Jeff Soderbergh Gallery (11B West Main St.)
Artist Lisa Barsumian of Jamestown, R.I. is showing some of her work in the Jeff Soderbergh Gallery. This Saturday-night stroll is great, she says, because “it’s the only time I get to talk to people about my work.”
Barsumian usually works alone. Her piece Hot Sun Flowers is done with oil pastels on corrugated cardboard. The yellows and greens in the work are muted, seeming heavy with humidity.
“I painted that about a month ago on the hottest day in July,” Barsumian says. “I was melting in the heat as I was doing it.”
Her artwork is done counterintuitively, she says. “I do the subject matter first. The backgrounds I work in after. It’s the shapes in between, the negative shapes, that I find most interesting. In life, too. I’m looking at the in-between shapes.”
AMZehnder Gallery (25 Bank St. #3)
At the AMZehnder Gallery, Debbie Forrest examines Vanilla Is Anything but Ordinary! by Suzette Lebenzon. The work is a conglomeration of Outer Cape landmarks positioned sideways, right-side-up, and upside-down.
“It’s so colorful,” Forrest says. “It feels so fun. I can identify all of my favorite places on the Outer Cape, like P’town and the drive-in. I live like a mile from the drive-in.”
Though she’s from Bethesda, Md., she spends summers in Wellfleet. She gestures to the wall of Lebenzon works behind her. “Some of the other color palettes aren’t my taste,” she says. “But this one appeals to me.” The piece is brighter than the others. Its oranges, whites, blues, and purples seem washed with daylight. To Forrest, the painting’s crowded nature doesn’t feel cluttered. “It just feels fun.”
Burdick Gallery (25 Bank St.)
Mia Flavin, 16, and Hannah Fogg, 17, attend Swampscott High School on Boston’s North Shore. They quietly confabulate before choosing their favorite piece at the Burdick Gallery. The decision: Monica Rozak’s Fragile, a seascape that is almost entirely sky. “It’s really pretty,” Flavin says. “The sky goes from blue to dark.”
“I like how you can see the paint strokes on it,” Fogg says. “A lot of the details are in the sky.” In the piece’s lower right corner, a solitary figure stands by the shore.
“He makes me feel kind of sad,” Fogg says. “He’s all alone.” The girls giggle. “Yeah,” Flavin says, “but he also makes me feel peaceful.”
Left Bank Gallery (25 Commercial St.)
Visiting from New York City, Wendy Weston is enraptured by Deborah Howard’s piece feet on the ground; pink pools. The painting is done in white, gray, and green-black. Some parts of it are smooth and opaque — others are translucent or intricately textured.
“With the texture she created in this piece,” Weston says, “I thought it was glued canvas on panel. But this is just panel. It blows my freaking mind.”
She points to a line reminiscent of a sound wave near the bottom of the piece. “I was like, ‘Wait, how the hell did you get the drips to go up?’ It reminds me of a heartbeat.”
Weston looks toward a couple whom she knows a few feet away. “I know they’re going to go for a different piece,” she says. “But if I were them, I’d buy this piece and design my entire home around it. It’s that good.” While entirely abstract, the painting is still a seascape, Weston says. “You know this moment in time exists somewhere on the Cape. It just has magic.”
Off Main Gallery (75 Commercial St.)
At Off Main Gallery, mobiles by Philip Hart hang from the ceiling on clear wires. David Dubusc, a retired photographer from Wellfleet, gazes up. Some of the mobiles are more structural: black-and-white squares are attached to the ends of straight red or black sticks. Others are “all soft edges,” Dubusc says, with flower-like or circular ends attached to swirling, curving lines. The mobiles are reminiscent of work by Alexander Calder, he says, though “the artist probably doesn’t want to hear that.”
Hart’s sculptural mobiles are “generally fun to look at,” Dubusc says, “because they’re so light and delicate. They’re calming.” Minutes ago, the gallery was packed, Dubusc adds. The mobiles remained serene, floating over everyone. “They’re spider-like,” he says. “Just so delicate.”
