December Featured Artist - Jon Caplan

“Looking back over my interest in photography, there have been numerous periods and events that have drawn me back into the medium… escaping to Berkshire and Hampshire counties during my teenage years, shooting for my year books (high school and college), hitchhiking across country, a variety of other travel adventures, and buying a home years ago in Egremont.

”I was fortunate to take a couple of wonderful photography courses in college (B&W, with dark room film processing & printing) that focused strongly on light as the photographer’s medium. My wife, Michele’s more recent evolution from jewelry designer to painter also has inspired me, and has amplified my awareness and appreciation of color. It’s wonderful for us to be able to collaborate. We shared a venue in Pittsfield’s October 2019 First Friday Artswalk, which now feels like many years ago.

”Since March 2020, I’ve been more focused on local landscapes, finding solace in my frequent Coronamania Therapy walks. I love the interplay of light and color during the twilight hour on Baldwin Hill and the surrounding area, which has inspired me to attempt to capture the bucolic beauty of Egremont, Great Barrington and the Berkshires. I've also enjoyed capturing the wonderful street life in our community.”

September Featured Artist - Nicole Webster Clark

An art instructor, aspiring poet, and mixed media artist, Nicole, creates in the Berkshire Hills of western Massachusetts. A gem + mineral enthusiast, eclectic solitary, and consciousness explorer she believes in magic and is moved by the beauty of the nocturnal sky, astronomical phenomena, metaphysics, and cosmology. Nicole attempts to unfold the delicate fabric of self-conscious epistemic moments of knowing. The workings of the universe within ourselves and around us fascinates her while contemplations of these mysteries manifest as conversions populated with textural vibrations, colorful swells and rhythmic compositions in her artwork. Nicole is a practitioner of herbal medicine, empyreal dreamer, and an alchemical philosopher who dwells in a derelict apple orchard surrounded by an extensive collection of houseplants, geological specimens and creature companions.

August Featured Artist - Ashley Yang-Thompson

The product of a Chinese immigrant and a white polygamist from Fort Scott, Kansas, Ashley Yang-Thompson (aka Miss Expanding Universe) questions stereotypes with humor and irreverence. She works in a wide range of media, from hyperrealist oil paintings to coloring book memoirs to VHS poetry. In the past year, her videos were selected for The Museum of Moving Image’s Changing the Picture series, which highlights artists of color who are bringing diverse voices to the screen. Her video art, in conjunction with her zines and letters, is also currently being exhibited in the San Francisco Asian Art Museum’s After Hope: Videos of Resistance exhibition. In January of 2020, she was part of two person show at Gund Gallery museum, where she displayed her zines and letters alongside Axis Mundo, the first historical examination of queer Chicanx artists. She has been included in shows in New York City, Taiwan, Chile, and Philadelphia. She is a recipient of the National Endowment for the Arts Creative Equity Fellowship and Mass MoCA’s Assets for Artists grant. She has been awarded full fellowships at the Vermont Studio Center, Ox-Bow, and The Wassaic Project.

The pictures displayed are excerpts from Miss Expanding Universe’s growing collection of Worm House zines. Her “graphic-novel-strip-tease thing” revives zine culture’s nonconformist ability to disseminate transgressive ideas and socio-political commentary. Miss Expanding Universe’s paintings, zines, and ephemera confront issues of identity, mental health, and the pain-staking creative process through the lens of her socially annihilating humor. Please take note that Worm House would not be possible without her assistant/chauffeur/platonic husband/muse, Uncle Fingers and her lesbian lover, Gum Slut.

missexpandinguniverse.com

July Featured Artist - Margaret Buchte

“Painting in oils with passion and joy for over 20 years. Always striving to capture the essence and beauty of a scene under dramatic light. Recently Margaret has enjoyed very much painting in watercolors, acrylics, and pastels.

Margaret Buchte is a local resident of Great Barrington, MA, in the Berkshires and a self-taught artist who draws her inspiration from the beauty of the Berkshires and beyond.

Streetscapes, historic buildings, places of interest along with nature also an irresistible draw as well as landscapes of mountains, rivers and seascapes. She also paints portraits of people in oils, watercolors and pastels and charcoal. Animal portraits and house portraits are also work she accepts for commissions. Mediums that she enjoys working in are oils, watercolors, acrylics,, pastels and charcoal.

Margaret has displayed her work with the Lenox Fine Art Gallery for five years until they closed. She has had solo exhibition shows at Berkshire South, Great Barrington; Lee Library; Mason Library in Great Barrington and the Douglas Library in Canaan, CT. CTSB TV showed two televised interviews on Margaret discussing her artwork on two different occasions. One was held at her solo show at Berkshire South and the other was held in the Lee Library. Margaret's work has been accepted in numerous juried shows in the Berkshire area, most recently, the Berkshire Arts Festival, at Butternut, Great Barrington, MA, and her painting titled 'Finding A Good Spot' was displayed on one of the Berkshire Arts Festival's posters. Margaret has accepted commissions to paint in oil, watercolors and pastels and charcoal portraits of people and homes with landscape and successfully completed the commissioned artwork to the satisfaction of her clients.

Her highly sought after 'Note Cards' and paper products from her collection of over 100 oils, watercolors, acrylics and pastel images are available all over Berkshire County: Most notably at Tanglewood, Shaker Village, The Mount, Norman Rockwell Museum, Red Lion Inn, Williams and Son, Bookloft, Lenox Print and Mercantile, Purple Plume, Villager Gifts, Sheffield Pottery, Bella Flora, Berkshire Coop Market, Elm Street Market and JWS Art Supplies.

During the year 2015 and currently Margaret is represented by the Berkshire Art Gallery, 80 Railroad Street, Great Barrington, MA and teaches Drawing and also Painting in Oils, Watercolors, Acrylics and Pastels to Adults/Teens/Children - all skill levels at the Renaissance Arts and Wellness Center, 420 Stockbridge Road, Great Barrington. Call Renaissance to sign up for a class (413) 528 9600.

Margaret also teaches watercolor painting at Noble Horizons in Salisbury, CT to Assisted Living Residents.

Margaret continues to paint with a 'Quirky Twist' for her subject matter with much enthusiasm and the diversity of her work comes through in a most delightful way and promises to be a valuable collector's item in years to come.”

fineartamerica.com/profiles/margaret-buchte

www.facebook.com/MargaretsOriginals

March Featured Artist - Jem Taylor

“My name is Jem Taylor and I’m a junior at the Berkshire Waldorf High School. I am a budding photographer with a passion for foreign travel and culture. Proceeds from this show will contribute to my Spanish class trip to Costa Rica this April and further my photography projects while there.”

January Featured Artist - Shanon Waddingham

“The world is magical through the lens of a camera. Things that seemed insignificant, can seem profound. Things you thought would be an amazing shot, once viewed on the computer, are bland and uninteresting.

“You just really never know: and that is part of the joy of being a photographer. There is always magic occurring... 

“I am a photographer and my prints  are many different sizes  from  4x6“ to 24x36”  and  normally on canvas but sometimes on metal.   I primarily make my income on my sports photography at dog agility events,   but I also have had success with my portraits and scenic views.   I just finished a show at the Chatham Grill of my old cars which went really well.   I think my best attributes as a photographer is my composition of my subjects  and also my ability to take candid shots that capture moments that people feel really represent who they are.”

www.artsyfartsyphotosbyshanon.com

December Featured Artist - Naomi Klavun

“What interests me most, in both my painting and photography is capturing the mystical element, the mood-altering and the magical in a natural scene. I want to find and reveal through my picture what elevates it from “reality” while keeping its resemblance to reality. I want to express my love for what I see. Through looking for it, I find beauty - especially in nature. And I am fortunate to live in the middle of it, now in the glorious Berkshires, previously in rural upstate New York, between the rolling hills and flowing mountain forms of the Catskills and Berkshires. In these locales, one beautiful season transforms gracefully and always colorfully into the next, with the pure blue-whites of winter melting into the gentle greens of early spring, into the vibrant highs of summer’s full color palette, and then to the warm oranges and more muted tones of fall. I want to convey the moods and also a vision, my particular view of this particular frame that I am looking at, how it can speak, what it is telling me, including the conversation of the light and shade.  In another way I love the challenge and freedom I experience in painting abstracts, where I can play with forms and colors without reference to anything recognizable, anything other than themselves. Here I purposely avoid forms that suggest objects or beings. I want to explore pure relationship, although, even in these paintings I am most happy when I perceive a mood, a suggestion of mystery, emerge. The process is a step into the unknown, where I am perplexed and free-falling at times, while at others I feel brilliantly enlightened.
I am finally devoting myself to my art full time, having recently retired from teaching art and English at Hawthorne Valley High School since 1985. Even during this career, I exhibited in solo, group and juried shows.  I have been a member of the Housatonic Valley Art League and the 14th Colony Artists group, exhibiting at least 5 times a year at various local venues.”

naomiklavun.com

November Featured Artist - Margherita Lamanno

Margherita is a Sheffield native and the mother of two daughters, who loves to capture moments with her camera. She is also a licensed esthetician, breastfeeding advocative and seeker of adventure and joy. She embraced photography as a young girl and pursued her love of the camera while in her teens by working with mentors Steve and Tony from the Snap Shop. During her employment there, she was encouraged to learn about all aspects of photography.

In 2014, she joined the Public Breastfeeding Awareness Project to support mothers and babies and to advocate for normalizing breastfeeding, along with 70 other photographers worldwide, through their photographic images.

Margherita describes herself as a lifestyle photographer who specializes in portraits, children, families, pets, pregnancy, breastfeeding, events and nature.  This show is dedicated to her loving mother, Barbara, who died in 2107. She is grateful for the encouragement her mother gave her to always follow her interests.

Inquiries may be made by contacting Margherita at earthmama10@yahoo.com

You can follow Margherita on Faceboook.

Interested in showing your work in our cafe gallery? Apply here!