Solo Galleries:
Alan Jacobs
Alan is a retired physician psychoanalyst living in Vermont. He is a self-taught artist and has been painting for ten years.
“I am self-taught but have looked at a tremendous amount of art over my lifetime.
I like the physical feel and color of oil paint which seems especially suitable for expressing body and flesh and the emotions, including in these paintings my reactions to the Holocaust.”
Pierrevy Polyte (Pievy)
Pievy is an artist, farmer, school-builder, teacher and more, originally from Haiti. He owns a large farm in Peak Macaya, Haiti’s second tallest mountain that is 7,700 feet above sea level, and home to the country’s last area of cloud forest. On his farm, they grow coffee, cocoa, fruit and vegetables. In 2005, he built a school for the local community in Lacadonie, Haiti, which is the only school on the mountain. He also founded the Peak Macaya Co-op to work with the population of Peak Macaya. He moved to Burlington, Vermont in April 2016. That year in the fall, Hurricane Matthew devastated both his farm and the school. Students were moved to temporary shelter while they struggled to teach the 500 children. Rebuilding the school motivates his painting because he needs money to send to Haiti to help rebuild the school, remake the farm and support his friends’ farms on the mountain. A percentage of his sales goes directly to the Co-op in Haiti. Pievy likes to share his art and the story of the inspiration behind each piece.
Other featured artists:
Dale Schelling Bills
Dale is an Artist, Painter, and enjoys creating with the written word.
Her specialty is painting moody Vermont forests of rich colored birch trees, created primarily by using spontaneous splashes and splatters of watercolor paint in a free-spirited impressionistic style. “My career as a professional artist began upon moving to Vermont in 1980 where I established a small private art studio in my home. I joined the West River Artist Guild and the Chaffee Art Center and began studying and painting with many of the local artists here in the Rutland area. My formal art training began upon taking Biological Illustration through the University of New Hampshire on the Isle of Shoals, just off the coast of Maine. There, I studied the Art of Biological Illustration, and discovered that Art, Natural Science, and Biology were intricately connected and that I loved it all! My artwork was published and used in the University’s Catalog. I went on to earn a Bachelor’s degree in Biology and Natural Science, and a Masters Degree in Education from Castleton State College. I taught at Fair Haven Union High School for a short while and then transitioned to a career in Environmental Health from which I recently retired”.
Kate Cormier
Kate was born in Rutland, Vermont in 1972. Her gift for drawing was recognized early during her scholastic years and she remained a serious art student. After graduating from Hoosick Falls Central School, where she was awarded the Carlton Reed Art Scholarship, she studied in a small Fine Arts program at the State University of New York at Brockport, where she received her Bachelor’s Degree in Studio Art and Art History. During these formative years, Kate discovered a predilection for realism, particularly portraiture. Along with her studio experience, she studied the Masters in her Art history courses, and this fueled her passion for Classical Realism which began to influence her style. Kate took her expertise into the classroom, teaching basic and advanced techniques at a progressive school, and creating and teaching an art curriculum for an alternative high school program. She completed a mentorship with Portrait Artist Tess Brancato. In 2008 Kate began working professionally on her own. Her love for Chiaroscuro and Sepia tones and her reintroduction to Classical Realism led her to master photographer Edward Curtis and his Native Americans portraits. Having Mi’ Kmaq heritage she has all along had a passion for Native Americans and their culture. Currently, Kate’s work consists of a composite portrayal of her influences and passions. Although her concentration continues to be renditions of Curtis’s portraits, she also enjoys painting contemporary portraits.
Raven Crispino
Raven is a mixed media painter, digital photographer, and writer.
She has always loved visiting Rutland on her vacations to Vermont. Her love for the Green Mountain State brought her to Vermont in October of 2021 from New Jersey. Raven enjoys painting with different mediums and gets her ideas from emotion, events, nostalgia, still life and dreams. When she is not painting, she is photographing architecture, nature, and people. Writing is another creative passion of hers since she was little and has had several of her poems published. Raven is currently enrolled at CCV for digital photography as she has hopes to pursue a certificate in graphic arts.
Lopi LaRoe
Local muralist Lopi LaRoe (aka LMNOPI) has been living in Vermont since she moved here in fall of 2018 from Bed-Stuy, Brooklyn where she had been living and cultivating her street art practice for nearly twenty years. She was born in upstate NY and grew up in the back to the land movement of the 1970’s. LaRoe has been a community organizer, humanitarian worker & civilly disobedient activist over the last four decades; participating in movements from Earth First to Occupy Wall Street, Standing Rock and the Climate Justice Movement. Her work emanates from within these movements.She is a traditionally trained painter, muralist & printmaker dedicated to having a positive impact in the world by creating large scale public work. Since making the leap of faith in 2009 from oil painting to muralism, LMNOPI has painted over 20 murals nationally. Her print portfolio is in the special collections libraries of colleges and universities across the county. Additionally, she has work in the permanent collection at MOMA in NYC. She is happy to now call the Green Mountain State her home. For inquiries, please contact [email protected]
Matthew Lerma
Matthew has been photographing nature since he was a little boy. His journey with photography really began when he was about six years old when his dad taught him the basics of developing film and printing photographs. He has dedicated his life to exploring nature and helping others see the beauty and splendor surrounding us. Professor Lerman spent forty years teaching biology in NYC area. When he saw the need for a marine biology textbook, he sat down and wrote one. His textbook, Marine Biology: Environment, Diversity, and Ecology (1986), featuring many of his own photographs, was used in colleges and secondary schools throughout the world for over twenty years. In addition, he has been a college professor of biology, marine ecology, oceanography, marine mammalogy, and anatomy-physiology at Kingsborough and CW Post Colleges in New York. His background in biology and love of photography have forged a deep appreciation for the land. The myriad of intricate connections within the biosphere have inspired a deep and abiding understanding of our world. Matthew feels that photography allows him to capture and portray a sampling of the biological events occurring.
Linda Quinlan
Quinlan won the Wicked Woman Poetry Prize with her manuscript Chelsea Creek, a series of poems reflecting on her upbringing in a blue-collar New England town. “Linda Quinlan renders the rough terrain of working-class New England with a lush beauty that pulls no punches, letting the brute hardness of a place and its people coexist with longing and love, finding the tenderness hiding inside tragedy,” PEN Award winner Michelle Tea said of Quinlan’s work. “I love these poems.”