Group show featuring artwork by Mary Therese Wright, Ellen Cone Maddrey, Tina Olsen, Liza Cassidy, Gayle Robertson, and John Loggia

Official Opening December 5th Gallery Walk. 
118 Elliot open gallery hours: Thursdays 3 to 6 pm

The exhibit “About the Size of It” is open at 118 Elliot Street in Brattleboro. The exhibit features the work of six painters who make up the 118 collective of artists: Tina Olsen, Ellen Cone Maddrey, Gayle Robertson, John Loggia, Liza Cassidy and Mary Therese Wright. The exhibit explores the notion of size in painting – the miniature and the monumental. Also on exhibit is the window display, “All Under One Sky,” the collective’s contribution to the Brattleboro Festival of Miniatures.

The artists contemplated the miniature and the monumental in painting, and how it is expressed in their individual work. In most representational painting, the image is exactly that – a representation of a (usually) much larger scene. The majestic landscapes of Bierstadt and Church are miniature when compared to the scenes they represent. But any painter, whether the work is representational or abstract, faces the question of how large to make the image. Queries arise for the artist and the viewer: how does the size or shape of a painting relate to what the painter is expressing, or what the viewer is seeing and feeling? This exhibit allows both the artists and the viewers to “try out” different sized works, discover how the eye reacts to each, and form new ways of seeing.

The 118 artists’ collective also worked together to create the window display “All Under One Sky” as a contribution to the Brattleboro Festival of Miniatures. These artists tend to create art from their physical interaction with the materials, rather than starting with specific ideas that are translated onto a visual medium. They used this process to work together in an improvisational mode, creating the universal sky that connects us all. The colors and shapes, and the light they create, remind us of the vastness of the natural beauty that surrounds our daily lives. Moving from “monumental” to “miniature,” the artists added whimsical miniature scenes of  life under the sky.

Please enjoy our offering of color and line to brighten the winter solstice and holiday season. The exhibition will be on view at Gallery Walk, December 5, during 118 Elliot open gallery hours, Thursdays from 3 to 6 pm, as well as during all 118 Elliot events and by appointment. 

Gayle Robertson has been artistically active all her life. Her experiences in the fields of lighting design, computer graphics, 2D and 3D traditional media, spirituality, end of life and bereavement, mix to bring different lenses to what happens in her studio. She uses her art as a way to engage with the moments of life and a tool for exploring all its meaning, calling upon her materials to bring her interests to light. She lives in Southern Vermont where she enjoys being part of the vibrant arts community.

Tina K. Olsen has been painting and working therapeutically in the expressive arts most of her life. She moved to Brattleboro in 2006 to live near her daughter and found a community of artists at the River Gallery School and 118 Elliot. Olsen’s works in oil and watercolor bring life to the healing light of nature.

Ellen Cone Maddrey came to painting later in life after careers as a lawyer, an elementary school teacher and a parent of three. Her artistic inspiration is deeply embedded in the mountains and waters of Seattle, her childhood home, and the natural world of Vermont. Her paintings express the comfort and thrill of nature through color and shape. She lives in Montclair, New Jersey, and has a second home in Wilmington, Vermont. 

John Loggia has been painting and working in the arts since 1979. He has maintained a practice of drawing and painting while working in film as a production designer and producer. In 2015 John opened 118 Elliot, an arts and education center in Brattleboro, Vermont that he runs with his partner. John, a jazz musician, feels that playing music and painting are two sides of the same coin with each practice informing the other and encouraging experimentation, risk, and unexpected revelations.

Mary Therese Wright’s artwork and community based projects have been shown throughout the United States. Wright has a keen interest in materiality whether painting, printmaking or metalsmithing. Her current work is a response to the vibrant colors and dynamic shapes of nature. She lives in Jacksonville, Vermont, and draws inspiration from her deep relationship with the trails and water of Lake Whitingham.

 Liza Cassidy is a visual and performing artist with a long time studio practice in Brooklyn NYC, and for the last seven years in her home town of Brattleboro, Vermont.  Her focus is on large scale abstract mixed media collage utilizing discarded materials, mostly receipts, to convey human experience, and plein air landscapes in oil.  She teaches Sequencing at River Gallery School as well as painting, studio art, and community mending/sewing sessions. She is also a long time collaborator with Theaterlab in NYC as a writer, director and performer.