"Gallerina" for the Summer

I hardly fit the image of a tony New York City gallerina but am having a great summer on Nantucket helping out my friend, artist and gallery owner Judith Brust, in sales and marketing at her gallery blue on Old South Wharf on Nantucket. I started working with Judy and gallery director Linda LaCroix on Memorial Day and will be in the contemporary art gallery down on Old South Wharf through Columbus Day in October while balancing my responsibilities as development director for the Nantucket Arts Council and my PR consulting work for clients on the east and west coasts. Below is a look at the inside of the gallery showing some wonderful mixed media works by Judy Brust on the wall. The new Mandarin Hotel in Boston purchased seven of Judy's large scale works last summer for the lobby and other common spaces within the hotel.




Other galleryblue artists are very talented artists Joanna Kane (whose work is shown just behind the gallery desk and which was featured on the cover of the Nantucket Arts Council Arts Festival brochure in 2008), Dale Bradley and Steven Pitliuk. All three are wonderful persons whom I've gotten to know over the past two weeks and really appreciate the work they are doing.



Below is the sign outside our primary gallery. The adjacent annex gallery features visiting artists. Our current exhibition in the annex gallery is of works by well-known Nantucket photographer Daniel Sutherland. The new exhibition features large and small-scale Nantucket landscapes and seascapes from Sutherland’s work over the past 27 years photographing Nantucket’s elusive and unique landscapes. Also included in the exhibition are works from Sutherland’s The Gates, Central Park collection, a photographic interpretation of Christo and Jeanne-Claude’s installation The Gates, which brightened the bleak winter landscape in Central Park with over 7,500 saffron-colored panels. The opening last night, despite the rain, was well attended and we look forward to welcoming many other visits to the gallery before the show closes on Thursday, June 18.

Today was a beautiful day on Nantucket. We've had some bitter cold and rainy May days leading up to this weekend but today was definitely Chamber of Commerce weather. Here's a look at the boat basin just outside the gallery back door.

Here's another look out the gallery back door. Last weekend during Memorial Day the boat basin was full with Figawi sailors and more drunks than I care to remember, stumbling all over the walkways into the shops and galleries, making those of us in charge of expensive goods and art work more than a little anxious. This weekend was back to normal with courteous and friendly customers and visitors from points near and far--Peru, California, Pennsylvania, Georgia and elsewhere. What a great place to be for the summer!