Ten Guest Artists Invited to Take Part

By Ruth Melville

Every year on the first weekend in August, the Norfolk Artists & Friends (NAF) holds an art exhibition in the Battell Stoeckel Gallery (known as the Art Barn). This year is the group’s 10th anniversary exhibition, and to celebrate, the members have decided to try something a little different.

In honor of the 10th anniversary, the group has invited 10 well-known guest artists to join them. To make room for their guests, this year NAF members, about 30 artists, will be limited to three pieces on display in the main gallery, although there will be additional space available in the annex next to the gallery. For the first time, professional art installers have been hired to hang the show.

The ten invited artists are a diverse and talented group. Half are painters or printmakers. Robert Andrew Parker, who lives in West Cornwall, takes his subject matter mostly from the natural world. He has also designed sets for opera and film, and illustrated books. Norfolk resident John Funt, who has been painting for 25 years, specializes in landscape painting. One of Joyce Hill’s mixed media paintings was used on the cover of an Ani DiFranco CD. Painters Ann Getsinger and Cynthia Atwood both live and work in the Berkshires. Getsinger’s work has been described as “realism with a twist,” while Atwood writes that she is “interested in the unrecognizable, the repressed, and what is beyond our immediate reality.”

The rest of the invitees work with a variety of materials. Linda Filley makes fine art shoes out of paper. Her sold-out show at the Norfolk Library last year was one of their most popular exhibitions. Donald Nakamura is a ceramic sculptor whose abstract designs range from small individual pieces to large-scale installations. Carl and Marilee Dudash design, build and decorate harpsichords and clavichords in their Norfolk workshop. Merrill Comeau is a textile artist who also teaches art for the Department of Youth Services in Massachusetts.

Rick Schatzberg, another Norfolkian, is the only photographer in the group. A self-described “migrant from a corporate career,” he is interested in using photography to explore and describe places”—not surprising for a man with an undergraduate degree in anthropology.

Ruthann Olsson, who started Norfolk Artists & Friends ten years ago, is excited about the special format. “We thought, let’s make a big show of it and invite people to celebrate with us,” she says. She also liked the idea of making the event more of a gallery show, and she hopes this will attract gallery owners to the exhibit. But she is quick to add that much of the art on display is not very expensive: “Everyone can find something they can afford to buy.”

Over the past five years, Norfolk Artists & Friends has donated a percentage of their sales, over $8,000, to the Music Shed Restoration Fund. This year, in thanks for the special support and encouragement extended by the Chamber Music Festival, the NAF donation will go to the festival’s Annual Fund.

The 2018 Art Show takes place on August 3, 4 and 5, the same dates as Weekend in Norfolk. The gala opening reception is 5 to 7:30 p.m. on Friday, and the Art Show continues from 12 to 5 p.m. on Saturday and 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. on Sunday. For more information, go to www.norfolkart.org.

Photo courtesy of Don Nakamura.