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Hope & Feathers Framing and Gallery hosts Earthlings, paintings by Northampton artist Perry Carter, October 6th through 29th

As an artist, Perry is inspired by the unique personality and spirit of her subjects, and she strives to convey what speaks to her, and perhaps amplify some aspect of their individuality through the medium.

Sometimes it’s downy feathers or soft fur juxtaposed with a tough, weathered spirit that ignites her curiosity… or the subtle combination of emotional vacancy and fear flashing in the eyes. Maybe she’s magnetized by the hard angles and dramatic intensity of a creature’s aura, or the evolutionary wonder of the spectacular palettes of wings. Rather than merely capturing a likeness with her brushes, she strives to express something ineffable in her work.

Color, or its absence, is inevitably part of a subject’s unique ‘atmosphere,’ and for her, oils provide the ideal medium. The world teems with fascinating creatures we so rarely take the time to fully appreciate, given today’s nonstop pace, in which doing is valued over being. And yet we are all part of one invisible, sacred web of being. Perry’s paintings are her attempt to explore and convey facets of these worlds-within-worlds.

An opening reception will be held on Thursday, October 6th, in conjunction with Amherst Arts Night Plus, from 5pm to 8pm.

About Perry Carter:
Perry Carter is a self-taught painter with a background in photography and interior design. She primarily works in portraiture, inspired by Earth’s many creatures. Her work has appeared in magazines, newspapers, websites, and CD artwork. She recently received a grant from The Turkeyland Cove Foundation for a painting residency on Martha’s Vineyard. In addition to her painting career, she maintains a private psychotherapy practice in Northampton, Massachusetts, where she lives with her talented musician husband and their two kooky spaniels.

Q&A with Perry

How old were you when you created your first artwork?
My father was an architect and my mother had a degree from RISD in illustration, so I grew up in a family focused on art and design. I picked up photography at a very young age and followed our family pets around taking photos of them. Some of the families in my neighborhood had had professional family portraits taken by a local photographer named Arthur Whitty who liked to shoot in natural lighting with very New England-y settings. I started copying his style, making my 8 year old friends pose against birch trees or stretch out in the grass pretending to be in a field of flowers. It was very corny, but it’s interesting to me now to see how those seeds are still evident in my creative work, through my focus on nature, people, and portraiture.

When did you know you wanted to be an artist?
As young as age 6, I knew I wanted to “find my passion”–something I loved and was good at. I was aware that if you loved your work, life would be much more interesting. I also felt very insecure as the youngest of six children, and wanted reassurance that I had value as a a person because I was “good at something.” So if I tried an art form for fun, I quickly put a lot of pressure on it to be “my passion.” I approached my interests obsessively but also commitment-phobically, like a bachelorette who’s afraid to settle down. It took me a long time to untangle that.

Why did you choose your medium?
I studied writing, music, photography, ceramics, the healing arts, and interior design before discovering painting. I took a break from my psychotherapy practice to pursue interior design training about 6 years ago, and finally took my first drawing and rendering class! We had to learn to convey our interior design ideas using markers and gouache. The teacher was a painter, and somehow I moved from the class assignments to buying canvases and paint. Like my first photographs, my first little painting was of my dog. Something clicked for me about the freedom, simplicity, and privacy that painting offered, which I hadn’t found in other mediums. I started with acrylics and moved on to water-miscible oil paints, which I adore. I have still never taken a painting class!

Where do you work?
I work out of a studio space in my own house. I find it easier to weave painting into the fabric of my life by living where I paint. My husband Russell (“Lord Russ”) is a musician and works out of a studio space in our house as well, so we both prioritize creative expression. I think I might have abandoned painting like everything else if Russell hadn’t been so encouraging of me from the start.

What is your creative process like? How do you work?
The only consistency in my process is that I inundate myself with images while gestating ideas for a new painting. I like to stay inspired, but ideas can come from anywhere, and often have no connection to what I thought I was setting out to do. If I start a new painting and it doesn’t feel right, I might abandon it early on. Other times, I push myself to finish things for the discipline. Sometimes I meditate for guidance on a painting!

What do you like about being an artist in the valley?
Being an “emerging artist” in the valley, I’m still discovering the riches of the art community. I really appreciate the wealth of interesting, creative people here–the writers, musicians, painters, and other artists–and the wide range of opportunities to see or share art in galleries spaces both large and small, humble and prestigious. It’s inspiring to live in a place where so many people prioritize their creative work above material wealth, often living very simply in order to do what they love.

September 1 – October 1, 2016

RETURN to the world of JOURNEY, with an exhibit celebrating the artwork behind the award winning wordless picture book trilogy by local author and illustrator, Aaron Becker. Lauded a “masterwork” by the New York Times and selected as one of the newspaper’s best illustrated books of 2013, JOURNEY went on to win a prestigious Caldecott Honor. The series continued with QUEST in 2014, and this August concluded with RETURN, which debuted at #1 on the New York Times Best Seller List. The show will include original artwork, sketches, artist proofs, and giclée prints from the series.

Prints, original sketches and watercolors, and artist proofs are available for purchase in our online shop.

About Aaron Becker: Aaron Becker was born in Baltimore and moved to California to attend Pomona College where he scored his first illustration job designing t-shirts for his water polo team. After attending the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, he worked in the Bay Area as a concept designer for film companies such as ImageMovers, Disney, and Lucasfilm.  “JOURNEY”, his debut picture book, was the recipient of a 2014 Caldecott Honor. Aaron spent the 2014-15 school year with his family living abroad in Granada, Spain where he finished work on his picture book trilogy’s final chapter, “RETURN”, publishing this August. Upon his  return to the states, his family added two cats and five chickens to their Pelham home.

July 7 – August 25, 2016

This exciting exhibit of works on paper has been curated from the Zea Mays Printmaking Flat File. The work in the Flat File represents examples of prints made using green technologies. It houses over 50 portfolios of prints by member artists, including etchings, monoprints, woodcuts and linoleum prints, photo etchings and lithographs, serigraphs and mixed media prints. This show features work from the Flat File from more than 24 artists.

Artists include: Judith Bowerman, Liz Chalfin, Rachel Chapman, Pamela Crawford, Sarah Creighton, Nancy Diessner, Jennifer Gover, Nancy Haver, Lyn Horan, Marsha Humphrey, Anita S. Hunt, Kate Jenkins, Julie Lapping Rivera, Doris Madsen, Tekla McInerney, Larinda Meade, Frank Ozereko, Lynn Peterfreund, Erika Radich, B.Z. Reilly, Joan Safford Wright, Joyce Silverstone, Jamie Sweeney, Janet Walerstein Winston, Carolyn Webb.

An opening reception will be held on Thursday, July 7th, in conjunction with Amherst Art Walk, from 5pm to 8pm. A second Art Walk reception will follow on Thursday, August 4th, from 5pm – 8pm. Artist demos will be featured at each reception, 5-6:30pm. Lynn Peterfreund will demonstrate trace monotype on July 7th, and Erika Radich will cut wood plates as a demo on August 4th.

About Zea Mays Printmaking:  Located in Florence, MA, Zea Mays Printmaking is dedicated to research, practice, and dissemination of safe printmaking. They offer studio access, workshops, residencies, internships, mentorships, and contract printing services to an international community of artists. Demonstrating the high quality and creative possibilities of original prints made with health consciousness is at the core of their mission. www.zeamaysprintmaking.com

Artist Statements

Judith Bowerman Threads XXXII
Judith grew up in Michigan near Lake St. Clair and the Detroit River, where she was first drawn to the quietude of water. After attending college near the dunes of Lake Michigan, she moved to Northern California for further training in painting and printmaking. The Pacific Ocean taught her about the absolute power and drama of water, and the coastal redwoods inspired her with a new sense of sublime scale. Longing to return to four distinct seasons, she moved to Western Massachusetts one snowy November and did not see green grass until after the mud season in early April the following year. In the 34 years since, the perpetual yet unpredictable seasonal changes of New England have continued to captivate her. She currently lives on a farm in Cummington, surrounded by gardens, pastures, woods and streams.

Liz Chalfin You Are Here V
Liz’s imagery comes from observations of people in public places: fairs, parades, city streets, museums, restaurants, beaches, parks etc. She is interested in capturing the feeling of a place and the way people interact with each other and their environments. This print is from the series You Are Here that looks at people and their cell phones and the disconnect they create between individuals in public.

Rachel Chapman City III
Rachel is an artist and art educator. She lives with her family in Amherst. These woodblock prints are part of a series exploring symbols & simple representational marks. She is especially interested in geometric forms that are recognizable across cultures – the triangles that represent trees, larger triangles that depict mountains – and in allowing the same geometric forms to hold different meanings in different contexts. She loves the process and materials of woodblock printing and am inspired by both the fine-art and commercial histories of printmaking. Though each of these prints is unique, the blocks themselves are inked and used over and over again to create new works.

Pamela Crawford April Swell and April Fool
All of Pamela’s prints shadow her life to become a kind of visual expression of her current temperament, struggle, or celebration. She works spontaneously, without detailed planning, to reveal a detail from her intuitive life. Within this construct, certain phenomenon spark her curiosity: biological patterns and structure; human growth and disintegration; and the predatory behavior of flora.

Sarah Creighton Untitled
This print is one of a landscape series where she has used dyed papers to create atmospheric, imaginary places; each one unique due to the effects of dyes and water.

Nancy Diessner Blindsight XII
In this series of prints, the concept of BLINDSIGHT (the mysterious ability of blind people who have damage to the visual cortex to have a very specific awareness of the location of objects in the world around them even though they can’t consciously see them) is a metaphor for that deeply buried connection between humans and animals. There is a subconscious, primitive level at which we are aware and can trace the essential being of an animal and find that being rooted within ourselves. That’s the space her work is trying to create–a place and relation between the animal and the human that we subconsciously know exists.

Jennifer Gover Mach 1
Jennifer is an artist and graphic designer who lives and works in Northampton. Mach 1 is the first in a series of prints about movement and propulsion, such as the speed of a jet in flight.

Nancy Haver A death in the family
Nancy’s woodcut is an image that embodies her concern with the issue of gun violence in the United States. In depicting the kneeling figure she pays homage to the German printmaker and sculptor Käthe Kollwitz, who typically chose a massive, single form and used this posture to effectively suggest mourning—for society’s violence against humanity through war and poverty.

Lyn Horan Moving Out of Invisibility
Lyn is a mixed media artist who has been making and exhibiting her work nationally and abroad for 35 years. Horan is interested in how perception and viewpoint are impacted by personal experience, not just in artmaking, but in life.  She likes to use visual imagery, and overlapping transparent materials that allow her to manipulate space and content to convey the complexity of overlapping “truths” such as in, “Moving Out of Invisibility,” in which the photopolymer intaglio process aids her in breaking down and then reassembling perceived reality.

Marsha Humphrey The Heart of the Matter
Marsha started making monoprints at Zea Mays 5 years ago and immediately fell in love with the medium. Her inspiration comes primarily from nature and from abstract art. She is enthralled with color and with the natural patterns that are all around us. It has been a pleasure and a gift to begin to translate the excitement she experiences into works on paper.

Anita S. Hunt Lodge VIII and Lodge IX
Anita’s prints are from an ongoing investigation into piles — either deliberately or inadvertently made by humans, animals, natural occurrences or disasters.

Kate Jenkins Mourning Dove
The birds at the feeders and in the trees surrounding her house are part of her family. Their songs are her music. She tries to capture their beauty in her watercolor monotypes.

Julie Lapping Rivera Round and Round
Our lives are lived amid a constantly changing set of conditions, be they pleasant, unpleasant or neutral. How do we navigate such slippery terrain? This piece invites contemplation of our challenge to move through the ups and downs of this one precious life with equanimity and grace.

Doris Madsen Floating Teapots
Doris has been a member of Zea Mays Printmaking for 10 years. A recognizable form is transformed. The accidental morphs into the intentional and spontaneous marks become deliberate. The completed piece seeks a balance while at the same time avoiding staticity. Layer after layer is inherent to the monotype process.

Tekla McInerney Thereafter no. 2
Each of her monotypes [unique and worked spontaneously] most often yields a landscape with water—moving, still, or frozen. The intimate prints are not direct translations of named locations. They are moments she recalls—from the coast of New England to the Antarctic peninsula.

Larinda Meade Coastal Morning
Larinda’s current work focuses on printmaking, mainly intaglio, to express her vision. She uses the landscape as a means to make meaning, by creating a feeling of quiet and calm while communicating her love of the landscape. Larinda skillfully and sensitively combines soft ground, aquatint and dry point to create stirring landscapes. Larinda’s work is exhibited nationally and internationally and her work is collected in public and private collections. She lives in Portland, Maine and is affiliated with Peregrine Press, Portland, and Zea Mays Printmaking Studio.

Frank Ozereko Eminence
This print is one of a long series of prints he has been making that focus on the “Vessel”. This subject has been represented in many different ways in his work but this particular piece references the richness found in elements of the decorative arts. It would be easy to see this print as part of a larger roll of fabric or wallpaper. He uses the monoprint technique and each print, even though it is part of a series, is unique and has its own characteristics. Gold foil is a new addition for him. It definitely steers the print into the world of rich brocades and suggest cultures and periods of time in which this type of luxury would cover building, clothing and people.

Lynn Peterfreund Both Sides 8 and Both Sides 13
From the series of prints evoking turbulent, emotive skies, “Both Sides 8” and “Both Sides 13” describe an ambiguous horizon line where sky and land/water meet and interact. The series was inspired by the rapid changes in our personal and social, political, and natural worlds. Other pieces in this series are 18×18 and 24×24 and can be seen on her website: www.lynnpeterfreund.com.

Erika Radich Plankton Blooms
Plankton has been a subject of exploration for her work over the last few years. She experimented with various resist processes that created the effect of the landlines, layers, and color variations apparent in distant views of plankton looms. Magnesium carbonate, talc, corn starch, and salt were used as resists. She used table salt mostly with various viscosities of ink, different rolling techniques, and color combinations to experiment further. The resulting series of images represents a colorful offering of explosions, meanderings, and distant views of the “feeling” of Plankton Blooms and their inherent power and effect on the earth.

B.Z. Reily It’s About Time
B.Z. is a sculptor/ printmaker/ arts educator exploring embossing, texture, object printing, collographs, monoprinting, relief and mixed media and sculptural printmaking. In her spare time, she sleeps.

Joan Safford Wright Untitled
Joan’s process involved woodcut, monoprint and collagraph and suggests light bursting out from the background. She’s a painter as well as a printmaker, and has exhibited her work in Williamstown, where she lives. She is fascinated by the subtle  and lovely effects which can be achieved when colors are layered over one another in prints, and her recent work reflects this fascination.

Joyce Silverstone Untitled
Joyce is interested in the edge here, where she experiences endings and beginnings, the meeting of two worlds and places of transition. She is printing relief plates using monotype techniques.

Jamie Sweeney Diamond Eyelet Swatch
Her recent work explores recreating the textures and patterns of handmade fiber art pieces (knit, crocheted, woven) through linoleum block printing. An avid knitter herself, she finds that the unique and slightly imperfect nature of these fabrics adds to their appeal. She is enjoying adding another layer of the handmade to these pieces, hoping that despite the increased imperfections, they still have beauty and value.

Janet Walerstein Winston Pay Attention
Janet’s prints reflect her interest in the organic aspects of landscape and space and geometric designs found in human built structures with the ebb and flow between them.

Carolyn Webb Grey Order, A/P and Blue Order, 2, 1/4
These two prints from the suite titled, “An Order” are based on a particularly beloved maple tree that lives in a place of resonant family history in Vermont. This tree is unusually dense with branches upon branches and for many years has served as an inspiration and a starting point for many explorations of organic patterns. She is fascinated with systems of the natural world as they simultaneously hide and reveal information. How often they echo the essential and fractal patterns of our own bodies through symmetry and chirality (mirroring). She was curious to see what more could be revealed through printing this one plate over and over in a variety of colors and ink densities.