Grey Raven Gallery Grand Opening
Event Date: April 7, 2023
Grey Raven Gallery opens officially on Friday, April 7, 2023 from 5–7 p.m. with a wine, cheese and fruit reception with many of the artists attending. The Grand Opening event will feature works by the two Gallery owners, printmaker Barbara Mason and wood sculptor and painter Martin Conley, and highlight works by a number of contemporary artists including sculptor Tony Furtado, whose whimsical ceramic sculptures are derived from his passion as a musician and love of nature. Award-winning plein air watercolor artist Jong Hong Zhong is also featured, along with artist Angelita Surmon, whose kiln-formed glass works demonstrate a technique that renders her compositions akin to light-filled paintings or drawings.
This month’s Co-Featured Artist, wood sculptor Martin Conley, finds beauty hidden in the grain of foraged wood from the Pacific Northwest, and the works on display will include both naturally conceived sculptures from nature and what Conley calls vessels – mostly tabletop structures created in unique mosaics from a variety of woodgrains and colors. Conley’s large scale paintings – on panels with unique geometric shapes and bold, vivid colors – harken back to his early work with printmaking and painting.
In this show, printmaker Barbara Mason’s work includes a number of non-objective designs from her rich imagination, printed on hand-made papers from a variety of sources. This blending of her unique freestyle design on one-of-a-kind textured and hand-colored papers extends the element of surprise found in Mason’s prints with imaginative colors and contrast.
