The Team Love RavenHouse Gallery on Church Street in the Village of New Paltz is moving into its second year. A venture that began in 2009 as Team Love Records and RavenHouse Management Company, producing local indie bands and selling their music on vinyl LPs as well as CDs, expanded in the spring of 2011 into a retail shop and art gallery to showcase the work of local visual artists. Co-proprietor Cornelia Calder says that the aim of Team Love is “to provide a physical space for art and music in an increasingly cyber world.”
Team Love RavenHouse Gallery is currently showing “Flyaway Garden,” an exhibit of mixed-media works by New Paltz-based artist Kaitlin Van Pelt, who uses oils, acrylics, gouache, ink and graphite on a variety of surfaces to explore images taken from old family photos. For the most part, the works are small, even tiny, and they feel very personal in nature. A sense of exploration is evident, as several images are reworked repeatedly in different pieces.
Some of the works are paintings on canvas, while others are enhanced drawings or painted collages made using chunky notched wooden plaques or found objects as support. The types and variety of supports and framing used for the works adds to the handcrafted and eclectic effect of the exhibit overall: a whimsical display of works made with heart.
Those variations on a theme are explored throughout. In Julia Listens to the Future, Van Pelt’s inspiration was a decades-old photograph of her grandmother listening to music on headphones for the first time. Grandmother Julia is depicted in a moment of pure delight, drawn in illustration-clear manner, but with her dress extended stylistically. With the drawing mounted on a tiny floral-painted paper that looks like old-fashioned wallpaper, the moment is given context in a subtle way. The same image of Julia appears again in several other forms on different works, each time reworked stylistically – Julia’s dress extended into a garden of flowers on one piece.
Another image that turns up repeatedly is that of “Dan,” a small boy with a bowl haircut and big glasses. He is, Calder tells me, Dan Wolfe, Van Pelt’s partner in music and life, and the artist does numerous variations on a theme here, in depictions inspired by an image of the small boy Dan was.
Originally from Long Island, Van Pelt is a graduate of the painting program at SUNY-New Paltz and now lives locally. She’s also a singer and musician with Team Love-produced psychedelic/folk band Breakfast in Fur.
“Flyaway Garden” will remain on exhibit through November 25 at Team Love RavenHouse Gallery in New Paltz, located at 11 Church Street in the Village. Gallery hours are Friday to Sunday from 12 noon to 5 p.m. or by appointment. For more information about Team Love RavenHouse Gallery, visit www.tl-rh.com or call (845) 389-8263. For more information about Van Pelt, visit www.kaitlinmakesthings.blogspot.com.
“Flyaway Garden,” an exhibit of mixed-media works on canvas, paper and wood by New Paltz-based artist Kaitlin Van Pelt, will remain on exhibit through November 25 at Team Love RavenHouse Gallery in New Paltz, located at 11 Church Street. Gallery hours are Friday to Sunday from 12 noon to 5 p.m. or by appointment. For more information about Team Love RavenHouse Gallery, visit www.tl-rh.com or call (845) 389-8263. For more information about Van Pelt, visit www.kaitlinmakesthings.blogspot.com.
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