This event will include all the artists who have shown art work in Betts Gallery during the 2011 season. This includes Petria Noyes,Peg Worth,Johan Selmer-Larson.Gus Szabronski,Jay Gibson,Kenny Cole,Michael Fletcher,Dina Petrillo,Thomas Griffith,Lois Anne,Cathy Melio, Daniel Anselmi,Joan Proadman,Norman Tinker,Mathew O’Donnell,Marc Leavitt,Squidge Liljeblad Davis,Alison Rector,Lesia Sochor,Bob Delio,Scott Reed,Candice Hutchinson,David Hurley,Carol Sloane,Bill Landmesser,Dyan Berk,Alan Crichton,Edward MacKenzie,Tom Prescott,Renee Lammers,Charlton Hudson, Dianne Schelble,John Squadra,Peggy McKenna,Gregory Dunham, Karen MacDonald,Denise Remy,Rich Holzer,Dennis Pinette,and Megan Pinette.

Their work includes oil painting, watercolor, water media, sculpture ceramic, photography, wood,and collage. It is a wonderful display of talent, grouped together for an exciting visual experience.

Please join us on Friday Dec 2nd between 5-8 PM. The gallery is open Monday to Friday 10am to 5pm and Saturday 10am to 2pm. For more information call 207-338-6465.

Charlton Hudson

Interior Reflections, Outward Abstractions
Reception, Friday October 7 from 5 to 7 pm

Betts Gallery will be hosting a reception for artist Charlton Hudson on Friday October 7 from 5 to 7 pm. The reception celebrates the opening of a new exhibit called "Interior Reflections- Outward Abstractions". Hudson has created a series of oil pastel landscapes, capturing his impressions of the natural environment that surrounds him every day. This body of work represents the impressions, both emotional and visual, that Hudson has seen living on the Maine coast.

Hudson says "I have decided to ground myself through the discipline of painting in a world that is so often troublesome and fraught with horror. By creating my own visual tranquility of meditative images, I am able to keep perspective of what is truly important in my life."

"Anything Goes", a group exhibit of work by 26 artists, opens Friday September 2 at Betts Gallery in Belfast. The opening reception is Friday evening from 5pm to 8pm. The artists, who have a vast amount of creativity in different aspects of art, have been given free rein to create whatever they desire. The only limitation is size. The resulting show is a very diverse and interesting exhibit. The show will be on view until October 1.

The exhibit includes oil paintings, sculpture, mixed media, photography and more. The exhibiting artists are Daniel Anselmi, Jenny Baker, Dyan Berk, Carolyn Caldwell, Kenny Cole, Bob Delio, Gregory Dunham, Mike Fletcher, Jay Gibson, Thomas Griffith, Rich Holzer, Charlton Hudson, Renee Lammers, Karen MacDonald, Edward MacKenzie, Petria Noyes, Dina Petrillo, Joan Proudman, Alison Rector, Dianne Schelble, Johan Selmer-Larson, John Squadra, Guz Szabronski, Norman Tinker, Jean Wiecha, and Peg Worth.

Lesia Sochor

August 2011
Reception August 5 from 5pm to 8pm

Betts Gallery will be featuring the new work of artist Lesia Sochor during the month of August. Italia, Bella is the title of this show. A trip to Italy was the catalyst which provoked this body of work. Intimate glimpses of Italy's rich culture emerge through graphite and colored pencil drawings, as well as oil paintings. Lesia received her BFA from the Philadelphia College of Art. She has lived, painted and exhibited in Maine for over 30 years. Her most recent exhibits in 2010 were at Caldbeck Gallery in Rockland, and at Lesley University in Cambridge, Massachusetts. She has taught art publicly and privately throughout her artistic career. A reception for the artist will be held August 5 from 5pm to 8pm. The exhibit runs through August 27.

Carol Sloane
July 2011

Carol Sloane of Washington Maine will be the featured artist at Betts Gallery for the month of July. Opening reception for the artist is Friday July 1, 5:30 pm to 8 pm.

"Tidal Rocks/ Canyon Walls" is a series of oil pigment stick drawings on paper. The Canyon Walls series are from a residency at The Helene Wurlitzer Foundation in Taos, New Mexico during the fall of 2010. There Sloane discovered the same tricks of light and shadow on the towering walls of canyons as she had found along the coast of Maine. It is these shared similarities that spurred the duality of this exhibit. Sloane has exhibited her work throughout Maine during the last fifteen years.

Artfellows Revisited

Former members of Belfast's Artfellows Gallery will exhibit work at Betts Gallery in June.

In 1980, as part of the first Church Street Festival, the newly formed Artfellows Cooperative Gallery held their first exhibit in three rooms on the second floor of the Odd Fellows building on Main Street. This space became home to the gallery for several years and inspired its name.

The organization grew quickly, its members mostly from Waldo and Knox counties. The late Richard Norton, staff photographer for The Republican Journal and later The Waldo Independent, was the group's most visible member and first president. Artfellows shows were well attended and their invitational, showcasing the work of area artists who summered in Maine, drew much attention to the gallery and helped to give it a state-wide reputation.

In 1985, the group had approximately 40 members and decided to move to a space downstairs, now occupied by The Belfast Framer and Betts Gallery. In 1987, Norton stepped down as president. Feeling that Artfellows had served it's purpose, most members voted to end the gallery's seven year run on a high note. A few members opposed this motion, reorganized and the gallery continued for another several years.

Proprietor Vicki McDaniel has long wanted to honor those early to mid Artfellows years with a show of current work from members from 1980-7. "Many of these artists I've known for years and I have followed their careers after they left Artfellows. It just seemed natural to one day celebrate them, here where they had their formative years."

Exhibiting artists include: Lois Anne, Margot Balboni, Dan Clarke, Alan Crichton, Lorna Crichton, Squidge Liljeblad Davis, Randy Fein, Jerri Finch, Jane Gilbert, Stew Henderson, David Hurley, Michael Hurley, Candace Hutchinson, Cynthia Hyde, Janice Kasper, Jim Kinnealey, Marika Kuzma, Bill Landmesser, Peggy McKenna, Cathy Melio, Richard Norton, Mat O'Donnell, Chris Osgood, Dennis Pinette, Megan Pinette, Tom Prescott, Phil Prince, Michael Reece, Scott Reed, Denise Remy, Liv Kristin Robinson and Lesia Sochor.

"Artfellows Revisited" will be on exhibit from June 2 through June 25. An opening reception will be held Friday, June 3, from 5:30-8 pm. Our gallery hours are Monday through Friday 10 am to 5pm.

Susan A. Cooney

The May exhibit at Betts Gallery is "Maine in Shades of Gray", graphite drawings by Susan Cooney. Please join us for an opening reception this Friday May 6, 5pm - 8pm.

The show will be on view until May 27.
Our gallery hours are Monday through Friday 10 am to 5pm.

Holiday Gala Exhibition
Opening Friday, December 3rd from 5-8.

Betts Gallery once again is hosting a Holiday Gala Exhibition. The reception with the artists is Friday, December 3rd from 5-8 PM . Please join us for the festivities. This exhibit showcases paintings, prints, sculpture, wood, photography, jewelry,and mixed media work of over 30 artists from Maine and beyond. The show will be on view through the month of December.

Jude Nickerson
Opening November 5th, 2010.

Jude Nickerson is the featured artist at Betts Gallery for the month of November, 2010. Opening November 5th, 5-8PM. "Fragments" is the current body of work that has embraced the abstract expressionistic style of painting that Nickerson worked in over 40 years ago. As an artist she is constantly addressing issues of identity. Illusive at times, it intrigues and draws her in and she questions--the what, why, and where. In this body of work, the viewer chooses their own interpretation and conclusions.The exhibit runs through November 27th.

"Ghosts", an exhibit of small wall assemblages
by Norman Tinker
October 1 - 30

"Ghosts", an exhibit of small wall assemblages by Norman Tinker, will open on October 1 at Betts Gallery at The Belfast Framer. The reception will be 5 - 8 pm on that day, and the show will run until October 30.

Tinker says "I feel a connection with hard scrapple working people trying to eke out a living. I see ghosts in the places they've been in and abandoned, the things they've used and discarded. Perhaps ultimately we're all reduced to a few scraps and maybe a photo or two, taking up space in some sacred landfill. Anything more depends on how we remember".

These words sum up what this show encompasses. The photos, from rolls of film that Tinker took on travels north of the 45th parallel in 2009 in Maine (Aroostook County) coupled with scraps of metal from the floor of his shop make up the wall assemblages in the Betts Gallery exhibit. Over a short period of time, these pieces came together with few revisions and seemed complete to the artist.

"Carnevale", an exhibit of 25 paintings by Marc Leavitt
Opening Friday, September 3rd

Betts Gallery at The Belfast Framer is pleased to announce the opening of Carnevale, a solo exhibition by Marc Leavitt featuring 25 artworks created in 2010.

The show is from September 1 - 25 with a opening reception on Friday September 3rd from 5 - 8 pm. Gallery hours are Monday to Friday, 10 am to 5 pm and Saturdays 10 am to 2 pm.

Inspired by cross-country travels in 2009 visiting museums in Boston, Philadelphia, Washington, DC, Houston, San Antonio, San Diego, and Los Angeles, Marc Leavitt broadened his ideas regarding meditative abstraction to pursue his concept of musicality through visual stimulation. For Marc, music enjoys underlying counting systems; he attempts to "hear" his paintings by complicating colored lines--multiplying, crosshatching, twisting, and however else moving them forward, backward, upward, and downward to unify their composition.

Carolyn Caldwell

Pastels and Oils

Opening Friday, July 9th from 5 - 8pm

Betts Gallery at The Belfast Framer will be exhibiting the work of artist Carolyn Caldwell from Deer Isle.

The show is from July 2 - 31 with a reception for the artist on Friday July 9th from 5 - 8pm.

Caldwell studied photography and art and then received a degree in Architecture from Boston Architectural Center. She lived and designed houses in the Caribbean for 16 years before resuming her interest in pastels and paint.

She focuses her pastels and paintings on the way the changing light can transform a landscape into abstraction and architecture into geometric compositions.

She is a member of both the Pastel Painters of Maine and Cape Cod, and a member of the Deer Isle Artists Association. She gives pastel workshops and private lessons in her Deer Isle studio.

Dark Shore

Marsh Field

Number 6, Rose

Sunflowers and Oranges

Gus Szabronski

Opening Friday, June 4 2010, 5-8pm

Secret

May 2010

Painting by Bill Irvine

SECRET is the inaugural exhibit at Betts Gallery,the newly named gallery at The Belfast Framer. The show consists of 21 artists working in various media , both 2 and 3 dimensional. The artists are Mike Fletcher, Carolyn Caldwell, Sarah Doremus, John Selmer Larsen, Carol Sloane, Dyan Berk, Alan Crichton, James Kinnealey, Alison Rector, Judy Belasco, Sondra Bogdonoff, Jamie Johnston, Jay Gibson, Bill Irvine, Tom Stewart, Daphne Taylor, Jude Nickerson, Gus Zabronski, Karen MacDonald, Daniel Anselmi, and Emily Nickerson.

Jannetta Jennings: Liberty Canning Factory

Maine artist Jannetta Jennings has been photographing the former Liberty Canning Factory for over a year. From this extended series The Belfast Framer & Gallery will exhibit fourteen digital prints. Almost monochromatic studies, these images capture the slow disintegration of the factory buildings and their immediate surroundings, documenting a part of local history. The factory was in operation from the early 1900s to the mid-1950s, canning local corn and blueberries.

“Colorful Characters”

The Belfast Framer & Gallery is showing new work by Susan Weinz of Belfast and Philadelphia from October 2 through October 30. The work focuses on language and letterforms and includes a series of artist’s books, typographic broadsides and prints.

Stories of colorful characters: quirky, nonsensical texts based on obscure words found at the end of the dictionary. “I like finding odd words I don’t know but that have an interesting sound or evoke the unexpected.” She writes narratives with an eye on more than just spelling and meaning, they also visually challenge the viewer’s reading experience. Appropriately, visuals are based on collections of old wood type that become “characters” in themselves.

Weinz has a BFA from Boston Museum School/Tufts University and an MFA from The University of the Arts in Philadelphia.

“An Alternate Vision”

The Belfast Framer and Gallery will host a reception for artist Mark Kuzio on September 4 from 5- 7pm. Kuzio has been involved with artistic concerns for over 30 years. Clay has been and continues to be his primary medium, but various other materials have attracted his attention. Clay, metal, mixed media, serigraphy, photography and most recently video have all provided means and methods of reflection and exploration.

The wall sculptures in this show are Kuzio’s attempt to explore the expressive possibilities of an alternate material, namely foam. Light in weight, the foam is solely used in an additive process. Kuzio creates sculptural structures that are untraditional in their relationship to the wall. These painted structures “play” with both color and 3-D use of space.

His recent photographs explore the visual relationships between individuals who are in some form of existing relationship. He calls the individuals in these photographs “conjoined” rather than “morphed”. The artist says “conjoining implies a comparing and contrasting while morphing implies change and transformation”. These images are powerful because they represent the forces that exist between spouses, fathers, mothers, brothers, sisters and parents.

"Redefined Shapes"
Daniel Anselmi

August 5 through 29
Reception Friday, August 7, 5-7 p.m.

The Belfast Framer & Gallery is showing new work by Belfast resident Daniel Anselmi August 5 through 29. An opening reception will be held Friday, August 7, 5-7 p.m.

Over the past year, Anselmi's work has explored the use of found materials to create art that often combines imagery and abstraction. This exhibition presents the artist's new body of work that expands his explorations into pure abstraction.

The concept for Anselmi's show came about from his discovery of a set of old hand-cut letter stencils. He was drawn immediately to their simplicity. The artist found that by altering the stencils and adding other elements such as found paper each work developed other shapes and lines, removing any obvious image of the alphabet while keeping the focus on their beauty as "redefined shapes."

Anselmi offers viewers an opportunity to reflect upon each work's individual qualities and appreciate how a simple discovery of castaway materials leads to ever-expanding artistic creation and contemplation.

Summer hours are Monday through Friday, 10-5, and Saturday, 10-2.

"Castine and Watery Places"

July 3 through July 31

"Untitled", oil

"Castine and Watery Places", oil paintings by Peg Worth, will be shown at The Belfast Framer & Gallery from July 3 through July 31.

Worth, of Belfast, is a self taught artist who started painting in her late fifties. Boating in Penobscot Bay exposed her to the beauty that this area has to offer, "...commonplace to some, new shapes and colors to me", she says. "Castine being the main trip, I learned to love the late evenings coming back on the boat."

"The Messengers"Scrolls

June 5 through June 26
Reception Friday, June 5 from 5-7 pm

"Tamara" (detail)

The Belfast Framer & Gallery is exhibiting work by Abbie Read of Appleton from June 5 through June 26. The work, block printed scrolls on mulberry paper, is entitled "The Messengers" and features designs based on insects.

"Messengers bring messages and so the name of the show "The Messengers” is a reference to the idea that various species (in this case, I single out insect species) are telling us that we humans are having an enormous impact on the environment. This is happening and we need to pay attention to the message”, she says.

Read finds them visually intriguing as well, and was creatively inspired by their wings, their patterns, and their tiny size. She says that insects are crucial to life on earth and she has great respect for them.

Read received a BA in Studio Art and Art History from Oberlin College and a MFA from the School of Art at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. She has taught art at the Concord Academy in Massachussetts. In addition to her art degrees, she has a degree in Landscape Design and operates a successful landscape business in the midcoast area.

The show opens Friday, June 5 from 5-7 pm with a reception to meet the artist. The Belfast Framer & Gallery is located at 96 Main Street, Belfast. Gallery hours are Monday through Friday, 10-5. For more information please call 338-6465.

MOTHERa group show

30 artists interpret the concept the Mother
May 1- May 29, 2009
Opening reception - Friday May 1 from 5pm- 7pm

"Connie" by Paul Bochner.

The Belfast Framer and Gallery opens its 2009 gallery season with an exhibit titled Mother, in which artists explore the concept of mother. Appropriate for the month of Mother’s Day, the show honors owner Vicki McDaniel’s late mother Mildred Constantine Bettelheim.

Click here to read more and view images

Small Works Exhibit GROUP SHOW

paintings, prints, collage & more

Holiday Art Gala

December 5 - December 24
Opening Reception: Friday, December 5, 5-8 pm
featuring Maine wine and cheese

Kimberly Callas1000 Circles

Exhibition: October 3 - October 31, 2008
Opening Reception: Friday, October 3, 5-7 pm

Gary Lawless will read his poetry Saturday, October 18 at 2 pm as part of the Belfast Poetry Festival.

Patricia SmithWatercolors and Oils

Exhibition: September 5 - September 30, 2008
Opening Reception: Friday, Sept. 5, 5-7 p.m. pm
Pleas Join Us For the Friday Night Art Walk

Cathy MelioPrints and Pots

Exhibition: August 1 - 30, 2008
Opening Reception: Friday, August 1, 5-7 pm
Pleas Join Us For the Friday Night Art Walk

Chris PolsonLandscapes

Exhibition: July 2- 31, 2008
Opening Reception: Friday, July 11, 5-7 pm
Pleas Join Us For the Friday Night Art Walk

Bob Delio

Exhibition: June 4 - 30, 2008
Opening Reception: Friday, June 6, 5-7 pm
Pleas Join Us For the Friday Night Art Walk

"The Circle"- Group Show

Our opening exhibition for the 2008 season was a group show featuring 25 Artists exploring "The Circle".

William Landmesser, 2007

Pamela Hitchcock, 2007

Tom Wills, 2007

Daniel Anselmi, 2007

Joan Proudman, 2007

Marc Leavitt, 2007