In January 2016, Harris Stanton Gallery in Akron is celebrating one of our most beloved artists with a career retrospective. Barbara Gillette was the 2011 recipient of the Akron Area Arts Alliance award for Outstanding Visual Artist. She has been a force in the Ohio art scene for more than 25 years and has been represented by the Harris Stanton Gallery since 1993. She is a member of the Artists Archives of the Western Reserve and her work has been included in shows at The Cleveland Museum of Art, The Butler Museum, Canton Art Institute, The Riffe Gallery in Columbus, Spaces and The Southern Ohio Museum in Portsmouth. She works primarily in pastel and derives her drawings directly from the rural landscape of Medina County and her travels across the Midwest. She is extremely concerned with the damage and loss that urban sprawl has brought to her cherished farmlands, and much of her work in the past 2 decades dealt with this tension between suburban and rural areas. Also on display will be the vibrant, organic ceramics of Bonnie Gordon.

In February our Cleveland Gallery will exhibit New Directions, what has become a yearly tradition between the two galleries. This show will feature up and coming young artists that have been educated at the local art schools. Two of the artists that will be exhibited are Charity Thomas (Kent State) and Philip Soucy (Cleveland Institute of Art). Both artists are extremely detail-oriented but use different media. Thomas, a paper artist states “My work is process-oriented. My pieces tend to be comprised of many small, nearly identical elements that become transformed through accumulation-simplicity repeated to create complexity.” Soucy creates his engaging abstract works on paper by blowing the ink around the surface with the use of a straw. He states “My work explores the effect of breath and momentary presence through mixed media, most notably watercolor and ink. The work serves as a record of each breath, each moment, during its own creation, illustrating the process of thought, with later outlines and layers highlighting and sharpening the inherent twists and turns.” He compares his work to the well-known meditation practice of Tibetan Monks, stating “They spend weeks meditating on a single thought while creating intricate mandalas out of sand only to destroy them with gusts of air; my work plays to the opposite of this practice: a gust (or breath) creates the design, then weeks are spent illuminating those moments. For the monks, the thought illuminates form; in my work, form illuminates thought.”

 

Harris Stanton Gallery

2301 W Market Street

Akron, OH 44313
330.867-7600

 

Harris Stanton Gallery Cleveland

1370 West 9th St.

Cleveland, OH 44113

 

HarrisStantonGallery.com

 

 

Harris Stanton Winter Exhibitions

 

Akron Gallery

November 13- December 14 Ohio Printmakers:  Charles Beneke; Julie Friedman; Joe VanKerkhove

November 28 Holiday Open House

January 15- February 13 Barbara Gillette Retrospective with Bonnie Gordon, ceramics

 

Cleveland Gallery

October 30- December 14 2^nd Annual International Exhibition

December 5 Holiday Open House

February 12-March 12 New Directions featuring new works from young up and coming artists

 

Images:

Philip Soucy, Elam Tranquil, 2015 Mixed media