“Sara Weeks Peabody: A Life in Line and Color” opens at the Northeast Harbor Library on Aug. 2, and runs through the month. A reception is planned for 5 to 7 p.m. Aug. 3.
The exhibition features oils, watercolors (some painted on silk), monotypes and drawings, as well as two gilded and painted folding screens. Many landscapes of Mount Desert Island and Corea are on view, along with images of Boston, Turkey and Antarctica.
“Peabody drew on all her artistic wherewithal to explore her sense of place, from Little Long Pond to the land of icebergs,” says art writer Carl Little, who helped organize the exhibition.
Peabody was born in Boston in 1926. Her father, Edward Weeks, was editor of the Atlantic Monthly. She took her first life-drawing class at age 11 with sculptor George Demetrios and later studied at the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture (in 1946, its first year) and the Cranbrook Academy of Art.
Curious about the tradition of folding Japanese screens, Peabody learned the techniques of construction and gold and silver leaf application from Yasuhiro Iguchi in the conservation department at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts.
Peabody majored in painting at Sarah Lawrence. She went on to become an art teacher, assistant book editor at Houghton Mifflin, editor of the magazine Current Design, and research assistant at the Addison Gallery of American Art. She published a children’s book, Tales of a Common Pigeon, in 1960.
Peabody had solo shows at the Episcopal Divinity School in Cambridge, the Boston athenaeum, Pine Manor College, and the Peabody Essex Museum. She exhibited in Maine at Sam Shaw, Wingspread, Judith Leighton, and Wini Smart galleries as well as at the Northeast Harbor, Seal Harbor and Ellsworth libraries and the Ethel Blum Gallery at College of the Atlantic. Her large-scale painting of Mount Desert Island has greeted Northeast Harbor Library visitors for many years.
The Northeast Harbor Library is open from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. Monday through Friday and 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Saturday. For more information, call 276-3333.
Categories: exhibitions, gallery, Northeast Harbor, openings, shows
