George Marshall Store
In 1867 George Marshall purchased the John Hancock Warehouse and surrounding land on the York River. Next door, he built the George Marshall Store, where he sold general merchandise as well as wood, building materials, and coal. The store remained in the Marshall family until 1954 when it was sold. In the years following, it served as home to the York Art Association, a gift shop, and the offices and research library of the Old York Historical Society. Upon purchase of the York County Trust building in 1994, Old York moved to its offices to their current location in the center of York Village. Two years later, Curator of Contemporary Art Mary P. Harding revived the gallery space with changing contemporary art exhibitions as well as occasional collaborative projects that blend historical themes and objects from the museum's collection with contemporary art.
Mary P. Harding, Curator of Contemporary Art
Mary is a 1975 graduate of Brown University and has always been passionate about art. After graduation, she was an exhibit designer for Strawbery Banke in Portsmouth, New Hampshire and later for the Margaret Woodbury Strong Museum in Rochester, New York. She served as director of the Barn Gallery in Ogunquit, Maine for four years. Since 1990, she has been an independent art consultant specializing in regional contemporary art and, since 1996, she has curated the contemporary art exhibits for the George Marshall Store Gallery, a property and project of the Museums of Old York.
2008 Art Exhibitions
April 26 ~ June 1
Momentum VI
This annual exhibit features the 2007 New Hampshire Charitable Foundation’s Piscataqua Region Artist Advancement Grant winner and several finalists. Since it’s inception in 2002, the foundation’s annual grant program has drawn increasing numbers of artists to compete for up to $30,000 to support plans that can make a significant difference to the advancement of an artist’s work. Although there is only one artist to receive the financial grant, the jury also selects a group of finalists whose work is exhibited in the annual Momentum exhibition presented by the Museums of Old York’s George Marshall Store Gallery. This year’s artists include Kirsten Reynolds, winner of the 2007 Piscataqua Region Artist Advancement Grant, and five finalists: Kim Bernard, Ross Cisneros, Dan James, Douglas Prince and Gail Spaien.
Marian Baker and Jenny Moore ~ Paintings and Pots
This installation in the dock level gallery combines Jenny Moore’s colorful, imaginative paintings with Marian Baker’s elegant and functional ceramics. The colors and forms of Baker’s ceramics seem to connect with Moore’s work as if they would be the chosen wares of the people who live in the whimsical dwellings depicted in her paintings.
June 7 ~ July 13
Inventions, Visions and Other Tales
This group show focuses on work by Donald Saaf, Julia Zanes and Michael Stasiuk. As husband and wife Donald Saaf and Julia Zanes have often exhibited their work together. Both create colorful, narrative paintings that are inspired by their rural Vermont family life, fanciful dream worlds and literature. The figurative, found object sculptures, made by their long time friend Michael Stasiuk, are the perfect characters to live in the imaginative worlds depicted in Saaf’s and Zane’s paintings.
Gail Spaien ~ Garden Archive
Gail Spaien is a painter who explores questions and ideas related to the visual representation of nature and the human interaction with the natural world. Garden Archive is an imagined botanical archive that will include an installation of the artist’s faux-scientific watercolor illustrations and preserved flowers. Area master flower arrangers and landscape designers will collaborate in the installation by creating arrangements from their gardens.
July 19 ~ September 7
Road Trip 2008
The sub-title for this exhibition could be “On the Road Again” as curator Mary Harding and Gallery Associate Scotty Friar, hummed that tune and many others as they logged thousands of miles traveling through New England to personally select work for the second installment of Road Trip. From New York City to Eastport, Maine they met many new artists, found wonderful places to eat, restful places to stay and views not to be missed. Their finds and adventures are recounted in Road Trip 2008 and their accompanying online journal.
Susan Wahlrab
Susan Wahlrab brings the complex development of intaglio to the unforgiving medium of watercolor. Through this technique, she is able to describe her fascination of biology and connection to the spirit of the land. Her richly colored and detailed paintings depict images of deep forests and the edges where water meets the land. These quiet, reflective places are a part of a personal journey, an attempt to understand the diverse and intricate environment that we are all a part of – but sometimes unaware.
September 13 ~ October 26
Gary Haven Smith ~ Recent Work
The challenges of sculpting stone have never deterred New Hampshire sculptor Gary Haven Smith. Using glacial boulders of granite, lead, wood, slate and other objects, he transforms the materials by cutting and shaping while retaining its natural essence. To create his most recent work he has devised a cutting system that produces ribbon like curls of granite. His choice of materials and sensitive application of incised patterns, patinas and polished surfaces are tied to his love and respect for the New England landscape.
Connie Hayes ~ Small Pastels
Connie Hayes is well known for capturing a sense of place in her lush and colorful oil paintings. The same holds true when using pastel. For Connie Hayes, the making of a painting or a group of paintings is a response to a specific environment. This exhibit of nearly 30 new small pastel paintings focuses on familiar sights and area landmarks in York, Portsmouth and New Castle.
November 1 ~ December 14
Figuratively Speaking
The 2008 season will conclude with an exhibition of work by regional artists featuring the human figure. The list of artists for this group show is still being developed, but it is guaranteed to be wonderful!
MaJo Keleshian
Depending on how you view the colorful, iridescent small paintings by Maine artist MaJo Kelleshian, they can be pure abstraction or absolute reality. The marks scratched into the wax surface suggest landscape-related imagery however she is interested in the elements from nature not of a specific form in nature. It is the inevitability of change and the impermanence of all things that intrigue her most.
For more information about the George Marshall Store Gallery and upcoming exhibits, visit their website at www.georgemarshallstoregallery.org or just stop in at 140 Lindsay Road!