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Current Show • July 5-27, 2019

Helena Dooley • Larry Smith

BELLWETHERS

​RECEPTION / Amherst Arts Night Plus: Second Thursday, July 11, 5-8 pm
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Helena Dooley, Miss Ratty's Dance Lesson #2, reverse painting on glass

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  Larry Smith, Still Life Layabout, oil on canvas

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BELLWETHERS
   In July, Gallery A3 celebrates the artistic legacies of two long-time, well-loved former members of Gallery A3: Helena Dooley and Larry Smith. Honored as BELLWETHERS because they both were teachers and creators who sparked positive change around them, Helena is currently living in retirement in Colorado and Larry passed away in November 2018. 

HELENA DOOLEY
​     Helena Dooley initially trained as a musician, but throughout her career, she also has been an adventurous explorer who worked and played with paint, glitter, written text, and mixed media to create colorful, unconventional visual art. She delved into many media, including photography, large acrylic painting, assemblage, installations, and reverse paintings on glass. But constant in all her art is an underlying challenge to herself and to convention.
​   Helena’s work includes a series of drawings in which she investigates synesthesia, the experience of one sensation evoking another, such as hearing color or seeing sound.
   She wrote, “I’d really like to do serious and meaningful work that changes the world. ​I think I’m a serious person. But the creature down in the basement who sends up this stuff disagrees.”

LARRY SMITH
​   A professor of art and design at Holyoke Community College before retiring some years ago, Larry Smith also served as the chair (director) of Gallery A3 for many years and was an integral member of the gallery’s extended community. He died on Saturday, November 10, 2018, at age 82. 
   As Larry wrote in one of his Artist Statements: “I like the tension between a real, three-dimensional object and a flat painted image of that object.  My subjects are common things one finds around a house and uses every day—cups and bottles, bookends and tape dispensers.  The images are flat, almost like silhouettes, with little or no perspective or shadow, and arranged so that they fit on the rectangular canvas surface.”

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