A show at Overlap Gallery, titled “No Place Like Home,” embraces the vision and memory of home from 47 artists and raise funds for two agencies that fight homelessness.
Nearly 200 responses were received to Overlap’s “call for artists” for the exhibition, which runs Nov. 16 to Dec. 21. All works are available for purchase, with 50 percent of proceeds directly benefitting the Rhode Island Coalition to End Homelessness and the Newport Housing Hotline. Artists will receive 50 percent of the sale price.
Overlap
https://www.overlapnewport.com/
112 Van Zandt Ave, Newport, RI 02840
(401) 324-5138
A public reception is set for Nov. 16, from 3 to 5 p.m., at the gallery. It will include refreshments and a raffle of artists’ works.
“Last holiday season, we were focusing on selling as much as we could from our store, but it didn’t feel right, and I decided it wasn’t for me,” said Overlap founder Susan Matthews. “This year, I wanted to focus on the holiday as a time of giving, and we can demonstrate that with this exhibition.”
A total of 177 works were submitted for the exhibit. “It was difficult narrowing things down, but we finally settled on 55,” Matthews said.
Molly Dickinson, The Crowded House
As part of the exhibition fundraising, Overlap will host “Thoughts of Home,” on Dec. 7, at 4 p.m., with a reading and conversation. It will feature Rhode Island authors Mary-Kim Arnold, Tina Cane, Hester Kaplan, Reid Sherline, Susan Tacent and John Wilson. Tickets range from $10 to $50 on a sliding scale, with proceeds going to the Newport Housing Hotline and the Rhode Island Coalition to End Homelessness.
“We put the call out for artists in June, asking them for work that addresses what home means to them,” Matthews said. “It could be a remembered landmark, a smell, all sorts of things. The work that artists submitted ranges from actual homes to sort of abstract senses of home and memory.”
Matthews wanted to help local agencies that do work reflecting Overlap’s connection to the community. “We wanted a local Aquidneck Island organization but also one that works on a larger statewide scale,” she said. “These two organizations fit that perfectly.”
Ernest Jolicoeur, who teaches painting at Salve Regina University, submitted to the show in part because the exhibition connects directly to social issues and social change.
“I really like Overlap, and I want to support what they are doing there,” he said. “It is rare to find a commercial gallery that puts public interest above its own interests.”
Jolicoeur’s painting depicts a tent in close view against a landscape. He said it seemed like it fit this exhibition because tents can have different meanings in different places.
“In New England, we associate them with leisure activity, but in other places, like the West Coast, they represent social struggle and homelessness,” he said.
One of the Aquidneck Island artists in the show, Felicia Touhey of Portsmouth, submitted work to “help Susie and the gallery, but also because Overlap is a beautiful space to show your work.” Touhey and some of her colleagues from the Beach Studios in Middletown are included in the exhibition, illustrating the small world of local artists. Touhey and Matthews are both members of the Newport Artists Collective, as are others who are local member artists at DeBlois Gallery and other spaces. “Yes, we live on a little rock,” Touhey said.
Touhey’s printmaking work has ranged from landscape to botanical studies, but since the pandemic, she has turned to making prints from World War II era family photographs, thus the connection to early memories of home.
“The world changed after COVID, and we still haven’t understood exactly how, but we’re also still feeling the impact,” she said. “This series of work is like visiting the past.”
The nonprofit Newport Housing Hotline has helped more than 100,000 families and individuals since 1978 with one-time grants for rental assistance and aid with shutoff notices for gas and electricity. The Rhode Island Coalition to End Homelessness works with advocates, providers and faith- based organizations to create solutions to prevent homelessness. The coalition and its collaborators helped passed the country’s first Homeless Bill of Rights in 2012.
After retiring from 22 years of teaching journalism at the University of Rhode Island, John Pantalone, the founding editor of Newport This Week, is happy to be writing for the paper again.
ART SCENE By Newport This Week Staff November 14, 2024
https://www.newportthisweek.com/articles/artists-exhibit-to-help-the-homeless/