ARTSI Tour welcomes visitors: Getting to know our artists
The Reporter asked some of our writers to visit several of the studios open for this past weekend’s ARTSI Tour, and what they found reflects the breadth and variety of creative spirits with whom we share this Island.
Charity Robey
Peter Waldner is a painter who does for the Shelter Island ferries what Edward Hopper did for the late-night diner, and his wife Sandra makes a batch of almond cookies for ARTSI every year. His art is an eclectic collection of local scenes, sculptures, and illustrations.
Sally Jacobs Baker sculpts in stone and wood, using the natural grain of the material to enhance the image she produces.
Megan Hergrueter ceramics have the marks of very local natural objects, such as shells, flowers, and sea creatures. She also works in raku, a form of ceramic that uses very high heat and ash to create abstract patterns on the object. One particular raku bottle called to me, so I took it home.
Jenifer Maxson
Carl Norr, on the ARTSI Tour map, is listed as a photographer, but is much more than that as it turns out. As a “master of lighting” for over 40 years, Mr. Norr was a cinematographer, a director of photography and made commercials all over the world. Twenty years ago, and semi-retired, he found he “couldn’t stop doing photography.” According to his partner, Deborah Klein, “Using two fingers, he taught himself Photoshop … and now he controls the light digitally, using different brush techniques to accentuate certain areas … people think they’re all paintings.”
Mr. Norr plays with color, light and focus to achieve his painterly effects, but he confesses to a continuing fascination with black and white. When asked which works he is particularly fond, he pointed out one that showed a stretch of the Ram Island Causeway, rendered in stormy grays and blacks, with a ruined dinghy in the foreground and a slash of emerging sun across the sky. A second work shows a congregation of dark pilings at North Ferry standing against the lambent sheen of water and sky. For this viewer, Mr. Norr performs a magic trick that gives very ordinary objects the quality of a dream.
The ARTSI Tour map lists Laurie Dolphin as a “printmaker,” but she’s a curator and publisher as well. I met Ms. Dolphin and her husband, Stuart Shapiro, in their beautiful Midway Road studio, which they built up from their house on Fresh Pond just before COVID. (One of Dolphin’s most arresting pieces is a black and white print of Fresh Pond).
According to Mr. Shapiro, Ms. Dolphin was a book-cover designer, then a book designer and now, for the past 10 years, an avid printmaker, too, who finds limitless inspiration in the patterns of Nature. Ms. Dolphin, a petite woman sparkling with energy, pointed out some of her recent prints. “I find interesting these leaves I’m working on — all have these structures that are kind of inside us. Like this heart-shaped one, they contain patterns and shapes that are within the human body. There is an interconnectedness from the outside to the inside.” She feels the same way about trees and their roots. “They’ve done studies to show they communicate with one another. We’re all connected.”
If you missed the tour, you don’t have to wait a year to learn more about our Island creatives. Visit the artsi.com website to see samples of their works and learn the stories of these artists; you can find their contact information there and schedule a visit:
Connie Abate, painter; Tia Bowman, painter; Bill Clark, painter; Linda Brienza, oils, soft sculpture; Kathryn A. Cunningham, oils, digital, print; Catherine Corry, portraits; Dee DeBernardis, watercolors; Roz Dimon, interactive works; Leah Friedman, painting; Melora Griffis, painting; Katherine Hammond, painting; Lily Hoffman, ceramics; Karen Kiaer, abstract painting, ceramics; Diana Malcolmson, painting; Mary Ann Moy, sculptor; Randy Osofsky, mixed media; Jacky Pullman, painting; Linda Puls, painting; Joe Reilly, painting; Susan Schrott, textile art; James Sebor, painting; June Shatken, painting; Jana Sheinker, painting; Chris Sorensen, photography; Alison Woodward, pastel and oil painting.
