SAXTONS RIVER — The painting and gourds of Colleen Grout and Kim Grall will combine in a display at Main Street Arts from now through February in a show they have titled “Where Would We Bee?”
An opening reception will be held Thursday, Jan. 10, from 5:30 to 7 p.m.
According to a news release, the show brings together Grout's encaustic painting and Grall's crafting of gourds as inspired by nature and the singular entity that connects their very different media: the honeybee.
Grout's medium is predominately beeswax, while Grall's gourds depend heavily on bees to pollinate the flowers that produce the gourds.
The artists ask, “Where would we bee without art in our lives, without creative expression, without nature and a climate that sustains us, without friendship, without each other, without bees?”
A resident of Westminster, Grout is familiar to locals as an art teacher in area schools since 1985. She holds a bachelor's degree in art education from Salem State University and a master's in education from Antioch University.
She shares both her acrylic and encaustic art work each summer at the Diamond Cove Art Gallery in Portland, Me., and has been a long-time participant in the Putney Craft Tour.
Also a resident of Westminster, Grall is a multi-media artist who works in fiber, digital photography, printmaking, painting, drawing, and collage.
She brings her background in fine art to working with gourds grown on her property, indulging her fancy for found objects, needlework, and carving.
“People often ask how I got started with gourds,” Grall says, “and I say serendipity played a major role. I was ordering my garden seeds one year and saw hard shell gourd seeds for sale, ordered some, and got hooked.”
“When working with a gourd, I can't help but feel that connection to another time, to another place, and especially to our planet Earth,” she says.
Grall holds a bachelor's in fine arts in studio painting from the University of Utah and also takes part in the Putney Craft Tour.