Sunday shoppers stroll and engage with artists at the show.
Review and Photos by W.A. Demers
GREENWICH, CONN. — Weather was favorable for the 43rd Outdoor Arts Festival showcasing contemporary art on October 12-13, with white tents lining the Bruce Museum’s drive and parking area. It’s a juried show running Saturday and Sunday from 10 am to 4 pm. Managed by Sue Brown Gordon, the event drew 68 exhibitors from across the United States, offering original fine art in painting, drawing and prints, mixed media, sculpture and photography. Great weather, of course, is never a given; last year’s first day was a washout with torrential rains keeping shoppers away. This year, on both Saturday and Sunday, shoppers enjoyed brisk but dry fall weather to go with the compelling art, and the added bonus of having a chance to talk with the featured artists, present throughout the entire weekend.
The juried show gave out seven awards this session. First place went to Jenny Pope, an Ithaca, N.Y., artist known for her colorful hand-carved and -printed woodcuts, linocuts and ceramics. Her “JPOPs,” as she calls them, are singular woodcut prints; she carves and prints each layer. “I cannot ever remake an edition because I destroy the block in the process,” she states on her artist’s page. Wild animals, flowering plants, insects, reptiles and more populate her scenes as she crafts a super-natural world. Her linocuts are even more dazzling as they are affordable, bold imagery painted with archival markers and then hand-painted with gouache. And animal forms continue with her line of ceramics, including a cleverly designed pitcher that employs a giraffe’s curved neck as a handle.
First place Arts Festival award winner for 2024 was Jenny Pope, who creates colorful hand-carved and -printed woodcuts, linocuts and ceramics. One of her most popular framed woodcuts, “Spirit Bear,” is shown left.
Second place went to Great Barrington, Mass., artist David Bryce. He describes his clay sculptures and drawings as pieces that “unite baroque movement, abstract expressionist gesture and Asian decorative spirit with a commitment to [his] own gentle, whimsical voice.” His process is informed by prior experience working in a bronze foundry as well as working on architectural restoration projects in New York City’s Central Park. For this festival, he set up a showcase of his sculptures that he has been offering for more than 20 years. He has completed commissioned pieces for both residential and commercial settings in the United States and internationally, as well as for purchase by town governments.
There were honorable mention awards for John van Orsouw, David Morgan and Paula Menchen. Van Orsouw infuses his paintings with a lively inanity reminiscent of a painting by Outsider artist Howard Finster and the color palette of a CoBrA work. Understandable, since Van Orsouw is formerly from the Netherlands where the European avant-garde art group formed in the late 1940s. He now lives among the Amish in Palatine Bridge, a small village in New York State. A lifelong doodler, the self-taught artist says he is influenced by children’s toys, folk and Indigenous art forms. His paintings are part child, part expressionistic brut, part music and part CoBrA, rendered on anything available, including old wood, cardboard and all kinds of “wonderful junk,” he says. He has also exhibited at the Outsider Art Fairs in New York City and Paris.
Woodcut printmaker David Morgan of Bath, Maine, recalls walking in Angier, France, and seeing this medieval wood carving, which gave him the inspiration for “Promesse” and he includes it among his medieval-inspired prints. Everything at his business, Merrymeeting Press, is made by carving an image into a wood block, applying ink and printing from the block. He makes prints from the same block, but each is also an individual work of art made one at a time by hand.
Morgan, a woodcut printmaker who lives in coastal Maine, showed among his Merrymeeting Press works an image he recalls seeing when walking in Angier, France. It was a medieval wood carving, and it gave him the inspiration for “Promesse,” which he includes among his medieval-inspired prints. Everything at his business is made by carving an image into a wood block, applying ink and printing from the block. He makes prints from the same block, but each is also an individual work of art made one at a time by hand.
Menchen, a visual artist who was born in East London and immigrated to the United States at the early age of 2, likes to explore the link between space, place and materials using multiple media. A graduate of the Otis Art Institute of Parsons School of Design, she majored in fine art with an emphasis on painting and installation art.
Best in Show was bestowed on Nicole Deponte, who lives in Pawtucket, R.I., and describes herself as a “Modern Surrealist + Avid Arranger.” She creates original mixed media collage paintings that defy description except that they are made up of objects and dreamlike themes that are borne of the past 25 years exploring drawing as an object thinker. Deponte’s focus on non-traditional techniques and processes creates a kind of cabinet of curiosities feel to her work. In her own words, “My process is informed by nature’s persistence to survive, our nature to collect and layer, and my own obsession with invention and translation.” She exhibits nationally, and her work can be found in private collections across the United States and abroad. She graduated from the sculpture department at the Massachusetts College of Art in 2000.
Proudly displaying her work, this year’s juried Best in Show winner, Nicole Deponte describes herself on her business card as a “Modern Surrealist + Avid Arranger.” From Pawtucket, R.I., her original mixed media collage paintings are borne of the past 25 years exploring drawing as an object thinker. Deponte’s focus on non-traditional techniques and processes creates a kind of cabinet of curiosities feel to her work.
Simon Kaplan stands out from the other exhibitors due not only to his joyful and irrepressible demeanor but also because he is the sole folk artist represented in the show. He loves to talk about his wood sculptures, which range from zany invented creatures to the more serious Native American Northwest Coast icons. He draws from international folk art influences, inspired by poetry and architecture, along with ancient, aboriginal and folk art from around the world, infusing them with his own meaning and vision.
Those looking for larger sculpture could find it aplenty, thanks to exhibitors like Joe Sorge from Shelton, Conn., who creates whimsical welded steel sculptures and then gives them fanciful names like “Triangle Glitter,” “Ambient Flow” and “Scarlet Dream.” Also showing was Peter Vinci, Jr, a Pound Ridge, N.Y., sculptor, whose stainless steel piece titled “The Orchid” was a sinuous blossom in polished steel. Drew Klotz’s kinetic sculptures made of aluminum and stainless steel and mounted on stands entertain as they revolve and dance with the wind, producing smiles.
If the show was strong in printmaking, photography may have been a close second. There was, for example, John Deng of Roslyn, N.Y., fine art photographer born in Shanghai, China. Deng’s large-scale photos transport the viewer to exotic locales, introduce rarely seen animals in their own environment and global citizens in dramatic settings.
“Nice location, nice show,” said John Deng of Roslyn, N.Y. A fine art photographer born in Shanghai, China, Deng graduated from college with a degree in fine art and taught art at the college level for several years. In his early years in New York, he studied photography at the School of Visual Arts and NYU Tisch School of the Arts. Deng’s photos transport the viewer to exotic locales, introduce rarely seen animals in their own environment and global citizens in dramatic settings.
Deng graduated from college with a degree in fine art and taught art at the college level for several years. In his early years in New York, he studied photography at the School of Visual Arts and NYU Tisch School of the Arts.
Caroline Christie’s photographs of America’s wild horses and burros amid desolate yet captivating corners of the West are meant to take the viewer on a journey and at the same time illustrate her advocacy for what she believes is a needed fight against roundups that capture the magnificent creatures and move them off the land to make way for cattle or other development. Like her subjects, Christie lives off the grid in the western Massachusetts hill town of Colrain.
As a photographer, Tom Kretch has trekked to places both near and far in search of “Peaceful Places,” what he refers to as “those special spots where I have been able to capture visual images that evoke a soothing and calming moment.” It might be a soothing colorful building, a beach to oneself, a woodland walk in the fall — all those spots that can create a peaceful, easy feeling. He takes those images and artfully works light, texture, form and color to create artworks that lend a peaceful and serene aura to the home, office or corporate environment.
For additional information, www.gordonfinearts.org or 518-852-6478.
