Nonprofits collaborate on Maine Art Gallery exhibit

SUSAN JOHNS
Mon, 08/21/2017 - 9:45am
From left, Virginia Forrest of Wiscasset, Ted Allen of Brunswick and Allen’s wife Barbara Bean look happy to be at Maine Art Gallery Sunday afternoon, Aug. 20. SUSAN JOHNS/Wiscasset Newspaper
Virginia Forrest points out Claudette Gamache’s pastel, “Queen Anne’s Lace.” Nearby is Virginia Milligan’s interpretation of it in a floral arrangement. Above Gamache’s work is Jane Bowman’s watercolor and gouache, “Lupine Landscape.” SUSAN JOHNS/Wiscasset Newspaper
Barbara Bean’s ink and prisma colors, “Flowers of the Field.” Below it, Sally Gemmill’s interpretation in a floral arrangement.
The non-profit Maine Art Gallery at 15 Warren Street in Wiscasset leases the 1807 former school from the town. SUSAN JOHNS/Wiscasset Newspaper

    The dry summer posed a challenge for Garden Club of Wiscasset members making floral arrangements for a Maine Art Gallery exhibit that opened Aug. 18. Club members bought flowers and picked wild ones to add to the ones they grew in their gardens, said Virginia Forrest, a member of both the club and the nonprofit gallery.

    Forrest was sitting just inside the entrance to the 1807 building on Warren Street Sunday afternoon, ready to greet visitors coming in from the sun. She volunteers at the gallery and at Boothbay Region Art Foundation in Boothbay Harbor and another nonprofit, River Arts in Damariscotta. Forrest managed the Maine Art Gallery about 20 years ago, after retiring from 24 years teaching third grade at Wiscasset Primary School.

    The gallery has leased the former Wiscasset Academy building since the 1950s, Forrest said.

    Before the “Color in Bloom” exhibit opened, gardeners from the club met at the gallery and each decided on a painting to interpret with an arrangement, Forrest said. They went home with photographs of the paintings and got to work, not on duplicating them but capturing the color and other aspects of the artwork, sometimes with different species of flowers than the ones in the artwork, Forrest said. 

    “I’m very impressed,” Brunswick artist Barbara Bean said about club member Sally Gemmill’s arrangement that interpreted her ink and prisma colors work, “Flowers of the Field.” Bean was visiting Sunday with husband Ted Allen. Bean last exhibited there many years ago and said she was very excited to be showing there again.

    The exhibit runs weekends through Sept. 18, noon to 4 p.m. Forrest said the club’s floral arrangements were timed for the Aug. 18 opening and were continuing to be watered since then. They would stay part of the exhibit, on pedestals near the artworks they interpreted, as long as the flowers held up, she said.

    Forrest said the opening was well-attended and upbeat with members of both groups and other community members enjoying the exhibit and refreshments people brought. The collaboration between the club and gallery represents something nonprofits should do as much as possible, Forrest said: Working together and supporting one another.

    Most Popular