News & Events

Lauren Clark Fine Art presents, “West St. Paintings”, new work by David Eddy. The show runs from August 13 through September 5, with a reception for the artist, Saturday, August 13 from 5-7pm.

With over 30 new paintings for this show, David Eddy continues to create semi-abstract figurative and landscape  paintings full of raw energy and emotion exhibiting a sophistication of color, marks and composition. There is an obvious and seductive physicality to the paint process, with a complexity of texture and line. Eddy's interest in exploring the relationship between abstraction and figuration is evident in each of his paintings, offering a very unique, very personal vision.

Lauren Clark Fine Art, in collaboration with glass art curator Mary Childs, presents Celebrations in Glass, introducing the works of three East Coast based artists: Mariel Bass, Shannon Floyd and Leckie Gassman.

Each artist approaches the medium of glass with a fresh, innovative vision.

Mariel Bass, a graduate of Massachusetts College of Art, is currently an instructor at the MIT Glass Lab, and has managed studios in the British Virgin Islands and St. Petersburg, FL, and worked with some of the best known names in Glass Art.

Shannon Floyd, also a Mass College of Art graduate, has participated in workshops at the Penland School of Craft and the Pilchuck School, and has been a resident artist at the Worcester Center for Craft and Salem State University.

Leckie Gassman is a graduate of Alfred University. He has been a teaching assistant at the Pilchuck School and many other institutions, and is currently on staff at the Penland School of Crafts.

The opening reception for Celebrations in Glass is Saturday, July 23rd, from 5-7pm at Lauren Clark Fine Art, 684 Main Street, Great Barrington, MA. For further information, email marychildsgallery@gmail.com, lauren@laurenclarkfineart.com, or call 413.528.0432.

The show runs through August 8, 2022.

Mariel’s one of a kind glass sculptures are inspired by her love of nature, specifically flora, fauna, and the sea. Bass studied fine art and glass at Massachusetts College of Art, and after managing studios in the British Virgin Islands and Florida, returned to New England where she continues
to create her unique sculptures and installations.

Drawn to the simple beauty and the constant challenge of working with glass Shannon draws inspiration from Scandinavian and mid century modern design to create contemporary objects ranging from decorative to functional that are simple yet elegant and modern.

All of Gassman’s work is individually blown and engraved freehand, and this particular collection is inspired by his time in the outdoor cafés of Barcelona. They are positive in emotion but also have a bit of loud conversation in the imagery. For Leckie, these pieces reflect the experiences of people interacting and connecting with each other.

Mariel Bass, “Intuitive Swimmer”

Lauren Clark fine Art presents “Women’s Work”, with artists Joan Barber, Abby DuBow, and Karen Iglehart. There will be a reception for the Artists Saturday, July 24 from 5-7pm.

Lauren Clark Fine Art presents a show of very new works on paper by Abby BuBow. The series, titled “Corona Diary”, is an autobiography of the recent months the artist, and we, have all endured. The work is not as dark as one might presume as it follows a trajectory from sunny spring days to a sudden, strange winter-like sense of cold and loneliness to signs of hope and renewal.

DuBow, who is best known as an established printmaker, has stepped outside her milieu to create this stunning group of mixed media paintings. Sometimes looking out and sometimes looking inward, she has captured a mood suddenly familiar to us all.

There will be a reception for the artist Saturday, July 11 from 2 to 7pm under and around an open sided tent outside the gallery, with staggered viewing inside throughout the day.

A Statement from the Artist
Corona Diary – 2020

In cold, bleak March I found myself stranded in the Berkshires. The sun refused to shine and I was stuck inside and isolated from the rest of the world. I missed my children and grandchildren very much. Before long I ended up in my studio with an overwhelming desire to paint mud. My art has often been dominated by vibrant colors, but the opposite came about through the experience of quarantining.

Through my studio window I viewed the loneliness of a small isolated house. My studio window informed and defined my paintings, looking out and looking in. Rage against the virus transformed into written words, tangled branches, dying flowers, gray landscapes, snow in May, distant family and friends. Gradually signs of spring and hope began to emerge though sightings of bright yellow forsythia, gorgeous marsh marigolds, and clusters of singing birds.

The act of painting helped me to see and deal with my feelings and emotions from March through June reflecting the chill of mud season to the rebirth of spring. Making art allowed me to create a visual diary that reflected the inhospitable darkness and chill of March mud to the warmth and color of spring.

Even as covid continues, surrounding and alienating all of us, spring can’t be stopped and the promise of new life offers hope in the future.

As we know we are not really out of the woods yet, though this desire to dip a toe into uncharted waters is virtually irresistible. To this end, there will be a reception for the artist Saturday, July 11 from 2 to 7pm under and around an open sided tent outside the gallery, with staggered viewing inside throughout the day. There will be further opportunities to meet the artist at an acceptable “social distance” throughout the duration of the show, which runs from July 11-July 26.

Though it should be fine to just stop by, we are also scheduling appointments in order to reduce any risks associated with the COVID-19 virus. If you’d like to schedule an appointment to meet the artist, view the art or to design a framing project, give us a call or send us an email.

Lauren Clark Fine Art, 684 Main Street, Gt Barrington, MA 01230
413.528.0432 Lauren@LaurenClarkFineArt.com

Lauren Clark Fine Art presents “True Dreams”, new paintings and a new performance piece by artist, writer, and performer, Douglass Truth. The art show opens with a reception for the artist, Saturday, October 12 from 4-7pm. The show will run through Sunday, November 3. The artist will hold a painting demonstration (a wonderful kind of performance in itself) on Sunday, November 3 from 1pm to 3pm. As he shares his painting techniques, so he shares much of himself along the way. This event is free and open to the public.

Lauren Clark has been representing Douglass Truth off and on since 2002. His most recent collaboration with the gallery was in 2016 when he participated in a show including two other Berkshire artists, David Eddy, and Julio Granda, in a show titled “Color Envy”. At that time, Truth performed his one man show “An Intimate Evening with Death, Herself” which has been performed coast to coast since 1995 with over 100 performances. Recently re-relocated, Truth now lives, paints, writes and performs in The Berkshires.

Of his recent work Truth says this, “My paintings are of a world, a world that I dream up when I have a brush in my hand. I must insist that in some sense those worlds—the worlds in the paintings—are as real as the one in which you seem to be reading these words. In fact these seemingly different worlds may be just different stops on the spectrum of reality, none more real than any other.
I seem to be somewhere, of that I can be completely sure.”

Truth references Donald Hoffman, a cognitive neuroscientist with an interesting theory. Hoffman says the things we think we see around us and interact with are projections of our consciousness. But he goes further than most to assert that time and space themselves, the very ground—we suppose—of our existence are not fundamental, but are also a projection of consciousness. That we, as conscious entities, are not at play in the quantum fields of SpaceTime, but that SpaceTime itself is a kind of dream that we make up.

“I find this exhilarating for some reason. It reminds me that the Buddhists say that what we experience as human beings is in the nature of a dream. But it always seems so solid and real, we think. How could it be? Just a dream?”

And for further enjoyment, please join us for two theatrical performances and a painting demonstration during the course of the show. Douglass Truth will perform his one man show, “True Dreams”, Thursday, October 17 and Friday, October 18 at 7:30pm. Order tickets here: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/true-dreams-with-douglass-truth-tickets-74625090655

Consider the premise-“If Scheherazade were a frog trying to cross a river and there was a guy who makes friends with an ant that has a bent for philosophy who then told a story—the ant, that is—about a frozen Halibut, but it might have all been a dream that some random dude has, but you’ll never convince the ant, or the scorpion, for that matter, that it wasn’t all completely real. If an animal speaks, that means it’s a True Dream”.

The artist will hold a painting demonstration (a wonderful kind of performance in itself) on Sunday, November 3, from 1pm to 3pm. As he shares his painting techniques, so he shares much of himself along the way. This event is free and open to the public.

Truth was born in 1953 in Indianapolis, Indiana, into a family famous for its lawyers. Attempts at remedial education throughout the years have met with uncertain results, leaving him with a reputation as mixed as his media.

He has worked as a civil engineering designer and surveyor during the pipeline years in Alaska, as a dishwasher, a waiter, a chef, a building dismantler, an English teacher, and as a software salesman in Taiwan. He once owned and operated a graphic design and silkscreen company called Flying Turtle Graphics. After a serious illness, Truth closed his T-shirt business in order to devote himself entirely to painting and writing, and as an artist has been represented by galleries from California to New York with many places in between.

Truth has written and published three books. “I Am a Dog”, “Revolution of Flowers”, and “Everything I Know About Death (Subject to Verification)” — all of which will be available for sale at the gallery during his exhibition.
“In my paintings, writings and performances,” he says, “The harlequin, the clown, the watchers, giant stone heads, the flower people and the black dogs show up to point out, in ways difficult or impossible to articulate or modulate in our normal signaling fashion, from which directions we might be coming from, and what choices we might have going forward. I certainly believe in otherworlds, underworlds, multiworlds, and so on, but I also think we’re there now and have never been anywhere else. Our vision lapses into a routine. The real mystery — one of them, at least! —is what’s really going on all the time all around us. Here in a gallery, in the corner grocery store, our kitchen, our places of work, the cities and towns and countrysides in which we somehow, miraculously, find ourselves living right now. It’s all alive and it never ceases to speak to us.”