‘Small Works’ at Lauren Clark Fine Art
Great Barrington — Lauren Clark Fine Art at 25 Railroad St. presents “Small Works in Several Dimensions, 2014,” with more than 20 artists from the Berkshires and beyond. This new show will run from November 22 through January 11. An opening reception with the artists will take place Saturday November 22 from 4 to 7 p.m. at the gallery.
Works include drawings, etchings, paintings and sculpture — in sizes ranging from the small to the very small. Artists include Richard Britell, David Eddy, Warner Friedman, Julio Granda, Franco Pellegrino and more.
Clark’s gallery hosts an intoxicating array of fine art and contemporary craft by regional and internationally recognized artists in all media. Many of those featured are local artists.
Lauren Clark’s gallery stops passerby in their tracks. Clark moved the gallery from a small space in Housatonic to Railroad Street last year.
“I like to spend my time surrounded by beautiful things of my choosing,” Clark says. “Everything that is in the gallery is carefully chosen, not just randomly chosen because I think it will sell…The gallery is my work of art; but always a work in progress.”
— H.B.
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Griller Nick Diller’s recipe
for Thanksgiving Turkey
Into our email box one day this week we received the following holiday communiqué from our east side neighbor Nick Diller (the east side being the other side of Main Street, in distinction from the airy heights of The Hill on the west). We are glad to share it – complete with the Griller icon:
Grilled Smoked Turkey
Turkey is a great canvas for flavor. You can brine, and inject, also insert vegetable and fruit flavors in the cavity, or under the skin, but never stuff a grilled turkey. The meat will be done before the stuffing.
1 (12- to 14-pound) turkey, neck and giblets removed and reserved for gravy
Kosher salt and pepper
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 tablespoon vegetable oil
1 large disposable aluminum roasting pan
Preparing the turkey
Using fingers or handle of wooden spoon, carefully separate skin from thighs and breast.
Rub:
4 teaspoons each salt and herbs evenly inside cavity,
1 tablespoon each salt and herbs under skin of each breast.
1 teaspoon each salt and herbs under skin of each leg.
Cooking the turkey
In the gas grill, cook the turkey at 350 degrees. If it’s above 50 degrees ambient temperature, cook 13 to 15 minutes per pound; if colder, 18 to 20 minutes per pound. Cook your turkey breast side down for the first half, then flip up and rotate it for the last half of the cooking time. The key is an instant read thermometer. Insert it in thickest part of thigh, and cook to170 to 175 degrees; the breast 160 degrees.
A gas grill will take only 12 to 14 pound turkey. No larger. That’s the best size. If you have a big crowd, cook two.
— M.S.
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The Beekman Boys take Egremont
Egremont — The “Fabulous Beekman Boys” have come to Kenver Ltd.
Kenver has become the exclusive purveyor of the Beekman 1802 products. These extraordinary two young men have won the Amazing Race, they appear on the Cooking Show and have written New York Times best sellers. In their spare time they create, on their 60-acre farm, wonderful pure products for your home, body and table.
Balsamic based drizzles with fig and elderberries and the Whyte Drizzle highlighted with black currents, are just one special food item they produce.
For the body, they have created the best fragance in the world, Fresh Air. A clean, pure fragrance to balance their goat milk based products, such as hand and body lotion, room sprays, liquid soap and wonderful bars of soap, one is Winter and the other Autumn. So much of what they do is based on the seasons.
Their Heirloom cook books are something that will becom an heirloom in your family and there is also the story of going from Manhattan to a 60 acre farm in upper New York state that will have you smiling and laughing out load. Aptly called “Bucolic Plague.”
They have located 52 Artisans in their area that they now work with and promote. So now along with all the wonderful products they produce, they are busy everyday on their 60 acres, with heirloom vegetable gardens and 130 dairy goats!
— D.S.
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Mondays with Pat, at Art on Main
Great Barrington — Art On Main, the Gallery at Barnbrook Realty at 271 Main St., presents Mondays With Pat: A Group Exhibit through January 2.
Mondays With Pat is the work of 13 Berkshire artists — both amateur and professional –who spend a good part of their Monday watercolor painting with artist-teacher Pat Hogan. The “Mondays” art group began nearly 20 years in Hogan’s home studio. As timed passed and numbers grew, the meetings moved to the CATA gallery in Great Barrington. Hogan teaches morning and evening sessions.
Hogan’s student Fran Hunt considers herself a beginner but has had a lifelong attraction to watercolor. Studying for a degree and raising a family kept her too busy until the nest became empty and she was ready for new artistic challenges. Several of Hogan’s students like Holly McNeely, Mary-Lynn Hall and Harvey Kimmelman have had careers in art, book design and illustration, interior design and advertising respectively. Sue MacVeety has written and illustrated children’s books primarily with images of the animals she lives with on her farm. Watercolor is the medium most often chosen because it suits the en plein air painters as well as the artist working in the studio.
After 35 years of lawyerly left-brain intensity, Betty Levenson is both excited and soothed by painting with watercolor.
“I am thrilled by the interplay of the fortuitous and the intentional, as water moves color across a field of white,” Levenson said. “Painting allows me to view the physical world through a previously hidden window, in which I often experience the beauty of the commonplace as if for the first time.”
For Sara Markel, watercolor has become on ongoing challenge and an engrossing passion that has changed the way she sees both herself and the world. “It informs my dreams almost nightly,” Markel said. “I am in love with the subtleties and nuances of watercolor.”
Harvey Kimmelman’s subjects reflect his desire to express a human emotion or mood. His figurative paintings show his reliance on great artists and traditions with strong drawing and composition.
“Watercolor has become my primary medium because of the immediacy and luminosity of its colors, and although it’s a great medium for experimentation, I like to be in control of the paints, rather than the paints controlling me,” Kimmelman said.
— H.B.
