Summer 2024

June 1-July 1, 2024 Tessa Greene O’Brien (and Friends!)

Tessa Greene O’Brien

Annex Arts Artist Residency Program and Gallery B are pleased to welcome Tessa Greene O’Brien as Artist-in-Residence for the month of June. Tessa, a painter and curator working in South Portland, will be working here for the month.

As an extension of her curatorial and arts organization practice, Tessa will host several other visiting artists to enjoy supported working time and space on the coast of Maine. The artists will each work independently, with shared space and time allowing conversations to unfold luxuriously over several days and deepening creative alliances. O’Brien hopes to introduce new artists to the Blue Hill Peninsula community, promoting cross-pollination and expanded creative communities for all!

June visiting artists  will include Emily Farranto (New Orleans), Annika Early (Belfast), Jeane Cohen (Brooklyn), Alice Jones (Portland), and more. Alice Jones’ residency dates will be determined by the impending births of two baby goats, expect to see Alice in mid-June painting gardens & greenery around Castine. Annika Early will be working on her elaborate black and white drawings while in residence from June 20-23, and Jeane Cohen will be here and painting for the later half of June.

A Maine native, Tessa Greene O’Brien is an artist & curator based in South Portland. She received a BS degree in Fine Art from Skidmore College and an MFA from Maine College of Art and Design. O'Brien has shown throughout the United States, including recent exhibitions at Platform Project Space, Brooklyn; Vardan Gallery, Los Angeles; Dowling Walsh Gallery, Rockland; Buoy Gallery, Kittery; Sears Peyton Gallery, NYC; Studio E Gallery, Seattle; and the Center for Maine Contemporary Art. She was a 2022-2023 Residential Fellow at The Lunder Institute for American Art at Colby College; other residencies include Surf Point, Tides Institute, Monson Arts, Haystack, Hewnoaks, Vermont Studio Center, Joseph A Fiore Art Center, and Stephen Pace House. Grants and awards include the Elizabeth Greenshields Foundation, The Ellis Beauregard Foundation, the Maine Arts Commission, the Joseph. A. Fiore Painting Prize, St. Botolph Emerging Artist Award, and the Kindling Fund at SPACE Gallery.

Special events will include two exhibitions, Tessa Green O’Brien and residents weekly Open Studio hours on Sundays 11-2:00 through June, and a The One Series Salons will be held at the Annex on Saturday, Sunday, and Monday, June 8th, 9th, and 10th, 5:00-6:30 PM.

Visiting artists invited by Tessa Greene O’Brien will be included in and making work for and the exhibitions at Gallery B.
“Strawberry Moon” is on view to June 12
“FAMILIARS” opens on June 14th, an exhibition about dogs, cats, and all manner of creature companions.
“Being Here”, opening July 1, will include much of the work resulting from artists spending time here during the month of June. 

Annex Arts studios are located at 8 Water Street in Castine.

OPEN STUDIOS

Open Studio days include Sundays, 11:00 - 2:00.

When the open flag is up, visitors are welcome to pop in for brief greetings. Artists will also be working out in the field during their stay on the Blue Hill Peninsula.

June 1-11, 2024 Emily Farranto

Emily Farranto, a writer and artist based in New Orleans, will be in residence from June 1-11 working on her next book which is about art and failure. Her writing has appeared in Slate, New Orleans Review, Arts and Letters, and 433. She writes a monthly art column for ANTIGRAVITY and publishes more art writing on her Substack, Village Disco and Disco Nola and posts art daily on Instagram @thevillagedisco

Events:

Emily will host a series of One-Work Salons in which participants view and discuss a single artwork for an extended duration of 1.5 hours (while enjoying refreshments). “Spending time with a single work of art is an extraordinary experience. This process reminds us how to look at art, that it’s worth taking time with a work, refraining from judgement, open to being changed by it.” 

The One Series Salons will be held at the Annex West Water Street Studios on Saturday, Sunday, and Monday, June 8, 9, and the 10th from 5:00-6:30 PM

June 12-24: Alice Jones, Annika Earley, Jana Benitez

Invited as part of Tessa Greene O’Brien’s stay were artists: Alice Jones, Annika Earley, Jana Benitez

Alice Jones:

Alice Jones is an artist living and working in Portland, Maine. She earned her BA in visual arts from Bowdoin College in 2017, and in 2018 she co-founded  New System Exhibitions, a project space devoted to providing solo shows to emerging and mid-career artists. She founded and manages the Kids Table Goat Collective, which raises a small herd of dairy goats in Freeport. 
Born and raised in eastern Tennessee, she holds dear the untamed mountain-laurel woods with their tumbling creeks and oppressive humidity, and the influences of missing home often  prevail in her work. In her paintings she explores relationships to place and landscape through a lens of memory and emotion.

Annika Earley:

Annika Earley (she/they) makes intimate works on paper about her alter-ego/fairy godmother/personal demon named Batshit. Her work considers the demands and joys of motherhood, sensuality and sexuality, gender, and pre-teen nostalgia. She often uses German fairy and folk tales and Spice Girls lyrics as reference points in her work.

Earley grew up in rural Switzerland but moved to mid-coast Maine in 2000. Earley holds an MFA from Maine College of Art and an M.Phil from College of the Atlantic. She has been a resident at the Ellis-Beauregard Foundation in Rockland, ME, Hewnoaks Artist Colony in Lovell, ME, Monson Arts in Monson, ME, Pace House Residency in Stonington, ME, and the Walkaway House in North Adams, MA. She has been supported by the St. Botolph Foundation in Boston, MA, the New York Foundation for the Arts, The Albert K, Murray Fund, and SPACE Gallery’s American Rescue Plan Grant. Earley’s work is in the collections of the University of Southern Maine and the College of the Atlantic and has been most recently exhibited at Field Projects in New York, NY and Moss Galleries in Falmouth, ME. She currently lives in Belfast, ME.

Jana Benitez:

Benitez was born and raised in New York City within the context of a Filipino family and continues to live and work in her native city, as well as in mid-coast Maine and Manila. She holds an MFA from Boston University and a BFA from Brown University (magna cum laude). Her vibrant, expressive paintings are highly sought after by collectors and institutions in Southeast Asia, Europe, and the United States. Benitez’s works are included in major private and public collections, such as Crystal Bridges Museum in Arkansas, USA; the Pataka Museum in New Zealand; and Ayala Museum, Museo Pambata, St. Luke’s Hospital, and the Philippine Women’s University in the Philippines.

Events:

Open Plein Air, Perceptual Painting Sessions:
Regularly, as weather permits, Evenings, 5-8 pm, see our socials for specifics.

Closing Exhibition: “Being Here”, opening July 1, will include much of the work resulting from artists spending time here during the month of June. 

June 18-July 4: Jeane Cohen

Jeane Cohen joined Tessa, and several other artists in residence for 2 weeks of painting on site and in the studio.

Jeane Cohen (b. 1988 Worcester, MA) divides her time between Midcoast Maine and New York. She received a BA from Hampshire College and MFA from The School of The Art Institute of Chicago. She has exhibited nationally at venues including the Institute for Contemporary Art at the Maine College of Art and Design (Portland), Miami University (Ohio), Slag Gallery (New York), Julius Caesar Gallery (Chicago), Make Room (Los Angeles), Able Baker Contemporary (Portland) and Vox Populi (Philadelphia), among other exhibitions. In 2022, Cohen was awarded a Pollock-Krasner Foundation Grant and a Sharpe-Walentas Studio Program Residency.

More about Jeane Cohen here: https://www.jeanecohen.com/

June 4-August 24: Kelly Carmody and Viktor Butko

Viktor Butko:

Viktor Butko, born in Moscow in 1978, breathed in the fumes of solvents and linseed oil daily as a child on visits to Verkhnyaya Maslovka street, where his grandfather, the well-known landscape painter Viktor Chulovich, had his studio. Viktor’s parents, Nikolai Butko and Marina Chulovich, were artists, too, as were the Verkhnyaya Maslovka street neighbors: Arkady Plastov had a studio downstairs, and Viktor’s grandfather would summon Plastov and his own artist offspring to communal dinners in the studio by banging on the radiator pipes. In summertime, the Butko family would follow Chulovich to a village between Moscow and St. Petersberg called Vyshny Volochok, where young Viktor would wander the woods and build forts out of the native aspen and alder. Today, Butko is married to a New England realist painter, Kelly Carmody, and lives in Waltham, Mass., making frequent working pilgrimages to the Maine coast and to Sag Harbor. Indeed, as he told Boston Voyager magazine, it was through the port of Sag Harbor that he came to the United States: He had met a group of plein air painters, including Ben Fenske and Marc Dalessio, in Italy in 2013, and a few years later was invited to participate with them in an exhibition at the Grenning Gallery (which represents both Butko and his wife). He is an Impressionist painter. His subjects are things of loveliness, caught in moments of quiet, of stillness — a hammock out of which someone has just risen, an osprey nest in the gloaming, lilacs in a vase, wet snow in woods — but his work is not sentimental. He shows us our world as it is, when its plain beauty is evident to those who stop to look. –Grenning Gallery

Kelly Carmody:

“Carmody’s virtuosic handling of paint is quietly gestural,” says curator Katherine French. “Her paintings are not only intelligently composed, but also filled with an exquisite sensitivity to light. In them, she manages to successfully re-interpret 19th century realism for contemporary audiences in a way that is fresh, original and absolutely sincere.” – Katherine French, Curator

Kelly Carmody’s work has been widely exhibited and collected. One of her major figurative works was chosen as a finalist in the 2016 Outwin Boochever Award at the National Portrait Gallery in Washington D.C and another was selected for the 2015 BP Portrait Award Show at the National Portrait Gallery in London. In addition, the historic Guild of Boston Artists elected her to become a member in 2015, she won the Edmund C. Tarbell Award in her first juried members show and won the Charles Movalli Award of Excellence from the Guild 3 years later. She received the Blanche E. Colman Award as well as the Newcomb Award for Traditional Painting. She was invited to exhibit in the 2016 American Masters show at the Salmagundi Club. In 2022 She won the North Shore Arts Award at the Guild of Boston Artists.

She exhibits work regularly in solo and group shows at the Sloane Merrill Gallery, The Grenning Gallery, the Guild of Boston Artists,and The Christina Gallery. Publications that have featured her work include American Art Collector, Fine Art Connoisseur, International Artist Magazine, Fine Art Today, Southwest Art, Studio Visit Magazine, Boston Magazine, and The Boston Globe. Carmody has won grants from the Ludwig Foundation, Turkey Land Cove Foundation, and Massachusetts Cultural Council, as well as receiving an Edward G. McDowell Travel Grant from the Art Students League and the Walter Feldman Grant. In 2014 she won 3rd place in the Portrait Society’s International Portrait Competition.

Carmody attended Massachusetts College of Art and furthered her studies at the Art Students League and in the studio of Numael Pulido. She is married to Viktor Butko and paints and teaches in and around her Waltham, MA studio.

July 08-30: Lauren Herzak-Bauman and Ryan Jaenke

Lauren Herzak-Bauman

Born and raised in Cleveland, OH, Lauren received a BFA in Ceramics from Bowling Green State University and an MFA in Studio Art from the University of Minnesota Twin Cities. She returned to Cleveland, Ohio in 2013 to pursue my artistic career after living in Minneapolis, MN for close to seven years. She now lives and works in a former electric car-manufacturing factory in Lakewood, Ohio.

Lauren’s practice is three-fold: she makes pottery, sculpture, and public art. Within each of these practices, she uses concept and craft to create a transformative experience for her audience. Her most recent public art project is currently installed at Penn State Behrend in Erie, PA.

Lauren worked with students and faculty at the plastics fabrication laboratory on campus to design and fabricate a site-specific public art piece entitled Colorwalk. Other recent public art projects include Common Energy for Cleveland Public Library’s See Also program and Trichromic at Cuyahoga Community College Western Campus.

While living in Minnesota she received several grants and fellowships to expand her artistic practice and work on large-scale projects, including the MCAD Jerome Emerging Artist Fellowship and the Minnesota State Arts Board Arts Initiative Grant. Lauren was a CPAC 2016 Creative Workforce Fellow, which she utilized to expand upon her sculpture and public art practice.

In the last few years, Lauren has exhibited her work in several solo two and three-person exhibitions including SPACES Gallery in Cleveland, Harcourt House in Edmonton, Alberta, and most recently, Gallery W at the American Greetings Headquarters in Westlake. Lauren also shows sculptures at Corey Daniels Gallery in Wells, Maine.

Lauren has participated in several residencies and workshops around the country and internationally, including leading a two-week residency at Watershed Center for Ceramic Arts in Maine and attending a month-long residency at Da Wang Cultural Center near Jingdezhen, China.

Ryan jaenke:

Ryan Jaenke was born and raised in Cleveland, Ohio. During his formative years, he discovered inspiration in the urban environment, observing and drawing influence from the emergence of graffiti art, underground music, and skateboarding.

Recently, Ryan has found his rhythm by dividing his time between painting large-scale murals and working in his studio. These creations stem from his enduring passion for graffiti art and street culture, incorporating iconic and abstract elements filtered through his design sensibilities.

Ryan has been honored with various grants and residencies, including the CPAC Creative Workforce Fellowship and the Creative Fusion residency, providing him with opportunities to work on projects covering hundreds of feet of building surfaces. Notable commissions include works for Warby Parker in Cleveland and New York City, Meta in New Albany, Ohio, and Rocket Mortgage Fieldhouse in Cleveland. Ryan currently resides and works in Lakewood, Ohio.

July 12-28: Drew Klassen, Shelley Mansel, Chrissy Nickerson

Drew Klassen:

Drew Klassen was born in Toronto in 1964, (mis)spent his youth in Winnipeg, and in 1986 enrolled at the Nova Scotia College of Art & Design in Halifax, Nova Scotia. Following his studies at NSCAD, he continued making art while supporting himself by varied means. While teaching English in Japan, Klassen began to exhibit his work, and on his return to Canada in 1998 he established a consistent studio practise. From 2001-2007 he taught representational methods and theory at the Dalhousie University School of Architecture and from 2006 to 2010 he taught painting at the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design. His work is held in numerous private and institutional collections in Canada and abroad. In 2010 he received one of five Established Artist Recognition Awards presented annually by the government of Nova Scotia. He is represented in galleries across Canada. Drew now lives and works in Ottawa, ON.

Shelley Mansel:

Shelley Mansel’s professional artistic career has spanned 20 years and has been devoted almost exclusively to painting the landscape. The landscape construct provides the foundation for her painting, yet each body of work has portrayed a specific sub-theme within this context.

Her formal strengths with respect to draftsmanship, colour, composition, and luminosity support her ability to restrain the landscape to its most elemental forms and convey a conventional and idyllic portrayal of geography. Her paintings demonstrate a timeless and universal quality, yet the beauty of each image also alludes to the inherent ephemeral nature of landscape.

Mansel excels within the landscape genre. She portrays rural environments which are distinctly Canadian and yet are invariably universal. Shelley Mansel is committed to an artistic practice which examines the natural world and how we, as artist and viewer within this realm of painted invention, can often visualize and find context for our own human reflection.

Chrissy Nickerson:

Chrissy Nickerson studied at the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design where she graduated with a Bachelor of Fine Art and a Bachelor of Design in Environmental Planning.  She also completed a one year study in Florence, Italy at the Lorenzo D’Medici Institute of Art and Design.  

Chrissy has won several awards,  including the Canmore Award of Emerging Artist of the Year (2007), Mayor’s Spotlight on the Arts (2015) and  has exhibited widely across Canada in both solo and group exhibitions.  Several residencies in Banff and the Yukon are also to her credit.

Nickerson’s vivid palette and confident brushwork have propelled her popularity in her local community.  The landscapes reveal innovative techniques of interpreting the natural environment.

“Colour and bold brushwork allow me to build vivid landscape representations like big bold tapestries. Onsite, in the fresh air with my colours, is a great day spent.  I have a deep passion to interpret our world in my own unique way. The challenge of growing as an artist is constant. I have always been, and will always be, a working artist, reveling in the continued learning process.”

July 27-August 11: Hannah Bureau

Hannah Bureau:

Hannah is a perennial resident at Annex Arts, which started as a residency supporting artists parenting young children. Her children have grown up calling our village home for two weeks of the year since they were infants. Welcome Jeff and Hannah, Isla and Elsi!

Hannah was born in Paris and moved to America at the age of 8. She lives in an old textile mill that has been converted into artist spaces with her husband, dog Mayzie, and twin girls, Isla and Elsi. Hannah Bureau is a graduate of Rhode Island School of Design, and was selected as an outstanding graduate student at Massachusetts College of Art and Design for Boston Young Contemporaries at Boston University. Hannah has exhibited extensively through the US and is in several private and public collections. . She has been featured in may magazine publications including Maine Home & Design Magazine, and Artists on Art Magazine. Her work will soon be published in International Artists magazine. When not at work in the studio, Hannah teaches paitning at The Rhode Island School of Design.

August 14 - 21: Judi Vitale and Mara Korkola

Mara Korkola:

Toronto-based painter Mara Korkola is nationally recognized for her captivating works that compress worlds of information into compact frames. While many of Korkola’s paintings capture anonymous city streets at night, her subject matter has also included airports and landscapes. Like keyholes, her paintings demand our attention and focus and transport us into another time and space. Korkola graduated from the Ontario College of Art, Toronto (AOCA); Wichita State University, Kansas (BFA) and the University of Texas at San Antonio, San Antonio (MFA). She has exhibited in Canada, the United States and Germany, including Painting as Paradox at Artists Space in New York, Synthetic Psychosis at the Museum of Contemporary Canadian Art, Toronto, High Roads and Low Roads at the Museum of Fine Arts at Florida State University, 60 Painters, a survey of Toronto painters, Auto-Motive: World from the Windshield, at Oakville Galleries and has had a comprehensive solo exhibition of her No Place series of paintings at the MacLaren Art Centre in Barrie, Ontario. Korkola is held in corporate and private collections, and is the recipient of numerous grants and awards including the Ontario Arts Council, the Toronto Arts Council and the Canada Council for the Arts.

Judi Vitale:

As an astrologer, writer, and empowerment coach, Judi Vitale has had her eye on the sky for most of her life, and she loves using her skills to guide and connect with others. Her work has appeared in Marie Claire, Redbook, and Modern Bride. When she's not whipping up horoscopes or working with clients, Judi lectures, teaches, and offers support through reiki, breathwork, and meditation.

Judi received her certification as a consulting astrologer from the National Council for Geocosmic Research in 1995. She's the author of Lovecasts: The Astrological Guide to Finding Lasting Love and Babystrology: The Astrological Guide to Your Little Star.

Follow Judi: Website