Sometimes, it’s a struggle to figure out what to give for holiday gifts. Not another necktie, please. No aprons, thank you. Enough with the electronic games. How about improving someone’s life with a little art?
Local galleries cooperate with holiday exhibitions and sales that give you an opportunity to find the landscape painting or other work that you think would make a special gift.
DeBlois Gallery in Middletown has obliged with its “Festive Fine Arts and Artisans Holiday Marketplace,” an annual show and sale featuring a variety of work by local and regional artists. Not all that interested in a painting, print or drawing? No problem. They’re selling ceramics and other crafts.
The holiday sale runs until Dec. 22. They’re planning a holiday party at the gallery on Dec. 7, from 5 to 7 p.m., and will participate in an “Art Trolley Afternoon” on Dec. 8, from noon to 4 p.m.
The holiday show at Jessica Hagen Fine Art & Design in Newport runs through Dec. 31. The show features new work by nearly 50 gallery artists and includes paintings, sculpture, photography, ceramics, jewelry, art books and Hunt Slonem “Hop Up Shop” merchandise.
The show is a mix of landscape, still life and abstract work mostly on the small side.
Joining in the holiday spirit, Spring Bull Gallery in Newport hosts its annual “Fall/Winter Small Works Show,” featuring work by member artists. Delightful small paintings under a foot in height and width include landscapes, harbor views, floral paintings, still life and more. The show has 90 paintings, ranging in price from $200 to $400, and features some of the region’s familiar landmarks, landscapes and seascapes.
Overlap in Newport continues its holiday fundraising exhibition featuring work by over 40 artists on an appropriate holiday theme of “Thoughts of Home.” On Dec. 7, the gallery will host an afternoon of readings and conversations about home by Rhode Island authors Mary-Kim Arnold, Tina Cane, Hester Kaplan, Reid Sherline, Susan Tacent and John Wilson. It begins at 4 p.m., and tickets are available on a sliding scale between $10 and $50. Proceeds from the event and from sales of artwork will benefit the R.I. Coalition for the Homeless and the Newport Housing Hotline.
Sandy Nesbitt’s Blink Gallery will be featured Dec. 5 at the weekly Salon Series at the Brenton Hotel sponsored by the Newport Artists Collective. He will share some of his photography and talk about operating his gallery on Farewell Street. The Salon Series has become a popular forum to meet artists and see their work, and it has also boosted public awareness of the Artists Collective.
The series continues in the hotel’s library Dec. 12 with Jhen Kordella and Alissa St. Jacques and Dec. 19 with Victoria Venditto. It begins at 5 p.m. and runs to 7 p.m. For more information, go to wwwneportartistcollective.com.
Cusp Galleryis moving from its current Broadway location to 51 Touro St. in late December. In the meantime, it is hosting a show featuring paintings by Zach Raley and sculpture by Carla Jackson. Gallery owner Curtis Speer offers for sale his photographic work and an assortment of work by artists the gallery represents.
Art Museum Goes to Sea
Give yourself a gift with a visit to the Newport Art Museum to enjoy one of three exhibitions during the holiday season. In the museum’s main gallery, “Kelsey Patenaude at Sea (with Cole Brauer)” presents an unusual opportunity to see an artist’s interpretation of a historic sailing achievement, combined with slides and videos of Brauer’s amazing 130-day journey around the world.
Patnaude kept in touch with Brauer throughout the journey and produced a 100-foot panorama interpreting the sailor’s descriptions of what she encountered from one day to the next. Brauer was the first American woman to complete a nonstop, single-handed race around the world in the 2023-24 global solo challenge.
The multimedia gallery presentation, curated by Art&Newport’s Dodie Kazanjian, shares vividly what must have been both exhilarating and frightening.
Patnaude’s photo-transfer images combine oil, graphite and ink on linen. They wrap around the side and back walls of the gallery, with roiling waves and dark clouds. Above them, on the gallery’s high walls, viewers can watch as Brauer expresses her joy, strains to keep control of her boat as waves run over it, and shares her awe at the open sea and the thrill of land on the horizon.
Below Patnaude’s images, you can read entries from Brauer’s journal describing what Patnaude imagined.
The museum continues its nostalgic exhibition celebrating the 50th anniversary of the conceptual artist Christo’s wrapping of Easton’s Beach in 1974’s “Monumenta” outdoor sculpture extravaganza. Documentary photos by Gianfranco Gorgoni share space with original collages, drawings and archival materials illustrating the artistic process behind Christo’s “Ocean Front” project. The show, also curated by Kazanjian, remains in the Morris and Cushing galleries through Dec. 29.
In the museum’s other show, photographer Nick Mele shares images of Newport interiors enhanced and altered by his imaginative sense of design. The exhibition continues until Dec. 12.
After retiring from 22 years of teaching journalism at the University of Rhode Island, John Pantalone, the first editor of Newport This Week, is happy to be writing for the paper again.
