The Maine Art Gallery offers something for everyone this summer

Wiscasset’s Maine Art Gallery on Warren Street is a busy place these days. This season’s calendar is filled with exhibits and classes designed to fulfill the artistic interests of the local community as well as our summer visitors.

The 2022 season opens with “Time Shift,” an exhibit of joyous, spirited creations by the artists at Spindleworks, an independence program that provides opportunities for adults and children with intellectual disabilities to learn marketable skills and to express themselves through art. The exhibit opens May 7 with a reception at 4 p.m. and continues from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. Wednesdays through Saturdays through May 28.

Early summer will find Wiscasset filled with plein-air painters hosted by the gallery. Artists from the New England Watercolor Society have chosen May 19 as the date to use Wiscasset village as their source of inspiration, and the Plein Air Painters of Maine will arrive with a similar mission on June 15. All current gallery members are invited to paint alongside these groups. The gallery’s plein-air artists participating in Paint Wiscasset Show will paint and exhibit June 29 to July 9.

Celia Ludwig, an artist and volunteer member of the gallery, has coordinated a schedule of classes. The first one, Sketching on the Go with Diane Dubreil, is sold out. Other classes include Plein Air Demonstration with Deborah Chapin, Catching the Light, Plein Air with Deanna Ball, Abstraction and the Landscape with Karen Jelenfy, and Impressionistic Photography with Olga Merrill. Check www.maineartgallerywiscasset.org for more information.

The gallery will host six shows this season, including juried and non-juried members shows. A guiding organizational force behind the ambitious schedule is consultant to the gallery Kerry Hadley, who joined the nonprofit a year ago. She will now be supported in her efforts by Candice Joneth, recently hired as assistant gallery manager.

The Maine Art Gallery is a nonprofit organization dedicated to the advancement and preservation of the visual, fine and applied arts through exhibitions, lectures, demonstration and educational programs for children and adults since 1958. The gallery is at 15 Warren St., Wiscasset.