Isalos Fine Art

I have to admit, sometimes I don't pick up the Island Advantages because I look at the front cover with its usual bits of ongoing news- some committee drama or developments in the mollusk and crustacean world- and I just can't quite get the level of excitement that I need to shell-out the 80 cents. But sometimes there's weather, or a mystery, like the weekly disappearance of about 3000 gallons of water, and, well... I just don't want to miss anything. As the above photograph illustrates, we have had weather. This was January third. I can't tell you how much snow we received, but I shoveled-out three separate times.

I mention that sort of news, because I know that that is what some readers of this blog really want. So I'll lure you in with photos of snow and sensational news, and ambush you with some art. Here's Rebecca poking her head out of her studio in the corner of the gallery. She's flanked by a nice little collection of her paintings. You'd think, having our own gallery and all, that it would always be easy to hang as much of Rebecca's work as we want. Not so. In the summertime, she sometimes ends up with less space than other artists, especially when we have a show. It's a real luxury when you've got the wall space to hang most everything you'd like.

But of course there's plenty of other art hanging as well. Occasionally I notice an arrangement that just seems to work, a little spot in the gallery that I look at and think "someday I'd like to have a spot like that in my home". That's a painting by Barbara Brady with a sculpture by Farrell Ruppert. The sculpture is made from the  flukes of an old anchor, a series he's been exploring for a couple of years now. The plywood bench is by me. There's just something about raw birch plywood that works for me. And don't forget the pedestal, hewn from artisanal organic MDF. The wall color? Adagio. Benjamin Moore.

Above: paintings by Vaino Kola and Eugene Koch. That's Koch & Kola. The Kola paintings are intricately detailed views of rocks along the shore of Greenlaw Cove. Vaino knows these rocks very well by now. The Koch pieces all use lines in different ways with innovative materials. I often describe them as atmospheric, since they might evoke fog or other conditions brought on around here by the ocean and the weather, but I think Eugene gets more excited about discovering new ways to use his materials than any desire to evoke anything. In that piece in the middle, he used three miles of fishing line, wrapped around a panel.

Marble sculpture by Richard Aliberti, rug by someone in the Middle East, a long time ago. That's the fun part about having a gallery. If you're the sort of person who likes to re-arrange furniture, you might enjoy having a gallery. When Main Street is  covered with snow, that's what we often do.