49th Annual Members' Fine Craft Show Kicks Off Summer at Rehoboth Art League

The content of this post comes from a press release from Rehoboth Art League...

The Rehoboth Art League (RAL) has an exciting range of shows coming up this June and July. Summer at RAL will kick off with the 49th Annual Members’ Fine Craft Exhibition, as well as Barbara Martin’s Eastward to Wyoming, Prints and Paintings by Alexi Natchev, and Faces of Many Nations clay masks by Amelie Sloan. All are on display June 10 to July 17. On June 10 from 5:00-7:00pm, RAL will host receptions for all the exhibitions, inviting anyone interested to visit the Corkran, Tubbs, Ventures, and Homestead Galleries to see these new shows.

The Members’ Fine Craft Exhibition is a signature summer show for the league and contains works created by member artists in a wide variety of media, including baskets, ceramics, fiber, glass, jewelry, leather, metal, mixed media, wood, and more. Artists and the public are invited to hear from this year’s exhibition judge, Andrea Uravitch, during her free Gallery Talk on Saturday, June 11, at 10:00am in the Corkran Gallery. Uravitch, who has shown in over 300 hundred invitational, juried, and solo shows in museums, galleries, art centers, college galleries and institutions, will discuss her selection of the award-winning pieces.

Taking over the Ventures this month will be abstract works in Barbara Martin's solo show, Eastward to Wyoming. This collection was inspired by Martin’s time at the Jentel Artist Residency in the Lower Piney Creek Valley of the majestic Bighorn Mountains in eastern Wyoming. Using the rhythm of the passing landscape and summer sky, these works encompass the movement and sensations of the vast openness of the Montana and Wyoming area.  

RAL’s historic Peter Marsh Homestead will display Prints and Paintings by Alexi Natchev. Born, educated, and starting his artistic career in Bulgaria, Natchev’s body of work, as a whole, reflects the scope and range of his creative endeavors in different fields of visual art: illustration, drawing, painting, and public art. This exhibit displays Natchev’s range, giving viewers the chance to see his technical processes and layered technics. 

Finally, the DeWitt Gallery will showcase Faces of Many Nations, a display of Amelie Sloan’s ceramic hand-built masks. A longtime RAL member and niece of one of the league’s founding members, Ethel P.B. Leach, Amelie leaves a lasting legacy at RAL, with a namesake room in the pottery studio on campus as well as an endowed exhibition award offered annually for excellence in ceramic hand building. This exhibition will allow the public the rare opportunity to purchase some of Amelie’s masks.  

The exhibitions are free and open to everyone during regular gallery hours of Monday through Saturday, 10:00am to 4:00pm and Sunday, noon to 4:00pm.

Visit https://www.rehobothartleague.org/.

The Coastal Camera Club: A Juried Exhibition

By Guest Blogger, Stan Divorski Stan Divorski is an artist and avid art and photography collector who lives in Lewes, Delaware. He has a PhD in Psychology from Northwestern University, a Certificate in Painting and Drawing from the Corcoran College of Art and Design in Washington DC and has studied modern art curating at the Chelsea College of Arts in London.

All art or photography lovers must see this joint exhibition of the Rehoboth Art League and the Coastal Camera Club, showing the work of photographers who are members in both organizations.

The artists display a creative — and at times playful — willingness to explore what the medium has to offer. Each artist shows a willingness to experiment with ground, presentation, image manipulation and staging to create uniquely effective images. The curators, Jay Pastore and Lee Mills, are to be congratulated for putting together a captivating demonstration of this diversity.

A few examples from this abundance of worthy images are in order. Dick Snyder’s “Florentine Ceiling” sets the tone by challenging the viewer to make sense of his black and white abstraction of a cathedral ceiling. Dizzying perspective, rich pattern, narrow tonal range and frameless canvas support simultaneously suggest M.C. Escher, a medieval tapestry and a Southeast Asia temple wall painting. 

Linda Rosenbluth’s “Out on the Town” at first appears to be an art deco poster of the 1930s, due to saturated neutral colors, rectilinear composition and flat light. Closer examination confirms a photo of a modern urban scene. 

Robin Harrison’s “At Rest” depicts a flamingo without the curved neck and stick legs that dominate most images of the bird. Harrison has selected a pose that abstracts the essence of the bird, highlighting its shyness and the textural richness and subtle color variation of its plumage. 

"Reflection" by Brooke Hedge

Brooke Hedge’s “Reflection” exemplifies how to capture mystery with only minimal editing of a photograph. Traditionally framed and matted, this black and white view of a young woman’s sun dappled reflection could well have been titled “Narcissus” after Ovid’s boy of that name. Its subject is Pre-Raphaelite, and its texture is that of Monet’s brush strokes. The image symbolizes innocent purity, the fleeting nature of beauty and the uncertainty of perception. 

Adjacent to Hedge’s work, Leslie Sinclair’s “Woodland Tea Party” takes a less purist approach. The frameless, aluminum mounted image of a tea table in a forest is a light painting (composed of multiple individually lit layers combined to form the final image). Reminiscent of Gregory Crewdson’s large scale, staged cinematic tableau, this smaller work is carefully arranged, conjuring Alice in Wonderland as interpreted by David Lynch.

If this exhibit is representative, The Coastal Camera Club may be more than a club, but rather the beginnings of a school of photography with a vision unique to the Delaware shore.

The Rehoboth Art League, with 1800 members, is Sussex County's first organized cultural arts center. Located on a historic plantation, it encourages artists and arts education and sponsors exhibits and programs.

The Coastal Camera Club, with more than 200 members, serves the Delaware seashore. It encourages and promotes interest in all phases of photography, encourages education in photography, holds contests and presents awards, and promotes the photographic efforts of its membership. 

See www.rehobothartleague.org and http://coastalcameraclub.com.