StJ Art on the Street announces its new summer show featuring the work of several Vermont artists in storefront, sidewalk, and indoor galleries along Railroad Street and Eastern Avenue. StJ Art on the Street debuted during the pandemic when empty storefronts and shop windows were utilized as fine art galleries exhibiting works that could be enjoyed from the street or sidewalk. St. Johnsbury has maintained this walkable gallery while adding some indoor options, notably the re-opening of the Catamount Arts Fried Family, Rankin, and Fireplace Room galleries located inside the Catamount Arts Center on Eastern Avenue.
St J Art on the Street received a Spark Connecting Community Grant from the Vermont Community Foundation. Spark! Connecting Community grants put building and nurturing community front and center. We aim to support grassroots work that builds social capital—our communities’ connective tissue. Social capital can be described as the value developed from working together, connecting across social networks, and sharing common place-based experiences. The more social capital a community has, the stronger and more resilient those communities will be, providing desirable places for us to live, work, and play.
StJ Art on the Street is featured in Vermont Curators Group – 2020 Vision: Reflecting on a World-Changing Year, showcasing online exhibitions and events demonstrating how 2020 changed our state and our world.
StJ Art on the Street gives a heartfelt thank you to Maple Grove Farms for sponsoring this project! Thanks to their generous support we will be purchasing easels that will be available for artists to use in future exhibitions.
StJ Art on the Street Summer show
Northern Express Care
1 Eastern Avenue
Cecelia Kane
Cecelia Kane is a painter, fabric artist, performance, video and earth artist whose work delves inside the universe of self and being. Cecelia Kane has performed and exhibited at many art venues across the USA, including Ruby Green Gallery in Nashville, TN, Hallwalls in Buffalo, NY, The Schwartz Center for Performing Arts at Emory University, the Atlanta Contemporary Art Center, Soho 20 New York, and Ruth Bachofner Gallery, Los Angeles. This particular series of paintings on display come from her COVID and Chaos series.
67 Eastern Avenue
Larry Golden
Larry Golden’s collection of paintings featuring local landmarks can be viewed in the windows of 67 Eastern Avenue. Larry has participated in the Vermont Studio Center in Johnson, Vermont, and has had numerous shows in the Gallery at Catamount Arts. Golden, now retired, taught art at the St. Johnsbury Academy for 45 years and has been painting steadily, if not daily, for the last 50 years. Golden works often in oils and focuses on nature. He lists George Inness, known for his involvement with the Hudson River School, and Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot, known for referencing Neo-Classical traditions and predicting plein-air Impressionism as influence. “I love to work directly from nature,” Golden said. “I start with the sky, I capture the correct light, and then I work from the distant mountains towards the middle ground and then the foreground. I concentrate first on aerial perspective… I am not concerned about color because when you paint on location, nature always provides the perfect color.”
Catamount Arts
115 Eastern Avenue
Catamount Arts opens the doors to the arts center for the first time in over a year with a show featuring four local artists. In the Fried Family Gallery, Open to Landscape: Elizabeth Nelson, Anni Lorenzini, Keith Chamberlin, and Terry Ekasala present paintings and photography exploring landscapes in both realism and abstract form.
Also, in the Fireplace Room, a collection of work created by community members during the pandemic is on view. Peruse handmade “Covid Chronicles” documenting life under lockdown.
Nick Piliero
142 Eastern
A prolific painter drawn to explosive riots of color, Piliero has exhibited in galleries in New York City and worldwide. Originally from the Bronx and Westchester, Piliero now lives in St. Johnsbury.
Nick is also having a one-man show at the Gumtree Museum of Art in Tupelo, Mississippi (home of Elvis!) in July 2021. A book about Piliero’s art and life is also in the works.
Crystal Matthew
166 Eastern Avenue
Crystal’s paintings and poetry are on display on the storefront windows of 166 Eastern. Crystal is a children’s book illustrator, make-up artist, author, and painter. She studied graphic design and fine art at Sheffield College in Sheffield, England. Crystal spent time in Florida working as a make-up artist for Disney, Universal Studios, and SeaWorld. She has also worked as a commissioned muralist.
More Community Artwork
Lamoille Valley Rail Trail
Bay Street
Alison Bergman
Alison Bergman’s large, whimsical installations are on view at the Lamoille Valley Rail Trail Pavilion on Bay Street. Bergman’s work “explores the nature of creative play through stacking, pattern, and color”.
The NEK Artisans Guild at 430 Railroad Street hosts in their Backroom Gallery Jenny Green: A Retrospective Journey through July 31st. This exhibition is a remembrance of the joy of Jenny’s life. It takes the viewer on a journey through her paintings, celebrating the exotic desert landscapes she loved, and her journals and paintings at home and afar. The Guild is open Tuesday-Saturday 11am-5pm.
Whirligig Brewing at 397 Railroad Street is proud to announce their premiere exhibit with HARLAN MACK. Harlan is a multidisciplinary artist based at the Vermont Studio Center in Johnson, Vermont. He employs blacksmithing, steel fabrication, painting, and oral storytelling to build an expanding, constellated narrative that invites viewers and listeners into an imaginary future. This world is generated and inspired by Harlan’s life experience, exploration and thoughts around identity, labor, perception, contemplation, fiction, community, emergence and afro-futurism. The Whirligig taproom is open Friday and Saturday 11am to 8pm. Gallery is open to the public. Visit their website https://whirligigbrewing.square.site/ or check their Facebook page for the most up to date hours and for restaurant pop-up events.
Most of us know that St. Johnsbury is home to an active arts community, which boasts of the regional and national treasure, St. Johnsbury Athenaeum. Dominating the gallery from its inception has been the magnificent canvas, ten feet by fifteen feet, The Domes of the Yosemite, by Albert Bierstadt. The Athenaeum is located at 1171 Main Street. Gallery is open Monday through Friday 10-5, and Saturday 10-3. 802-748-8291.
Check out the group show at Cosmic Cup Cafe located at 139 Eastern Avenue. Hosted by the Caledonia Food Co-op, and the Northeast Kingdom Artisans Guild, this show features co-op founding members in a variety of work within the theme Community: Food, Farms, and Family. Cosmic Cup Cafe is open M-F 7am-4pm, Sat 8am-4pm, Sun 8am-1pm.
Bill and Kim Darling are co-owners of Gatto Nero Press in St. Johnsbury, Vermont. They have both taught visual art at St. Johnsbury Academy, an independent high school, for over 20 years. Bill Darling was born in White Plains, New York in 1955. He studied painting and printmaking at The Art Students League of New York. Bill teaches and works in diverse mediums, but intaglio printmaking is his passion. Kim is a visual artist with studio and teaching practices firmly rooted in observational drawing. She has worked in a variety of mediums, including oil and fresco painting and “Moving Drawing” video installations. Her current studio work is mainly in intaglio printmaking. Kim’s educational background includes a BFA from Alfred University in Alfred, New York; extended study at the Art Students League of New York, of which she is a life member; and an MFA from Vermont College of Fine Arts in Montpelier, Vermont. Teaching is an important part of Kim’s artistic practice. Gatto Nero Press Studio and Gallery host exhibitions, teach workshops and create and publish intaglio prints. In 1996 Bill and Kim founded The Intaglio Society at St. Johnsbury Academy, and for the past twenty years have brought their students to Florence, Italy. Gatto Nero Press located at 190 Eastern Avenue and is open by appointment, contact Kim Darling at kdarling@StJacademy.org.
The Golden Gallery is the studio of Larry Golden, located at 1567 Memorial Drive. The gallery features mostly Golden’s landscapes and plein air paintings. Golden also has a series of paintings featuring the landmarks and buildings of Railroad and Main Streets. Golden, who has a Bachelor of Arts degree from Saint Anselm College and a Master of Arts degree from the Pratt Institute, has also taken classes at the Art Students League in New York City, the Reilly School of Art in White Plains, New York and the Lyme Academy of Fine Arts in Connecticut. He has participated in the Vermont Studio Center in Johnson, Vermont and has had numerous shows in the Gallery at Catamount Arts. Golden taught art at St. Johnsbury Academy for 45 years. Golden works primarily in oils, creating landscapes and exploring nature. Hours are Wednesday-Sunday from 10:30-4:30, and by chance on Monday and Tuesday.
The Fairbanks Museum and Planetarium presents Inside Out: Hidden Art in Natural History Collections as part of the 2020 Vision: Seeing the World Through Technology, a statewide initiative of the Vermont Curators Group. This exhibit lets you see beyond the surface of our taxidermy collections. This intriguing exhibit is a collaboration between the Fairbanks Museum and Northeastern Vermont Regional Hospital (NVRH) that peels away our surface understanding of objects to reveal what’s inside. This unusual concept combines radiographs of some of our oldest and most mysterious taxidermy with contemporary portraits of the same mount. What’s revealed are the bones, wires, pins, and human touch in mounts created by different taxidermists using different equipment to achieve life-like representations. The Fairbanks Museum & Planetarium is open W-Sun,10am-5pm and is located at 1302 Main Street.
Take a moment and head over to Central Cafe and appreciate Shaun Terhune’s stunning photography, including a 72″ Franconia Ridge metal panorama. Shaun grew up in Vermont, home to rolling green mountains, cows, and maple trees and tin sap buckets. He claims it’s hard to sum up his childhood in the Northeast Kingdom, where he was raised and his family still lives in the log house they built there. Many formative happy years were spent on their little homestead. Shaun now lives with his wife Elisabeth and works his craft in northern New Hampshire – their personal idea of paradise. His history with the White Mountains goes back to his teen years, when he regularly hitched rides into the wild places to experience a remoteness and ruggedness he couldn’t find anywhere else in the East. Central Cafe is open 8am-4pm, closed on Tuesday and is located at 418 Railroad Street.
For more local art there is the gallery at Artful Eye at 443 Railroad Street open M-F; 10am-5pm and the selection is always changing.