July exhibitions at Dowling Walsh Gallery

During July, Dowling Walsh Gallery will host three exhibitions featuring work by Jenny Brillhart, Daniel Minter and Stephen Pace (1918-2010).

An opening reception will be held from 4 to 7 p.m. July 1 outside behind the gallery. Masks are encouraged while inside the gallery.

Dowling Walsh Gallery is at 365 Main St., Rockland. The gallery is open from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Tuesday through Saturday and by appointment on Sundays and Mondays. Visit www.dowlingwalsh.com, or call 207-596-0084 for more information.

Jenny Brillhart: “Room For”

July 1 to 30

Jenny Brillhart begins her process by organizing objects within found and created spaces, posing subjects that engage from something that might be thought of as nothing. Her technique is a building process of material and repetition, reflecting the geometry of architectural structures and patterns. Playing with physical space, light and shadow, time and materiality, her paintings make us question our perceptions while simultaneously commanding them.

Brillhart was born in 1972 in Keene, New Hampshire. She received a BFA from Smith College in Northampton, Massachusetts, and went on to study painting and drawing at The Art Students League, New York. In 2003, she graduated from the The New York Academy of Art with an MFA in painting. She has had solo exhibitions at Kuckei + Kuckei Gallery, Berlin, Germany and Emerson Dorsch Gallery, Miami, Florida, as well as numerous other solo and group exhibitions. In 2017 she showed at the Center for Maine Contemporary Art in a two person exhibition alongside artist Sara Stites. Brillhart was included in the 2019 deCordova New England Biennial. She lives and works in Blue Hill.

Daniel Minter: “A Other Crossing”

July 1 to Aug. 27

Daniel Minter is an American artist known for his work in the mediums of painting and assemblage. His overall body of work often deals with themes of displacement and diaspora, ordinary/extraordinary Blackness, spirituality in the Afro-Atlantic world and the (re)creation of meanings of home.

Minter works in varied media, including canvas, wood, metal, paper, twine, rocks, nails and paint. This cross-fertilization strongly informs his artistic sensibility. His carvings become assemblages. His paintings are often sculptural.

Minter’s work has been featured in numerous institutions and galleries including the Portland Museum of Art, Seattle Art Museum, The Charles H. Wright Museum, Tacoma Art Museum, Bates College, University of Southern Maine, Center for Maine Contemporary Art, The David C. Driskell Center and the Northwest African American Art Museum. A travel grant from the National Endowment for the Arts enabled him to live and work in Salvador, Bahia in Brazil, where he established relationships that have continued to nurture his life and work in important ways.

Minter has illustrated over a dozen children’s books, including “Going Down Home with Daddy,” which won a 2020 Caldecott Honor, and “Ellen’s Broom,” which won a Coretta Scott King Illustration Honor. “Seven Spools of Thread: A Kwanzaa Story” was winner of a Best Book Award from the Oppenheim Toy Portfolio, and “The Riches of Oseola McCarty” was named an Honor Book by the Carter G. Woodson Awards. Minter served on a team of artists commissioned by the City of Seattle Parks Department to create a water park in an urban Seattle neighborhood. He was also commissioned in 2004 and 2011 to create Kwanzaa stamps for the U.S. Postal Service.

As founding director of Maine Freedom Trails, he has helped highlight the history of the Underground Railroad and the abolitionist movement in New England. For the past 15 years, Minter has raised awareness of the forced removal in 1912 of an interracial community on Maine’s Malaga Island. His formative work on the subject of Malaga emerges from Minter’s active engagement with the island, its descendants, archeologists, anthropologists and scholars. This dedication to righting history was pivotal in having the island designated a public preserve. In 2019, Minter co-founded Indigo Arts Alliance, a non-profit dedicated to cultivating the artistic development of people of African descent. Minter is a graduate of the Art Institute of Atlanta and holds an Honorary Doctorate of Arts from The Maine College of Art.

Stephen Pace (1918-2010): “Dunes Party”

June 3 to July 30

Born in Charleston, Missouri, Stephen Pace grew up in Indiana, and initiated his formal art training by studying drawing and watercolor methods with W.P.A. artist Robert Lahr. During World War II, he served in England and France, honing his skills by painting views of local scenery. Pace enrolled at the Institute of Fine Art in San Miguel Allende, Mexico, with funding provided by the G.I. Bill. After a year south of the border, during which time met and befriended the painter Milton Avery, he went to New York, where he attended the Art Students League (1948-49). After time in Florence and Paris, Pace resumed his studies in New York, attending classes at Hans Hofmann’s school. Hofmann’s teachings–especially his practice of creating volume through dynamic planes of color– helped inspire the direct and vigorous Abstract Expressionist style Stephen Pace employed during the 1950s, with jagged forms and pulsating energy. 

After 1960, Pace embraced his rural roots, spending time in Pennsylvania and then Maine, a region that allowed him to reconnect with nature. Dividing his time between studios in New York City and Stonington, Maine, he returned to figural art, working in a style characterized by simplified shapes and a liberal use of color while exploring subjects ranging from Maine lobstermen to landscapes and nudes.

Pace taught at a number of institutions, including the Pratt Institute, Washington University, Bard College, the American University, and the University of California, Berkeley. Examples of his work have been acquired by the country’s foremost public and corporate collections, including A.T.&T., Chicago; the Bristol-Myers Collection, Princeton, New Jersey; the Curie Institute, Paris; the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, D.C.; the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; the National Academy of Design, New York; the Phillips Collection, Washington, D.C.; the Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, D.C.; and the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York.