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Between the Sea Foam
and Over the Sand

July 2nd to July 31st, 2022



Exhibiting artist and DeBlois member Virginia Fishburne Stone explains the title of the show this way: "So much of Rhode Island is surrounded by the sea it seems inevitable that DeBlois Gallery put on a beach-going season art show with the subject matter of its ocean, beaches, boats, sea life, swimmers, beach bathers and anything else the artists for this show can surprise us with of oceanic subject matter. This show was named for a line in an old medieval ballad 'Scarborough Faire,' made famous in a version by Simon and Garfunkel. 'Between the Seafoam and Over the Sand' is just one variation of that line. We hope you will delight in the solving of the impossible tasks undertaken by our show artists in creations of paintings, graphic work, ceramics, metal, sculpture and jewelry."


Shawndavid Berry

For this show I focused on the sensation one has in jumping into the ocean.
The excitement, joy and pleasure at once. The exact moment one enters the water our eyes shut.
My focus was observing that moment from behind the eyes.
The flash of color as ones senses are overwhelmed, is what I hoped to capture in these examples.

Day Break #17
Oil on canvas
Day Break #17
36" x 24"
325
I Thought I Remembered
oil on canvas
I Thought I Remembered
40" x30"
500
I Thought I Remembered #2
oil on canvas
I Thought I Remembered #2
20" x 20"
200
I Thought I Remembered #3
oil on canvas
I Thought I Remembered #3
24" x 18"
250
I Thought I Remembered #4
oil on canvas
I Thought I Remembered #4
30" x 40"
600
Heart Tone
oil on canvas
Heart Tone
30" x 40"
425

Ellen Blomgren

This new series of works is both playful and colorful. The glazes I've been developing over the past decade with a couple of studio assistants is something I'm particularly proud of. All the glazes used in these works are made from natural ingredients mined from the earth! The layer of shine comes from silica, kaolin and salts while the colors come from metals such as iron, copper, cobalt, chrome and tin.

Large Octopus
Stoneware and glazes
Large Octopus
19" x 22" x 7"
800
Small Octopus
Glazed stoneware
Small Octopus
12" x12" x 6"
700
Sea Otter with Starfish
Glazed Stoneware
Sea Otter with Starfish
14"x5"
400
Starfish (7)
Glazed stoneware
Starfish (7)
4-5"
65 ea.
Seashells
Slip cast stoneware with glaze
Seashells
5-6"
55 ea.

Laura White Carpenter

Laura White Carpenter is a Providence-based artist who primarily works in hand-built porcelain sculpture and mixed media of found materials (metal, wood, "junk"). She is an accomplished welder and manipulates her found steel, also often adding hand-built ceramics to her sculptures. She has lived on four continents and has been greatly influenced by the seemingly universal imperative of using decorative marks to indicate an object’s or place’s significance. Meanwhile, she has increasingly utilized techniques and supplies that have a lower impact upon the Earth. She enjoys creating the perfectly imperfect form and intentionally retain tool marks in her hand-built ceramics. For the past few years, she has been creating hand-built spherical raindrop forms, inspired by the roots of ceramics, using the coil-building method as humans have done for tens of thousands of years to make essential functional items. She was also motivated by the desire to realize a consistent practice, to truly hone her skills, and to explore a wide variety of decorative processes, including experimental methods such as adding glass, metal, fiber, and found objects into the clay body or glaze. The coil-building process uses minimal water, and having lived in a highly arid area for a few years (northern Ghana), she recognized this is a more sustainable form of ceramics in a world where clean water is a privilege not the basic human right that it should be.

New Skin for Old Bones
ceramic / found object
New Skin for Old Bones
12 x 8 x 8
295
Glacial Falls
ceramic
Glacial Falls
11 x 7 x 7
295
Vincent's Dream
ceramic
Vincent's Dream
11 x 7 x 7
295
Water
ceramic
Water
21x20x20
495

Izabella Casselman

All humans have the need to connect with each other. Touching is the most immediate way to connect. Words can be misunderstood.

Touch
Mixed media with plaster
Touch
19" x 25"
400

Juliette Casselman

Juliette is an artist, educator and mom native to Rhode Island. She is from a family of artists, smart talkers, and opinionated loud mouths. Juliette's art is inspired by her love of nature, her kiddos, movies, and sometimes her own lesson plans.

Rock Crab
Watercolor on paper
Rock Crab
14" x 16"
100
Beach Roots
Watercolor on paper
Beach Roots
22" x 26"
150
Moody Gil
Watercolor on paper
Moody Gil
22" x 28"
250

Frank Fishburne

Frank Fishburne was born an artist but it was not revealed to him until later in life. His grandmother was an artist and three of her grandchildren have become artists. Although he inherited artistic sensibilities he spent his working life working with machines and metal. He reveres tools. He has been called "The Man of A Thousand Vises" not because of his bad behavior but because he has a thousand actual metal vises.

As I recall, his artistic journey began with a series of Helmets he made and brought to a family gathering. He has made both sophisticated, intellectual, refined and crudely finished metal pieces. Raised inside the beltway, he has been painfully aware of political absurdities and once did a collection of 9 crows in metal, assembling them in a line entitled "The Judges" referring to the 9 Supreme Court judges. He enjoys taking parts of metal objects and redefining them as something else. His work ranges from the acerbic to the silly.

Frank’s reply when asked to comment on his work is "Hope you like it."

-Virginia Fishburne Stone

Jaws
Metal
Jaws
6"w x 12"d x 18"h
300

Karen Nash

Life’s a beach, some say, and I’ve beachcombed life’s shores all my life. I’m fascinated by the detritus cast away to the margins, shores, middens, and yes, dumpsters that I encounter. As our climate changes, our tidelines creep farther and farther inland, and the debris that people have casually tossed into Mother Ocean is slowly but surely being tossed back at us.

My dimensional collage, Washed Ashore in Senegal, is based on a photograph I took on the beach at Joal, Senegal, birthplace of Senegal’s first president, the revered poet-statesman Leopold Senghor. The high tide line is a tangled clutter of seaweed, shells, plastics, and piles of rags. Second-hand clothing from overseas that doesn’t sell in charitable outlets is bundled and sold to vendors in West Africa and elsewhere. Too often, the tee shirts and other textiles that don’t sell on the street are thrown into the ocean, only to wash up miles down the coast, including the stretch where I caught the ironic image of an Obama backpack among the other debris.

My other piece, a mixed-media photocollage, is probably self-explanatory once one knows the title: Trinity-by-the-Sea, Newport, RI, circa 2051. Present-day Trinity Church sits uphill from Newport Harbor on grassy Queen Anne Square, but the shoreline depicted in the work is approximately where some predictions of sea level rise indicate that the water’s edge will have advanced by mid-century. Enough said.

Washed Ashore in Senegal
Photo and found objects collage
Washed Ashore in Senegal
18"w x 22"h
130
Trinity-by-the-Sea, circa 2051
Photo collage and acrylic
Trinity-by-the-Sea, circa 2051
30"w x 48"h
220

Suzie Pacheco

Fascinated with the beautiful distortion of the underwater world and with a history of life drawing, a wonderful union was made. As it continues to call to me, the Swimmer Series is born.

Blissful Patterning
Oil on Canvas
Blissful Patterning
18"x24"
1850
A Zen Meditation
Oil on Canvas
A Zen Meditation
18"x24"
1850
One With The Elements
Oil on Canvas
One With The Elements
16"x20"
1600
Surrender
Oil on Canvas
Surrender
12"x16"
1400
The Plunge
Oil on Canvas
The Plunge
11"x14"
1250
Cool Down
Oil on Canvas
Cool Down
12"x16"
1400

Virginia Fishburne Stone

As so many folks, I have spent a lot of time at the ocean. Currently I live in two locations near the ocean in Martha's Vineyard, Massachusetts and along the North Carolina shore. Hence, I have much accumulated ocean related art. The background for the invitation for the show is an oil I did as a child which due to my parents I now own. It was painted at the Outer Banks of North Carolina.

Sometimes I say that if it is not sold that I will rework it. There is a figure drawing in this show that I drew in college back when we were not allowed nude models. I reworked it. At the time of the original drawing it was still the time of the white and black racial division of beaches in North Carolina. I turned this vintage pastel piece into a commentary on a black bather looking through the handrail bars on a deck at the water that she is not allowed to go down to enjoy.

Some of the other pieces are just fun, some are commentary. Some celebrate the magic of the beach, even at night. Many study the people on the beach. If they are hung I have two that were early watercolors of shells that I collected and painted at the beach house kitchen in dishes when I decided to move from abstraction or nonobjective symbolic art to realistic painting done back back in my late twenties. I tend to slip easily back and forth from realism to abstraction without even thinking about it. One of the results of being a teacher of art and art history for much of my life is that I have a lot of stuff in my head. I also have have had lots of change in my life and lived many places. I have been to all fifty states and some countries outside the US. I think all that is reflected in my work. People say "Oh these things are such different styles." But to me they are just reactions to doing something and then doing something else and then trying to solve the piece in whatever way that works. The only thing I can say for sure about my approach is that if I think I have a plan about where it the piece is going I get fooled and the piece ends up somewhere else. I am in charge but not in charge.

Like my cousin Frank says about his work, "I hope you like it."

July the Fourth
prismacolor
July the Fourth
6" by 9"
125
Sea Shells 1
watercolor
Sea Shells 1
11" by 14"
125
Beach Odalisque
watercolor, prismacolor
Beach Odalisque
6" by 16"
150
Sunrise
prismacolor
Sunrise
11' by 14'
200
Sunburnt
watercolor,preismacolor
Sunburnt
20' by 10 and 3/4
150
Going Fishing
prismacolor
Going Fishing
5" by 7"
95
Splash
watercolor,prismacolor
Splash
5' by 7'
95
Beach Odalisques
Lying in the sand like seals on a beach, indolent, removed from all concerns,
minds focused on the great nothingness, going only to the water to wet their toes.

watercolor
Beach Odalisques
11" by 14"
150
Back Porch,The White Beach, detail
Pastel
Back Porch,The White Beach, detail
22" by 28"
400
Sun Worshippers
Collage,watercolor,prismacolor
Sun Worshippers
5" by 7"
95
Sun Worshippers, detail
Collage,watercolor,prismacolor
Sun Worshippers, detail
5" by 7"
95

Joyce Zipperer

Women have been forever lured and influenced by trends in fashion. My work focuses on women's shoes and undergarments, as well as jewelry. I sculpt with metal to underscore how some of these styles might feel when worn, and to mimic and/or exaggerate different current styles, hopefully to bring a smile to the viewer's face. Miniature versions of undergarments and bikinis in wire weaving, cut metal and natural stone are made into jewelry.

IMPRINT (view 1)
hammered copper with repurposed faucet knob.
IMPRINT (view 1)
2" x 4" x 9 1/2"
395
IMPRINT (view 2)
hammered copper with repurposed faucet knob.
IMPRINT (view 2)
2" x 4" x 9 1/2"
395
SHOW GIRL
aluminum and glass blobs
SHOW GIRL
8" x 5" x 8"
650
SLIDE
copper, steel, antique wheel, faucet knob
SLIDE
5" x 2" x 12"
900
POINTED TOE
stainless steel mesh, aluminum, handwoven wire laces
POINTED TOE
8" x 4" x 16"
900
BLUE WAVES (bikini necklace)
hand cut aluminum/silver chain
BLUE WAVES (bikini necklace)
20" x 1/2"
110
Pendant Point (necklace)
picture jasper, non-tarnish copper wire weaving & chain
Pendant Point (necklace)
24" x 3/4"
95
RED BIKINI FLING (view 1)
hand cut aluminum, waxed linen ties, glass beads, silver chain
RED BIKINI FLING (view 1)
20" x 3"
110
RED BIKINI FLING (view 2)
hand cut aluminum, waxed linen ties, glass beads, silver chain
RED BIKINI FLING (view 2)
20" x 3"
110
BIKINI CLOTHESLINE
Crocheted copper wire, for corner mounting (shown)
BIKINI CLOTHESLINE
3/4"h x 11"l
250

DeBlois Member Artists

Fish to swim into summer!

Lacey Fish,
Clay sculpture
Lacey Fish
17"l x 10"w
150

Jillian Barber

Little Lacey Fish,
Clay sculpture
Little Lacey Fish
8"l x 5.5"w
48

Jillian Barber

Blue Bird planter/bowl,
Clay sculpture
Blue Bird planter/bowl
10"h
75

Ron Caplain

Mary of the Street Repair,
Composite digital photograph
Mary of the Street Repair
16" x 20"
200

Ron Caplain

Zelda of the Street Repair,
Composite digital photograph
Zelda of the Street Repair
16" x 20"
200

My time at the easel is restful and freeing. It's a journey into myself and a learning experience. Feeling the sensuousness of the paint itself, the vibration of blending the colors, and the emotion that arises as I work. It has lessened my personal need for perfection and to let my flow be more natural. As the daughter of an artist, I was fortunate to have the encouragement to explore being creative in any way possible. My goal as an artist is to share what brings me joy and happiness. Painting has also become a necessity in my life, a way to renew my brain and my spirit.

Morning, Glory,
Oil on Canvas
Morning, Glory
12x12
175

I am an artist using a camera to create images of the world around me as I see it at that moment....that is what I do capture a moment.

Ship-Shape,
Color Photograph
Ship-Shape
29" x 22"
350

J R Lynch

Cheramie,
Black and White Photograph
Cheramie
29" x 22"
350

This is an experimental work using mixed media. A monotype was produced using printers ink on rice paper. When completely dry, I coated the print with a thin layer of encaustic. Then mounted in small wood window frames which have been hinged to all stable standing. Place in front of light it becomes more luminous. The scene was created using materials from the Caribbean and photos of Koi.

Under the Sea,
Monoprint w/encaustic
Under the Sea
24"x14"
195

Karen Nash

Ukrainian Sunflower
Assemblage
Sale proceeds will go to Chef Jose Andres' World Central Kitchen mission in Ukraine!
Ukrainian Sunflower
30" dia.
200

When I was a kid some abstract painters were creating works that were without allusions, without references and thus were objects in their own right. I discovered that a zig zag line didn't describe anything but itself. I filled a sketchbook with designs incorporating the zig zag. This particular interest morphed into something else.
Years later I decided that some of those old sketches deserved to be made into finished pieces and the ZIGZAGTAG series is the result.

ZIGZAGTAG#1,
Acrylic on panel
ZIGZAGTAG#1
12" x 6"
50

Michael O'Donnell

ZIGZAGTAG#2,
Acrylic on panel
ZIGZAGTAG#2
12" x 6"
50

Michael O'Donnell

ZIGZAGTAG#3,
Acrylic on panel
ZIGZAGTAG#3
12" x 6"
50

Michael O'Donnell

ZIGZAGTAG#4,
Acrylic on panel
ZIGZAGTAG#4
12" x 6"
50

Michael O'Donnell

ZIGZAGTAG#5,
Acrylic on panel
ZIGZAGTAG#5
12" x 6"
50

Michael O'Donnell

ZIGZAGTAG#6,
Acrylic on panel
ZIGZAGTAG#6
12" x 6"
50

Michael O'Donnell

ZIGZAGTAG#7,
Acrylic on panel
ZIGZAGTAG#7
12" x 6"
50

Michael O'Donnell

ZIGZAGTAG#8,
Acrylic on panel
ZIGZAGTAG#8
12" x 6"
50

Michael O'Donnell

ZIGZAGTAG#9,
Acrylic on panel
ZIGZAGTAG#9
12" x 6"
50

Michael O'Donnell

ZIGZAGTAG#10,
Acrylic on panel
ZIGZAGTAG#10
12" x 6"
50

This is one of twenty zinc-plate etchings that I made in the early 2000s, at an excellent editioning studio in New Delhi.

EXPRESSIONS,
Zinc Plate Etching
EXPRESSIONS
18"x12"
80

Virginia Fishburne Stone

Fish Are Jumping,
watercolor,ink,collage
Fish Are Jumping
11 by 14 inches
75

Virginia Fishburne Stone

Picasso's Ponies,
Blockprint, watercolor and collage
Picasso's Ponies
11 1/2' x 14 1/2 "
95

Virginia Fishburne Stone

Her Horse,
Watercolor and prismacolor
Her Horse
6" x 8"
50

Currently I am working on a new series of prints "Back to the Garden" which are inspired by the colors, shapes and patterns that I see in flowers, gardens and landscapes around me.

Loopy Lupines,
monotype & collage
Loopy Lupines
24 x 24 (image)
650