BELLOWS FALLS — Canal Street Art Gallery, 23 Canal Street, presents “Interaction: Clare Adams, Charles Norris-Brown, Phyllis Rosser, Melissa Rubin,” a show of four local artists exploring how they each interact with their environment, themselves, and their media, to create their art.
The show is now on view through Oct. 15. The public is invited on 3rd Friday Gallery Night in downtown Bellows Falls, from 5 to 7 p.m., on Sept. 16, to experience the show and meet the artists. All gallery events are free and open to the public.
As described by the gallery in a news release, “Clare Adams's work explores the interaction between light, glass, and paint. Charles Norris-Brown creates art to make an interaction with the viewer. Phyllis Rosser's work manifests from the artist's ecstatic interaction with nature. Melissa Rubin's process is in interaction with her materials and emotional state of mind.”
Adams, based in Cambridgeport, says she is compelled by the interaction between light, glass, and paint. Her current work in glass is informed by her career as a painter and printmaker, and she is showing monotype prints alongside reverse painted and stained glass. The action of painting on clear plastic panels to create a monotype print led the artist to painting on glass.
In this show, Adams premiers her newest series portraying women of historic, civil, and political importance, such as Maya Angelou, Frida Kahlo, Stacey Abrams, and Liz Cheney.
Norris-Brown, based in Bellows Falls, says he is driven by the interaction of the viewer with his work. He is an artist and social anthropologist. He works in watercolor painting, ink wash painting, and drawing.
His choice of subjects, often people and animals, communicates the artist's desire to reach people through an understanding of nature - both what threatens it, as well as its wonder. His anthropological research on people of the forests, and their place in the health of the ecosystems there, has brought Norris-Brown to his current focus on figurative work depicting people embracing nature.
Rosser, based in Bellows Falls and New York City, creates her art through what she describes as an ecstatic interaction with nature and the environment. Rosser finds wood washed onto the shores of the Connecticut River to create her sculptures.
The compositions of Rosser's sculptures reflect the natural way the wood is found, honed to its essence by water and time. In this show, the artist exhibits alongside her sculptures a painting titled “Hellebores and Strawberries.” Rosser's paintings in acrylic on canvas often portray close-up views of wild irises, tree peonies, passion flowers, and amaryllises.
Rubin, based in Cambridgeport and New York City, says she interacts with her materials and techniques based on emotional states of mind, and in relation to the media themselves. In this show, Rubin presents a selection of work from a series exploring the artist's struggle with insomnia.
“The cycle of sleeplessness, the repetition of evenings awake, light diffused through the darkness or fragmented into slices through the windows, all inform this series,” organizers say. Rubin makes her art with materials such as oil paint, powdered pigments, graphite, ink, wax media, metal leaf and powders. The artist uses techniques such as monotype printmaking, encaustic painting, encaustic monotype, and collage.
Canal Street Art Gallery is open Tuesday through Saturday from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. For more information, visit canalstreetartgallery.com, call 802-289-0104, or email artinfo@canalstreetartgallery.com.