.

“I love exploring new techniques and materials, especially pushing the envelope of current and traditional techniques. Challenges always seem to lead down long roads even after they have been resolved and spawn future ideas and designs. ‘Impossible’ is only a temporary condition.”

For more info about Ploof and his work, follow this link to his website. www.chrisploof.com

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Pop Up Artist Cynthia Woehrle

Featured Artist, Cynthia Woehrle is the guest artist for Pop Up beginning Tuesday, July 17 through Monday, July 23. Read on to learn more about her inspiration, her process, and her work.

July 17 – July 23

Landscape in oil is the medium in which my artistic themes are expressed. Each landscape represents the memory of an emotion and my aim is to present a scene that has a ground but also has an ephemeral and floating feeling to evoke a dreamlike memory. I am fixated on the subtleties of the atmosphere, which I layer in glazes of paint. Each work develops its own temperament; some complicated and heavy, others light, loose and confident.

Contradiction is also a theme, associating lights and darks in the atmosphere with both positive and negative implications. For example, with darkness, there is an acknowledgment of the negative and an appreciation for its beauty and solace. Darkness symbolizes repression and withholding but at the same time, and importantly, darkness brings comfort and rest. Light, a symbol of hope and renewal, is a focal point that disrupts this rest. In depicting the sky, I can explore a full circle of human emotion through light and atmosphere.

The moon is a subject within the contradiction theme that I began exploring at a time of forced reaction about the meaning of life and death. Ever changing, the moon’s presence is mysterious and is often contradictory in symbolism. This makes the search for absolute truths impossible. There is always another answer, another perspective. Philosophers grasp at answers in an effort to understand life but all that is true is the journey and what is discovered along the way.

Woehrle will be showing her work at Pop Up on Maine Art Hill at 5 Chase Hill Rd. in Kennebunk from July 17 to July 23. The gallery is open every day at 10 am. For more info about Woehrle and her work, follow this link to her website. www.cynthiawoehrle.com

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Pop Up Artist Phil Laughlin

Featured Artist, Phil Laughlin is the guest artist for Pop Up beginning Tuesday, July 10  through Monday, July 16. Read on to learn more about his inspiration, his process, and his work.

July 10-July 16

“The idea that man has a relationship with nature has been with us all along. What’s new is our understanding of the complexities and subtleties of that relationship and the role we play in that balance. When I observe a landscape subject with my 21st-century painter’s eyes, I am aware not only of how nature has shaped us but how we have had a reciprocal impact on nature.” Phil Laughlin

Phil Laughlin was born in the Finger Lakes region of New York.  Like most kids, he enjoyed drawing, but you wouldn’t have guessed from his childhood that art would become his passion.  At home, the idea of a career in the arts was never discussed.  School offered one art course in 12 years of public education.  The prevailing attitude was “Okay… We’ve checked the art box on the curriculum form, let’s move on to the real business of life.”

 

His academic strengths were math and science so it seemed like engineering would be a good course of study at college.  This seemingly straightforward plan collided with the social upheaval of the late 1960’s. In the second year at SUNY Stony Brook, he began to question his career path in the counterculture-style of the times.  Doing something in the creative arts seemed more meaningful than building rockets, so he switched majors to studio arts.

When he graduated from Worcester Museum Art School, Abstract Impressionism was relinquishing the spotlight.  Several other art movements emerged in rapid succession.  The ones exploring newfound notions of realism were of most interest.  He moved to New York City and continued to paint.  The need for employment pushed him to study applied arts and work as a graphic designer.

Creatively, commercial design work wasn’t very fulfilling, but the opportunities presented by the city itself and the exposure Manhattan offered to new ideas and new standards of artistic professionalism were their own reward.  World-class galleries and museums were in abundance.  He passionately consumed it all.

In 1986, Phil moved his family to the beautiful green mountain state of Vermont.  At the same time, desktop computers hit the scene.  After a period of experimentation, he found himself gravitating towards illustration software, rendering product, and technical subjects.  Painting time had to share with work time while he raised his family.  Children grew, moved out, and he gradually rebalanced his schedule to once again favor landscape painting.

Along the way, he discovered the rich tradition of New England painting built by generations of artists.  Casting aside the last bit of guilt over leaving the formal concerns of modern abstraction behind, he joined other contemporary artists working with and extending that tradition.

Currently, he paints local scenes from his rural home in Williston, Vermont.

Laughlin will be showing his work at Pop Up on Maine Art Hill at 5 Chase Hill Rd. in Kennebunk from July 10 to July 16. The gallery is open every day at 10 am. For more info about Laughlin and his work, follow this link to his website. www.phillaughlinart.com

“Anything else you’re interested in is not going to happen if you can’t breathe the air and drink the water. Don’t sit this one out. Do something. You are by accident of fate alive at an absolutely critical moment in the history of our planet.”- Carl Sagan

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Artist Julie Houck

For 17 years, Julie Houck traveled the world as a professional location photographer. Working in many diverse locations throughout Europe, Asia and across the United States, provided Houck with an invaluable opportunity to increase her understanding of composition and the elements of design. Houck’s career as a photographer also instilled in her a fascination with the powerful effects of light.

In 1995, Houck decided to pursue her lifelong dream of becoming a painter. “I decided to redirect and pursue what I truly loved.” As a contemporary landscape painter working in oils and encaustics, Houck aspires to capture not only the scene but also the moment and mood, relying on her study of the classical principles of directly observing color, light, and form in nature.

Houck shares, “As a contemporary landscape painter working in oils and encaustics, I aspire to convey not only the scene but also the moment and mood. The moment is fleeting but the painting allows us to live in that moment a bit longer, to linger, to reflect, to contemplate, to enjoy. I am inspired by the interplay of light on the landscape which is ever elusive and always changing. Painting softly allows me the opportunity to recreate that one particularly special moment when the land, light, and atmosphere seamlessly fuse.

Reflecting a serendipitous moment in time can be, however, a deceivingly slow and deliberate process. Both of the media I prefer, oils and encaustic, involve applying layers upon layers of paint.  And even though encaustic, painting with hot pigment-colored wax, is known as an especially process-intensive medium, every layer spontaneously changes the piece, so it evolves over time with a life of its own. I find this element of working intriguing.

Simultaneously, my work in oils is highly influenced by my early classical training– particularly the study of light on form.  Each landscape is painted in transparent layers with sometimes up to 40 layers of paint in order to recreate the subtle play of light on the landscape as well as to control the incremental changes in tonality.

As an artist, I approach each painting believing that it is not enough to paint the literal view. My goal is to also capture the essence of the landscape and hopefully connect you viscerally to that place and time.”

Houck has studied with contemporary realist painters at the Atelier of Classical Realism in San Francisco with David Hardy, the Academy of Fine Art in Seattle with Anthony Ryder and most recently, in France, at the L’Ecole Albert Defois with Ted Seth Jacobs. Houck studied en plein air with John Cosby, Kevin MacPherson, Don Demers, and Kim English.

Her landscapes reflect the influence of these artists as she hones her classical technique of painting in numerous transparent layers in order to recreate the subtle play of light on the scene. Her desire to capture the essence of the landscape is evolving into compositions dissolving into only the barest, most minimal components—the sky, horizon, and land.

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