Between August 20 – September 2 potters Rick Boyd and Pamela Williamson and printmaker and painter, Jane Banquer join to fill display stands and walls with new and recent work. You are invited to the opening or to make a picnic day of island art along with walking and biking on village roads or rocky shore.
The exhibit features thrown pottery in elegant decorative and utilitarian forms with glazed surfaces that vary from subtle color and texture to a reflective metallic sheen and black and white and color reduction woodcut prints reinterpreting paintings in oil and acrylic. Visit the GEM Gallery at 62 Island Avenue, Peaks Island, 207-766-5600 or Pamela and Rick at 766-3050 and Jane at 766-2246. An opening reception is Thursday, August 20 with daily gallery hours 10 AM to 7 PM.
After 35 years as a potter Rick is still amazed with the process of transforming balls of clay into works of art. It's about centering the human body and making a connection with the clay. He works with a variety of clay bodies each with its own characteristic's and his energy and the feel of the clay defines the shape of the piece. Rick does the throwing and trimming and Pamela does the cleaning and glazing. This is a great collaboration as he admits to being somewhat colorblind and she is wheel challenged. Surface color is achieved by using various firing techniques and by using slips and glazes made in the studio on Peaks Island. Pottery is a marriage of art and science and he’s always looking for new techniques and advances while never forgetting the basics. Success sometimes comes from failure and circumstances beyond control, after all in the end it is the firing process and the Kiln God who retain final control of the piece.
Rick has refined his craft with courses at Vanderbilt University, Maine College of Art, Haystack Mountain School of Crafts and Warren Mackenzie at Red Lodge Clay Center, Montana and has served as visiting Artist at Nicolet College in Wisconsin. Rick and Pamela’s work has been shown at galleries and shows across the United States. He is a member of the American Ceramic Society Potters Council, National Council on Education for the Ceramic Arts and the Maine Crafts Association.
Jane Banquer studied at the DeCordova Museum, the Boston Museum School and at Smith College with Leonard Baskin and Amy Namowitz Worthen. She was a state juried member of the League of New Hampshire Craftsmen, where she served to set fine art print and photography standards and to review the work of new artist applicants for exhibition and sales throughout the state. She is represented by Addison Woolley Gallery, Portland, Maine and formerly by Wenniger Graphics, Boston, Rockport, and Cape Cod, MA, among others. Her work has been seen in juried exhibitions throughout the region and was included in the 2006 Maine Print Project.
Images in her painting, relief and intaglio prints are derived from the tangible world around her of human form, sea, land and creatures of her surroundings. As objects they’re both contained in natural and manipulated, reconstructed space.
