Arts & Leisure
Peaceable Kingdom at the George Marshall Store Gallery
By Rose Safran
Donald Saaf, "Peaceable Kingdom"
It is appropriate as we approach the holiday season to have an exhibit that takes its inspiration from the message of a world of peace and harmony, created by Quaker minister Edward Hicks (1780-1849) in his folk art paintings depicting "The Peaceable Kingdom," a subject which he reportedly painted about 100 times, one-fourth of which appear to have survived and are in leading American museums.
We are most familiar with the pageant of Hicks' animals - tiger, wolf, lamb, lion, ox, bear, calf, kid, fatling - all dwelling together and at ease, quietly, on the land ("they shall not hurt nor destroy my holy mountain") - and to the side, another message, the depiction of William Penn signing a treaty with the Indians.
Said George Marshall Store Gallery Curator Mary Harding of her well-timed exhibit, "the Peaceable Kingdom celebrates earth's creatures, nature and peace." At the gallery, it does so through creatures of the air, sea and land which are more in tune with our current lives and which we are more likely to recognize over two centuries beyond Edward Hicks. But, nevertheless, Hicks' message - namely peace on earth by, to and for all creatures - remains the necessary-as-ever constant here.
In a detail from artist Donald Saaf's four-by-six feet surrealist oil on canvas painting, a young man in a striped shirt sits at a miniature red-painted piano and becomes the focal point of others around him. A girl with a striped skirt is seated atop a gigantic bird, a rooster floats above her, to the right of center a coat-clad musician appears to strum a melody, watching and below him is a black or dark brown bear, a child is reposing quietly next to and dwarfed by a spotted leopard and behind is a little lamb, above which is a striped zebra. And amid it all is a mosaic of branches forming a web with a human face reaching into the sky appearing to observe the bucolic music-driven scene centering about the piano.
Now, that's just one painting in this rich network of paintings, sculptures, constructions, mixed media, photographs, prints containing birds, gigantic fish, animals as such, arm-in-arm somewhat anthropomorphic ones, mice and other bugs, and even that human mammal called man. Over 20 artists have contributed works to this exhibit, including painter Gail Spaien with her gentle birds perched in a colorful calm environment, sculptor Jane Kaufman witty as ever, here juxtaposing animals a lion lying down with a lamb, even in a contemporary scene such as a carpooling lion and lamb, and a scripted pole lambasting marriage, which reads, "If you want to be happy, get a cat!" Too, there's Michael Stasiuk with a clever construction joining a dragon and snake.
Harding states that one of her favorites is Holly Mead's "They were handed the world on a silver platter," with its depiction of a globe.
It is remarkable that these unique creations and many others, big and small, striking and subtle, humorous and serious, realistic and bizarre, modernist and traditional can manage to live side-by-side in a small, tight art gallery. But, the challenge of living together in close quarters and amid diversity is, after all, what the "Peaceable Kingdom" is all about. If only in the greater context of the broader world, it could be as easily accomplished as in this noteworthy exhibit.
Bobhouses at the George Marshall Store Gallery
"He's moving to Mexico," said Vicki Wright, Director of The Art Gallery at the University of New Hampshire, as we were both admiring the bobhouses (i.e. icehouses), barns, sugarshacks and paintings by Jerry MacMichael, currently of Winnisquam, N.H., where he has worked for many years.
"And I feel that this may be the last chance to own something of his," she continued, while we stood in front of his wonderfully textured barn front, carefully constructed of innumerable carved wooden pieces - even the stones on the land are of wood, individually carved and hand-painted.
"Isn't this tin-roofed one also wonderful?" she continued, noting another full barn, as we moved about before she managed to flag Harding at a crowded reception to indicate which work she was intent on owning.
Then, a little farther away was another carefully carved construction, the backside of the barn, at that time catching the eyes of a cocktail-in-hand couple.
The artist Jerry MacMichael is no stranger to the George Marshall Store Gallery, for his work has been included in group exhibitions where his unique miniature bobhouses and sugar shacks have received considerable attention.
This writer, to whom Jerry's inspirational turf is a former home territory, remembers snowmobiling across the frozen lake, avoiding these small, rudely crafted houses in which fishermen keep warm while staying enclosed atop the ice in which they've cut holes, hoping that their lines and bait will entice some prey.
Each MacMichael bobhouse is different, colorful, imaginative, in proportion, and given considerable thought - it's warmer, too, to visit them inside, here at the Dock Level Gallery, surely, a comfortable substitute for seeing the real ones in the frigid.
Rounding out his show are several paintings of the area around which the artist lives.
Both exhibits run through Dec. 10. Gallery hours are Wednesday through Saturday, 11 a.m. to 4 p.m., and Sunday, 1 to 4 p.m. The exhibition will remain in the gallery and also be available by appointment through the end of 2006. For further information, call 351-1083.
