The “View from Here Plein Air Art Show,” featuring works from Aire MV artists, opens at Old Sculpin Gallery on August 29, and will continue through Sept. 12. It will also be exhibited virtually on the gallery’s website, with works available for purchase at oldsculpingallery.org. Due to the pandemic, Aire MV artists are skipping an opening reception, and instead concentrating on specific goals — to paint while sheltering in place, to create while isolated from friends and family, and to imagine the possible while the current odds seem impossible.
To realize those goals, the artists have created six ideas or concepts, each of them interpreting these in their own way. According to a press release, all the works have been created this summer from mid-June through August. The six concepts are “Home,” “An Island View,” “Looking Out,” “Looking In,” “Looking Up,” and “Looking Down.” The gallery will group the paintings by concept, providing an interesting exhibit of contrasting interpretations of a single idea.
Artist Kanta Lipsky completed works in the “Looking Down” category, saying in the release, “Other seasons will have the splashy openings and the crowds, but this year we paint close to home, with just the bird song as company.”
“Looking In … is a watercolor of the tiny house that I’ve lived in throughout the pandemic,” says artist Lizzy Schule in the release. “Now that the weather is nicer, I can go outside and seek comfort in nature. But, when the shelter-in-place order was issued, living in a 240-square-foot home was challenging at best.”
Artist June Schoppe depicted her own studio, saying this year it was her “haven.” Valentine Estabrook lamented not meeting with other artists, as in past Aire MV experiences, saying, “But now … everything is so different. Different and challenging, but also mind-expanding. The process of expressing, through art, our individual interpretations of the concepts we agreed upon has taken my work to a different level, more like a different planet!”
Old Sculpin Gallery, Dock Street on the Edgartown Harbor, open Tuesday through Friday, 10 am to 6 pm, Saturday, 11 am to 6 pm, and Sunday, 12 to 5 pm; oldsculpingallery.org.
