AVA ArtReach

Join Paulette Werger in the Bente Torjusen West Sculptural Studies Building at AVA . She will be working there in steel with Roger Goldenberg to celebrate this wonderful studio and give a sneak peek of AVA’s Community Open House on December 3, 11AM-4PM.

Tracy Hayes is a NH-based mixed media artist. Her work starts with variations of a single mark, and evolves from there with added paint, charcoal, ink, graphite and other media. As the paintings take shape as marks are added, blurred, or removed, the work becomes otherworldly, vaguely subterranean spaces and forms.

Nate Twombly is a NH-based illustrator and interdisciplinary artist. His illustrations capture the quaint and playful details of New England. His illustrations are quirky, personality-filled and celebrate aspects of everyday life. The work often pulls from imagery of Americana, from classic sci-fi movies to architecture, history, and aspects of rural life.

Chris Archer is a New Hampshire artist and teacher. His work has been exhibited nationally and internationally, earning multiple awards, and is in the collections of the San Angelo Museum of Art in San Angelo, Texas; Tokyo Geidai in Tokyo, Japan; as well as multiple private collections. His work has been published in a series of Lark Books publications and he has written for Studio Potter Magazine.

Ann Saunderson is a NH-based painter, printmaker and educator. Saunderson works with a variety of media to create expressive, textural paintings that toggle between abstraction, landscape and figure.

This week is an Exhibition Tour with displaying artists: Nick Lamia, Katya Roberts, and Elizabeth Nelson.

Kate Knox is a NH-based printmaker.  Her intricate woodcuts depict familiar aspects of New England structures and architecture, and repurposes them with a contemporary approach. Dairy barns and wood buildings are often dissembled, mirrored and distorted to create surreal imagery.

Derek Bell is a VT-based painter. He received his BFA in Painting in 2008 from Rhode Island School of Design and spent three of his years there as a Teaching Assistant. As a painter, Derek prefers landscape, portraiture and animals, as well as an occasional still life. Since graduating from RISD, Derek works primarily in oils, watercolor, gouache and more recently egg tempera. The artist grew up on a horse farm in Vermont, and from an early age learned to paint and draw in a way he describes as “an almost monastic training in art.”

Colin Callahan is a NH-based painter and educator. He works primarily with representational painting using traditional techniques, with a focus on landscape. His evocative, painterly works explore atmospherics, seasonality, and light

Christopher Volpe is an artist, writer, and educator.  Volpe’s paintings approach nature less as a visual motif than as a site of introspection and metaphor for intangible feeling and ideas. His murky, atmospheric landscapes and tar paintings often wrestle with ideas of the sublime and the power of the natural world. His work is shown nationally and held in the permanent collections of Smith College and the Whistler House Museum as well as in numerous private collections.

Fallon Rae is a NH-based painter and organizer. The artist’s current series “Galactic Transfusion” explores the cosmos and astrological events through acrylic and mixed media paintings. The work is a combination of envisioned spaces and renderings of more specific phenomena. Rae’s practice broadly explores topics surrounding naturism and interconnectedness.

Grace Mattern is an established poet and visual artist. Mattern’s poetry and short fiction have been published widely, including The Sun, Calyx, Poet Lore and Yankee. She’s received fellowships from the NH State Council on the Arts and Vermont Studio Center. She’s published two poetry books, Fever of Unknown Origin (2022) and The Truth about Death (2012), which won the NH’s Reader’s Choice award in 2014.

Dustan Knight is a NH-based painter, educator, and writer. Her expressive, active abstract work embraces a wide range of media. Paint is often dripped, poured, and splattered to create engaging surfaces. Her paintings are informed by personal experiences with nature.  The artist creates sketches outdoors that are brought into the studio to work from, and often reference landscape, seasonality and foliage.

Teresa Taylor is a NH-based ceramicist. Her work is inspired by natural and botanical forms, and she works both sculpturally and functionally. Often including pattern and drawn elements, the pieces are painterly with lively surfaces.

Yasamin Safarzadeh is an Iranian-American artist, poet and activist. She is a native Angelino with an MFA and BFA in multimedia art representation and is currently working on her MBA.

Bob Dorr is a NH-based embroidery and mixed media artist. He creates intricate fiber-art brooches, garments and sculptures. The artist also works with mixed media, with an emphasis on layering similar to his fiber works. He is a juried member of the League of NH Craftsmen and has won numerous awards for his work.  He shows his work regionally. Dorr is also an educator and teaches at Kimball Jenkins School of Art.  The artist will be demonstrating techniques in create three-dimensional elements in embroidery.

Tyler Morrison is a NH-based ceramicist and educator. His focus is on functional work, emphasizing simplicity, sustainability, self-reliance, and humility. A lot of the work is made from recycled material, processed from studio waste. Primarily focusing on wheel throwing, Morrison also mixes his own glazes and prepares his clay. He is also an educator and teaches ceramic classes at AVA Gallery.

Mary Mead will be demonstrating her processes for printmaking. Mead moves freely from sculpture, printmaking and work on paper in a variety of media. The artist often combines printmaking methods to produce engaging works that toggle between abstraction and depicting of nature. She earned her BS Fine Arts from the University of Wisconsin/Madison, with a concentration in sculpture. Mead teaches at Two Rivers Printmaking Studio, Chases Garage, Kimball Jenkins School of Art, and AVA Gallery and Art Center.

Victoria Elbroch is a Maine-based artist. She creates meticulous drawings and etchings of ancient trees. Elbroch studied etching in Florida and at the University of Oklahoma, also spending three years working with master printmaker, Loraine Moore. She has continued to take every opportunity to learn and evolve in the 42 years she has made her living from her art. The artist was born in England, and has also lived in India and Pakistan. In 2020, she spent 6 weeks in the UK meticulously drawing ancients trees. Elbroch exhibits nationally, and has won numerous awards for her prints and drawings.

Harrison Halaska received his Masters of Fine Arts from the Laguna College of Art and Design in 2018. His focus has been painting still lifes, landscapes, and portraits from life. He is engaged by the uncovering and discovery of his environment through painting.