Permanently Closed as of 12/31/2023
80-1 Lyme Street · Old Lyme, CT 06371
Linda Hoffman has been part of the New England artist community since the early1980’s. Her art includes indoor and outdoor sculpture, public installations, digital prints, three chapbooks of poetry and the Fine Art letterpress book, Winter Air. Hoffman’s work is in the collections of Harvard University, the Boston Public Library, the Pierpont Morgan Library, NY, Hechinger Tool Museum, DC, and in the Towns of Wellesley, Groton, and Acton, MA; and in Littleton, NH. She is the orchardist at Old Frog Pond Farm & Studio in Harvard and curator of the farm’s annual outdoor sculpture exhibit. She blogs on Apples, Art, and Sprit at www.lindahoffman.com/blog.
DAVID BORRUS
By day, welding is the skill David has used to earn a living. His welds conform to the straight lines and right angles of I-beams and concrete. Often he was so focused on the fierce tip of the electrode that he failed to notice the magnificent human and mechanical symphony of the job site happening all around him.
At night in his studio, he can weld figures which express the complex curves and stances of daily life. He can work his TIG torch to create musculature, instruments, and motion. Essentially, he layers beads of molten metal (bronze or steel) in the same way that clay is built up in modeling sculpture. Later he uses a series of grinders to carve, shape, and finish each piece.
Over the past 30 years, he has tried other mediums, but he enjoys working in steel and bronze the best. The internal strength of these materials allows him to capture that instant when a musician is bent over backward to reach a high note in the “midnight ramble” or a gymnast swerving and twisting on the pommel horse. He continues to work in steel and bronze because he really enjoys welding. He likes the “arcing and sparking” of the grinders and electrodes and the smooth patterns of the orange liquid metal as it follows the blue tip of his torch.
His works include dancers, musicians, athletes, construction workers, and
Judaica. He studied foundry and mold-making techniques at Massachusetts College of Art, and has worked steadily in the marine construction industry as a diver, welder and pile driver for over 30 years. He creates his sculptures in Cambridge, Massachusetts where he and his wife Amy have lived and raised their two sons, Sam and Gabriel, since 1994.
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Chandler Davis
Chandler Davis is an award-winning sculptor. He started his career as an artist in residence in Norwalk, CT, and has exhibited at several venues in the metropolitan area, including the Silvermine Guild, the Washington Square Windows Gallery in Manhattan, and Art-X Gallery in Stamford. In addition to creating submarine sculptures, he has been working on a film, The Shell Maker, a docudrama of the shell's journey through contemporary society.
Conrad Levenson
Cassie (Palazola) Doyon was born and raised in Gloucester. She currently lives in Haverhill and has worked as an artist and art educator in the Merrimack Valley and North Shore for the past twenty-five years. She has a BA with a focus in graphic design from Salem State College and a MA in art education from Tufts University/SMFA. Cassie is currently employed by the Essex Art Center in Lawrence and has been involved in the Lawrence community for the past eight years, working with the Esperanza Academy, Si Se Puede, Lawrence Community Works, and Vinfen/Point After Club. Her artwork has been exhibited in galleries throughout Massachusetts and has had public installations of her mosaics in Lawrence and Newburyport.
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JERRY EHRLICH
Jerry uses materials that are easily accessible to him and that excite an allegorical reference. He has spent 50 years playing with different materials. Sometimes in response to ideas, other times to push the material and see what ideas flowed therefrom. He spent much of the last ten years focused on rebar. Rebar is found around large construction sites and subsequently junkyards. Its use is as the skeletal armature for the poured concrete with which the structure to be built is formed and framed. Surrounded by concrete, the tension inherent in the steel holds the concrete in compression adding strength to the static load. The tension is directional. Add energy either through gravity or heat and the rebar expresses itself in ways although
characteristic of the material which is not reflective of its intended use.
He uses rebar and other construction detritus to explore the nature of the material and discuss the dialectic relationship between use and reuse, between energy and tension, static and active, inside and out, between container and contained, and moment and time.
Of late he has been combining found materials with any of the materials and techniques that allow for a more spontaneous discussion of the same ideas that have always interested him but he feels as he ages those questions get more refined thus distilling the responses to more a straightforward rendering.
STEPHANIE GARON
Stephanie Garon received dual science degrees from Cornell University, then attended Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA). Her environmental art has been exhibited internationally in London, Colombia, and South Korea, as well as across the United States. Her writing, a critical aspect of her artistic process, has been published in international literary journals. She teaches at MICA.
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​As a five year Stephanie tagged along with her father to "hamfests,” radio operator gatherings held in county fair parking lots. Cars would pop open their trunks like overflowing treasure chests filled with electronic wares: old radio boxes, computer boards, cables, monitors, soldering irons. It was an oasis in the heart of wooded valleys. Her father would sell or trade items he no longer needed. Her job was to display them on a tattered blanket and haggle to make the sale. The setup became her stage as she pranced about, reorganizing after each barter session. In her mind's eye, they were a traveling show and Stephanie was the star with dirty nails, pigtails, and suspenders. Years later, when she finds herself welding and smelling the rusty steel odor of the studio, she is driving down those dusty roads again. Her work explores the limits of nature and connection through juxtaposing industrial elements with natural materials she collects. The decomposition of the natural forms provide drama and philosophic markers of fragility: green pine needles fade to brown, cement made from melted snow crumbles, and wind switches orientation of metal sculpture around trees. Rich in associations, the work
functions as abstracted expressions of a time, place, and way of life that capture paradoxes: formalism and fragility, permanence and impermanence, and nature and nurture.
JOE GITTERMAN
Joe Gitterman has sculpted for 50+ years yet it wasn’t until he retired from Wall Street that he devoted his full time to his art. Since his first exhibition at a local Connecticut gallery in 2011, Joe Gitterman’s career has taken off. His work has been bought by both private and corporate collections and he has received commissions from Robert Couturier, Norwegian Cruise Lines, The Riverside Building in London, the Robert A.M. Stern-designed Arris building in Washington D.C. and the Four Seasons Hotel in Houston, among many others.
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Gitterman creates abstract sculptures inspired by movement such as ballet and modern dance. Gitterman states, “I thought about the movements of the dancers as a series of frames in an old celluloid film, and how just one of those frames could convey a fantastic sense of motion. I thought that capturing this ‘single frame of motion’ in a solid piece of sculpture would be a wonderful challenge.”
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Sculpting models in copper, wax or acrylic, Gitterman chooses to cast in bronze or fabricate in stainless steel. The surface texture and color of each piece accentuates features such as sensual form or the suggestion of dynamic movement. Whether rendered in clean, crisp stainless-steel, vibrant color, or the leathery patina of bronze each abstraction and gesture references the fluidity of form and motion. Gitterman does not make editions thus each of his works is an original.
DEBORAH HORNBAKE
The trees, rocks, and creatures native to Deborah Hornbake's New England home inform her work. They are the inspiration for these sculptures. The rhythm of forms and the contrasting textures found in these natural materials seem to her to echo those shapes found on our bodies and in our bones.
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In studying the wood, branches, stones, and pebbles, new forms suggest themselves. Often, it is as if the particular fragment has been awaiting transformation. It is her privilege to share these resulting artworks with you.
Ernesto Leal
Ernesto Leal, native to El Paso, Texas, learned to sculpt the figure at Lyme Academy of Fine Arts. After graduating from the Academy, he continued to study on his own from old masters drawings and references associated with the figure. His work in sculpture began with small miniature pieces of sleeping animals and people. Although drawing is his foundation for sculpture and painting, sculpture continues to be his greatest joy and challenge.
Artist Statement
My work in art still remains very closely associated with classical figurative sculptures. My drawings and paintings are much different; they delve into biomorphic shapes and figures. Sculpture provides me a more constructed and methodical approach to expressing my thoughts and emotions. Sculpture isn’t very forgiving; meaning that if I make a mistake it won’t be easy to hide or workaround, so from the beginning to the end the completion of a sculpture is very challenging and tedious for me. I feel it is very necessary for me to complete this form of art to continue to hone my skills in drawing and painting.
MADELEINE LORD
Madeleine has worked with steel for over 30 years and has numerous permanent public art installations in New England and nationally.
Cut steel figures include “Revolutionary Figures” in Fort Washington Cambridge MA, “The Enduring American Spirit” the first 9/11 permanent memorial in Whitinsville MA, and recently a “Chef Picking Herbs” commissioned by Community Servings in Jamaica Plain. Other locations for cut steelwork include Gary Indiana, Dallas Texas, and San Bernardo CA.
Work welded from scraps transforms found metal into figures, fauna or flora where you see the image first and the ingredients second. Public Art includes a “Giraffe”, “Ostrich”, Mr. Bo Jangles” and an “Angel” owned by the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston.
ROBERT MEYER
Robert has been sculpting and involved in the creative aspects of the art world for many years. As President of Meyer Design Associates, he created award-winning annual reports and corporate communications for Fortune 500 companies throughout the Northeast, Florida, and Chicago.
He was juried into the Silvermine Guild of Artists in 1992 and has devoted his creative energies exclusively to sculpture since 1998. He spent three months sculpting at Studio Sem in Pietrasanta, Italy, working in marble and terra cotta. Since returning from Italy, he has completed four commissions for Quinnipiac University and shown his sculpture in group and solo shows in New York and Connecticut. His sculpture is in the collection of the Memorial Art Gallery in Rochester, New York, and corporate, institutional, and private collections throughout the northeast.
He received a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree from the University of Colorado and a Master of Fine Arts degree from Rochester Insitute of Technology. He is a past Trustee of the Silvermine Arts Center in New Canaan, CT and a Founding Member of the Katherine Hepburn Cultural Arts
Center.
“All of Meyer’s works... set up a dialogue between parts and wholes, masses and volumes, surfaces and their scars. ...These are works of graphic purity and tactile richness at the same time. ...As much as his work “discovers” affinities to nature, to architecture, to symbol, and to narrative, its most persuasive attribute is its capacity for touch.” -Patricia Rossoff, Sculpture Magazine
TOM PEARSON
Tom Pearson (Third Rail Projects Co-Artistic Director) is an artist working in dance, theater, and performance as well as film, poetry, visual art and new media. He is best known for his original works for theater, including the long-running immersive theater hits Then She Fell and The Grand Paradise, and as a founder and co-artistic director of the New York City-based performance company Third Rail Projects. Pearson’s work draws from depth psychology, archetypal studies, and deep dream practices as well as the ceremony of his native Tsalagi (Eastern Band Cherokee) heritage and its focus on the right relationship and story as medicine. He holds an MA from New York University in Performance Studies, and he has received two Bessie Awards for choreography, a Kingsbury Award for writing, and an IllumiNation Award from the Ford Foundation and National Museum of the American Indian for his work in Native Theater. He helms the Global Performance Studio, Third Rail’s international program for cultural listening and exchange. Pearson was recently named among the 100 most influential people in Brooklyn culture by Brooklyn Magazine and awarded artist fellowships in Saint Petersburg, Russia from CEC Artslink (Back Apartment Residency), in the U.S. from the Center for the Arts at Wesleyan University; and in Italy from the Bogliasco Foundation. He has been named Creative-in-Reference for Olin College for 2019-2020. His published work is available at tompearsonnyc.com. His performance and artwork can be found atthirdrailprojects.com.
R. DOUGLASS RICE
R. Douglass Rice's sculpture begins as a series of small cardboard cutouts. From 4" X 8" pieces of cardboard, he cuts out various abstract shapes. Slotting the top of one and the bottom of another, he joins them together creating a free-standing cardboard sculpture. Once this is complete, he follows the same process with sheets of 3/4" AC plywood, cutting each of the abstract shapes with a jigsaw. He then sands and paints them with high gloss metal paint, so that they looked like they are made of steel. From there he takes the full-scale plywood pieces to a metal fabricator, Hillary and Company. They then cut the shapes out of two 4’x8’ sheets of 5/8’ aluminum with a water jet. They are then powder coated to give them a high gloss “industrial painted” finish.
He currently has six sculptures on display in Connecticut, Massachusetts, and Rhode Island.
MATTHEW WEBER
Matthew Weber is a Connecticut based sculptor living and working in Hartford County. Since 2006. He's been worked as an art professor and a curator at Middlesex Community College in Middletown. In addition to exhibiting regionally and internationally, he has received a 2006 New Boston Fund Individual Artist Fellowship from the Greater Hartford Arts Council and
Connecticut Artist Fellowship from the Connecticut Commission on the Arts in both 2004 and 2010.
His sculpture and drawings investigate the interrelated trace of human presence and of natural phenomena. Process-driven projects mimic and distort both physical and symbolic transformations of structured order on environmental forms. Individual works and thematic groupings seek to instigate dialogue through evocative material surface juxtapositions, expressions of gravity and of corporal scales.
