Welcome to the Souterrain Gallery
a dependance of The Wish House
With our new expanded space of the Souterrain Gallery we are aiming to ad a more public exhibit space , meeting place & venue for a variety of concepts to Cornwall in particular West Cornwall's town center that with the Covered Bridge and bucolic setting is a natural attraction for visitors from near and far.
The Space is to convey what a segment of Cornwall is all about, Art and Art on all levels.
We hope and wish to exhibit works by our vast variety of area artists to share their love and pride of inhabiting this part of the world.
Please enjoy!
Souterrain Gallery Hours: Thursday - Sunday 11:00 - 5:00
2022 Exhibits & Events
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Saturday September 24. 3-6 pm
Please join us for our 25 year anniversary celebration featuring an Artist Reception in our Souterrain Gallery : Bela Selendy Photography Nature's Core Hope is an evolutionary necessity as well as a BBQ by Dan Evans aka Dangerous Dan and the Jazzy Tunes of Carol Leven and Co. About the exhibit : Nature’s Core We are wired to seek life. Hope is an evolutionary necessity. In this diverse presentation, photographer Bela Selendy explores themes of nature, life, transition, death, perception, time and reality. Moving from the figurative to the abstract, organic to material, the disparate but connected themes of the exhibit combine to express and explore zest and melancholy, optimism and despair, the slow movement of time and the capture of a frenetic instant. In bursts of fractal color or tones of earth and rust, Selendy strives to capture the hunger for life in nature’s minute forms, the core striving for continued existence; moves to painterly explorations of the transition to decay, where both sadness and joy are to be found; and finally opens gateways to the imagination in abstract compositions built on man-made elements where nature inescapably emerges in involuntary perception. We are wired to seek life. Bela Selendy is a native of Cornwall who nevertheless spent most of his life elsewhere. Educated at the Hotchkiss School, he continued to the University of Chicago where he studied philosophy, art, sciences, philosophy of art and philosophy of science before moving to Sweden for a few decades and engaging in a number of largely unrelated pursuits, finally returning permanently to Cornwall in 2020, well-timed to peak pandemic. He worked for many years to gain sufficient control of the medium of photography that he could relinquish control and allow randomness, the absence of certainty that underpins what our perception fools us into interpreting as objective reality, to emerge. |
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S A M P L E R
Bound by an interest in craft and materiality, seven artists explore drawing with alternative techniques. The ceramic sculptures of Sam Berenfield harken a nostalgia for childhood that is challenged by the expressive quilts and drawings of Noah Pica, whose work evokes an unflinching humor and sensuality that confront the viewer with color and form. Beautifully sensitive drawings by Krista Young respond to the frenetic and ornate patchwork quilt of Emma Redmond. Elizabeth Schweizer and Stefan Sehringer converse through weaving: material dances in the works of Sehringer, while Schweizer's surreal images develop through the shifting of color and pattern. Cassie Sheedy intertwines two and three dimensions with multimedia wall reliefs in wood and on paper. Together the artists grapple with the anxiety of being young during uncertain times, of finding and forging a place to call their own. Sam Berenfield, sam-berenfield.com Noah Pica, noahpica.com Emma Redmond, emmaredmond.com Elizabeth Schweizer, elizabethschweizer.com Stefan Sehringer, stefansehringer.com Cassie Sheedy, casssheedy.com Krista Young, kristamarieyoung.com |
2021 Exhibits & Events
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Cornwall Artisans Pop-Up shop at the Souterrain Gallery
weekends during the Holiday Season 11-5 starting Friday November 26. -28. and all following Saturday and Sundays till December 19. Nan Bevans , Susan Hellmann , Denise &Jessie Bate , Bianca La Porta , Teresa Pattison ..... Cash & Checks preferred , Masks required 413 Sharon Goshen Tnpk , West Cornwall CT 06796 , T.: 860 672 2969 www.souterraingallery.net |
Amber Maida
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Hannah Jung
Resting Place May 29. - July Artist Reception May 29. 3-6 pm Artist Statement The body of my artwork, “Led by the Light”, visualizes a ‘beacon of hope’ through my own journey of life by portraying symbolic imageries from nature such as sky, water, light and dark. As humans, we strive to find who we are and where we belong on earth. These integral questions in our minds through this journey allow us to utilize the natural world to touch the depths of our hearts that desire to seek the answers and understand our true identities. As the viewers cast their own imagination upon the images, these images are, in turn, transformed by impression from their own past and present and eventually arrive at their destinies. In order to capture its richness of the ethereal beauty on each stage of the journey, I work on a large number of paintings in a series, mainly focused on pure emotions of sky and its reflections on water. As nature begins to lose its concrete meaning, it starts expressing the essence of the image, its color, its smell, its movement, and its atmosphere. Herein, the realities of sky, water, and earth are transformed into spiritual beings, intimate and personal. Such nature echoes the heartbeats of the Creator as a compassionate and loving father and speaks of hope and redemption, renewal, peace and serenity. I believe art has the power to enlighten the eyes of viewers’ hearts to see ordinary nature as a new revelation. This journey into the divine realities of nature invites us to tap into the essential core of our own being. My paintings are meant to encourage the viewers to have these spiritual experiences through their own personal perceptions and interpretations BIO Hannah Jung, a former Juried Artist member from Silvermine Guild Arts Center (2004-2012) and Westport Arts Center (2009-2012), has exhibited nationwide including The White Gallery (2019, Lakeville CT), Lyman Allyn Art Museum (2019 New London), Salmagundi Club (2018, New York NY), Six Summit Gallery (2018, Ivoryton), The Voice of Art Gallery (2018, Cheshire), H. Pelham Curtis Gallery (2012, New Canaan), LH Horton Jr. Gallery (2010, Stockton, CA), Baker Arts Center (2010, Liberal, KS), The John Slade Ely House (2011, New Haven), The Gallery of the Contemporary Art, Sacred Heart University, and General Electric World Headquarters (2008-9, Fairfield CT), Mercy Gallery, Loomis Chaffee School (2008, Windsor), Gallery Korea, Korean Embassy (2005, Washington D.C.), Vision Gallery (2004, New York), and Promenade Gallery at the Bushnell (2003, Hartford), to name a few. Also, she was a recipient in the entry of Art of the Northeast (2006 & 2010) at Silvermine Guild Arts Center and was invited to Artists Residency Program at I-Park (2006, East Haddam CT). Her work has been recognized with numerous awards and reviewed by Republican-American, Record-Journal, Korean Times, Connecticut Post, Cheshire Herald, Westport Now, etc. and her number of paintings are in private collection nationwide. A graduate of Seoul National University, Korea (Bachelor of Fine Arts: Painting) and Southern Connecticut State University (M. Science.), she taught at a number of schools including Housatonic Community College (Bridgeport), Albertus Magnus College (New Haven), Lyman Allyn Art Museum (New London) and public/private schools. Jung is currently working as Director and Artist-inResidence of The Voice of Art, a nonprofit art organization she founded in 2017 based in Cheshire CT and later transformed into a virtual art gallery to nurture expanded viewership in the current art market |
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2020
our first exhibit starts August 1. The Bevans Quartet through October 31. Two generations of Bevans women, one a daughter of Margaret and Tom Bevans,the other a granddaughter, have joined with two Bevans daughters-in-law to mount a glorious show of art and costumes at the Souterrain Gallery in West Cornwall, CT.The fact thatall three generations have shared a commonality of interest might be explained in part by heredity, in part by the notion that like attracts like, even after generations. Margaret Bevans, among other things, was the children’s editor as Simon & Schuster, and she helped put together the great illustrated children’s book Pat the Bunny. Her husband Tom designed books for Simon and Shuster. Together they also founded The Cornwall Chronicle, the monthly newspaper whose layout has hardly changed since its first issue in 1991. The Bevans daughter, the late Ann Bevans, also known as Pandy, designed in fabrics. Pandy graduated from New York City’s prestigious High School of Music and Art (today’s La Guardia High School), and her design skills are evident. She created quilts whose abstract patterns create the illusion of three dimensionality, or she might use her artistic license todesign a simple house in fabric that is strictly two dimensionalwith a star looking down on the scenethat seemsabout to leap into your arms. The Bevans’ granddaughter, Loren, or Lory, is a theatrical costumer. She cut her teeth in a costume shop that was tantamount to a garment-industry sweatshop, but she learned her trade, and before you knew it she was on the road with “The Lion King” before the show had opened on Broadway, and she was still working on the show at the New Amsterdam Theater on opening nightand long after.(One of her great concerns was whether the giraffe might topple during the grand processional down the aisles of the orchestra.) Today she teaches costume design at St. Ann’s School in Brooklyn, and some of her costumes for school plays are on display (the bows on two of the schoolgirls’ dresses are hardly your usual wimpy, little-girl bows).Sitting on the floor and leaning against the wall are scenes she’s costumed for various shows, including Nervous Splendor, Let’s Play Too, and Ophelia, and scattered about are fabrics and patterns and the tools of her trade, including a sewing machine or two. On the table with one of the sewing machines is a collection of sewing machine feet, which in layman’s terms are attachments “under which you put the fabric when you sew it,” as Lory describes them, and they all have different functions. You will find hemming feet that create different sized hems, and a buttonhole foot, and an embroidery foot, and so on, along with pins and pin cushions and scissors that are so large that Charles Atlas would struggle with them. Daughter-in-law Nan Bevans, who is married to the Bevans’ youngest son, John, studied at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts at Tufts in Boston, and she doesn’t like to relegate herself to the usual media such as canvas and paper.She uses them, but Nan enjoys playing with totally unexpected media as well, such as a piece of bowed wood that was originally a barrel stave, or a tin lid, or even house painters’ paint brushes that have been cleaned of their original residual paint and are now adorned by painted faces. You’ll also find portraits of a surprised deer, and crows cawing, and a dog panting from the heat, and a porcupine that is hardly pining away. You’ll find a contemporary portrait called “Covid Expressions,” and a timeless one called Roger, a gentle soul who was the mechanic who saved Nan and John’s car from the junk heap on a trip to Maine, and all of these in all manner of shapes including the usual squares and rectangles as well as ovals and circles and soft-edged right angles, and on and fascinating on. And Jane Bevans, widow of John’s older brother Bradford and mother of Lory, is another graduate of New York City’s High School of Music and Art, which is where she and Bradford, a fellow student there, met. After college but before law school, she studied at the Art Students League, with work in her early style that might be described as “post-Renaissance” or “neo-Impressionist,” styles that she is still experimenting with. Her work is in oils and acrylics and even Sumi ink, an art form that requires brushwork that goes from the intensest black to grays that are so pale as to be barely perceptible. Her work can be many layered, such as her mixed media “Hydranga,” or it can be just a few strokes of a brush. It can be molto serio or whimsical, even witty, such as a few of her chickens that are scratching around an imaginary barnyard. Glorious, all. The show will be on view until September 30. Open Thursday – Saturday 11-5 , Sunday 11-4 , and by appointment # # # # # |
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November 30. - January 20.
Robert Adzema , Watercolors , Cornwall Covered Bridge and Barns Artist Statement All my landscape paintings are painted outdoors - plein air- and in watercolor. I favor this medium because it is easily transportable and so encourages me to deal with the subject directly and spontaneously, and to welcome chance and accident. In general, I choose sculpturally interesting subjects with strong and often unexpected compositional points of view. I try to capture a time of day and the quality of light of the location, such as the reflective and transparent light on a stream, lily pond or marsh, or the modulated light fracturing on the rock face of a quarry. My technique reflects a passion for and use of color along with expressive brushwork to further the emotional dimension of the painting. x x x |
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September 28. - November 17.
Paint the Churches .....or your sacred place in Cornwall in collaboration with the Cornwall Association |
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August 10. - September 22.
Patrice Allison Galterio Cut & Paste : A Show of Collages Artist's Reception August 10. 3 - 6 pm Bio: Patrice has had a creative force within it feels, all her adult life. Certainly early, with music and fashion then art and design. All this creativity is self guided and self taught, she is a folk artist at heart. Professionally she has been a graphic artist for more than thirty years. Another creative outlet is the hunt vintage goods and she had a little shop in Pawling for two years buying and selling unique and whimsical finds. In 2006, Patrice co-founded the Kent Film Festival, as Creative and Organizing Director, she provided Creative Direction promoting the event and Organizing Direction coordinating the films, filmmakers, receptions, screening and workshops. Collage has been a constant creative outlet for many years. |
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Shaun MacDavid:
Trees June 15. - August 4, Although Shaun has been a figurative painter for years, this most recent work is best described as abstract. However, it draws heavily on the colors, forms, and rhythms found in nature. The work invokes the spirit of a place, telling its particular memory and impression that forms over time. This new work is inspired by the artist Joan Mitchell, who was part of the New York School, but who spent the bulk of her career in France; as well as the artist Grace Hartigan, also of the New York School. However, Shaun’s unique style and sense of color stand out as her own. |
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Home & Away
Watercolors by Ellen Moon April 20. - June 2. ELLEN MOON:PLEIN AIR WATERCOLORS
For the last 30+ years I have been a fairly serious Sunday and vacation painter of landscapes in watercolor, but I have never had an easy time dealing with the local landscape. What I liked to paint were expanses of sea, sky or mountains. In northwest Connecticut we are surrounded by a beautiful but complicated landscape, full of masses of vegetation. In 2004 I decided I should conquer my fear of the local landscape and so set myself the task of making a painting a day of the countryside of Cornwall and its surrounding area. This has been a very enjoyable and rewarding project. For me, painting has become a form of meditation, and hour in the day when I have to concentrate on one thing and one thing only. It is literally impossible to multitask while painting! My daily efforts have also been a form of exercise—visual push ups. I find that after these years of observation I am more aware of daily, even hourly changes in the light and color of my surroundings. Even in January, when the watercolors began to freeze inside the car, I have always been happy to spend that hour painting what was in front of me. I am in love with the fields of this corner of the world. Many of these paintings were made in the field in front of the house where I grew up. This field is, without doubt, my favorite place in the world. A field can be an expansive mirror of the sky or a small room in the woods. It can be bounded by trees, water, mountains, or only the sky itself. Dramas of light and shadow occur at the edges of fields, or around the islands of rocks and copses that sail through their midst. Seasons bring change, but now I see the longer changes that happen from year to year. A tree falls and light comes to a new place. A wet summer comes and fields that were last year an open floor of green become now a textured wall of flowers. If there is a snowy winter, when the snow melts the field is a lake of lavender reflecting the setting sun. A dry winter brings standing red flames of grass in the low light. For this show I have also included paintings from some of the wild and beautiful places that my husband, Dave Colbert, and I have had the pleasure of visiting in the last few years. |
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Lazlo Gyorsok
& The Housatonic Camera Club The Magic Corner captured and other fantastic imagery 10.13. - 12.31.2018 |
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Madeline Stenson Deluge
In this body of work, Madeline Stenson works primarily with pen/gel pen, pencil, colored pencil and marker on paper. Madeline is attempting to visually organize her feelings of anxiety, fear, stress, and depression through making these line drawings. At the same time, producing these works is highly meditative for her. The organized chaos of line-work function as a documentation of the artist’s thought process. Madeline wants to continue exploring how detailed lines and maze-like patterns can abstractly symbolize feelings of anxiety and still seem controlled when taken in as a whole image. Madeline is an artist from Torrington, CT where she has a studio through the Five Points Launchpad. She graduated from the University of Hartford in 2017 with her BFA and a major in Sculpture and currently works as the Program Coordinator for the Northwest CT Arts Council. |
Peter Joslin Trout Markings and Landscapes
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Trout Markings and Landscapes
The origins of this show were small oil studies based on the extraordinary markings on brook trout (Salvelinus fontinalis.) These markings, both random and ordered, include vermiculation, parr marks, spots, and halos. The color is rich and varied and ranges from black to brown, ochre, moss green, blue and red. Fontinalis comes from the Latin for “of a spring or fountain”, a reference to the clear, cold water of its native habitat. These studies led to a six-year exploration of this subject in oil and watercolor. Coupled with this, my work based on landscape has been ongoing and some are included in this show. The work is modest in scale to promote intimate examination and reflection. The watercolors in this exhibition are intentionally unframed to enable the viewer to see the immediacy of the medium first-hand. I grew up in Connecticut, fishing and exploring brooks and streams. In 1993 I moved to northern Vermont, in close proximity to the Green Mountains and the National Forest. ************************************************** “Then, at the bottom of a small chute, I caught a nice brook trout. This is not the most common trout in Montana and, while its introduction was long ago, its accustomed venue is elsewhere. It is a wonderful thing to be reminded of the variety of beauties displayed in the quarry of trout fishermen. You want to cry, as a local auctioneer does at the sight of a matched set of fattened yearlings, “My, oh my!” The brook trout has a silky sleekness in the hand that is different from the feel of any other trout. Browns always feel like you expect fish to feel; rainbows often feel blocky and muscular; but the brook trout exists within an envelope of perfect northerly sleekness. He is a great original, to be appreciated poetically, for he is not a demanding game fish. Some of the most appalling arias in angling literature are directed at this lovely creature, who was with us before the ice age.” —Thomas McGuane, Fishing the Big Hole “Once there were brook trout in the streams in the mountains. You could see them standing in the amber current where the white edges of their fins wimpled softly in the flow. They smelled of moss in your hand. Polished and muscular and torsional. On their backs were vermiculate patterns that were maps of the world in its becoming. Maps and mazes. Of a thing which could not be put back. Not be made right again. In the deep glens where they lived all things were older than man and they hummed of mystery.” —Cormac McCarthy, The Road |
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