Best of shows: wine, beer, art, animals
How do we celebrate the dogs, cats, birds, and other companion animals that add so much to our human lives? One way is to use their images in artwork.
Yet how should we pay back these creatures for being such great models? One way may be to support animal rescue shelters.
But if you combine art and fund-raising - and add wine and beer tasting - you have tomorrow's Hair of the Dog Wine and Beer Tasting show at Essex Art Center in Lawrence, an event aimed to please both human and nonhuman. (Please, no pets at the event itself.) The art show will benefit the Massachusetts Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals shelter at Nevins Farm in Methuen.
"All the artists exhibiting love animals," said Tamara Krendel, an Andover artist and art teacher who is among the 20 Merrimack Valley painters, sculptors, and craftspeople who will be showing their art - much featuring animals - at the event.
Wine and beer will be donated by Mike and Sheri Helman of Shawsheen Village Liquors in Andover. These two dog lovers organized the first Hair of the Dog event in 2005, and it has steadily grown. This year Whole Food Market will donate appetizers. All ticket proceeds will go directly to the Methuen shelter, as will 10 percent of all wine and art sales. Music will be provided by the White Street Band.
The Hair of the Dog printed invitation, featuring a pastel drawing by Karen Van Welden-Herman, illustrates the bond between a woman and her best friend. It features the late May Bell, who volunteered for many Andover organizations and was a frequent sight downtown walking her 114-pound German shepherd, named Rikki Gretchen.
Herman, a historian and painter who has a studio in Lawrence, did the pair's portrait for Bell's 80th birthday. ("I love to paint people who have character in their faces," Herman said.)
Bell died in 1996, but her portrait conveys the spirit of the MSPCA, which is "matching people with companion animals." Herman said.
Krendel, who just finished a solo show at the Henderson Hall Gallery at Middlesex Community College, plans to show new watercolors featuring images of birds and bird cages, a subject that has intrigued her with its play of light.
She may also show work featuring the "meeting of two worlds," that is, paintings juxtaposing her Siamese cat with her yellow parakeet.
"There is something mysterious and iconic" about these two animals, she said. "They have lots of history; they have lots of symbolism."
Birds aren't the only winged creatures fluttering through her watercolors and pastels. Krendel is also fascinated with luna moths, night insects that generally are glimpsed fluttering near the tops of trees and that live only a few days. Once she had about 50 of them in a large cage, raising the caterpillars from cocoon to adult stages through several generations.
"It sounds like mice crunching on cornflakes when they start breaking through the silk" of the cocoons, she said.
Last year's Hair of the Dog featured many of her luna moth works.
"These were my pets," she said.
Carolyn Bonier, an Andover psychotherapist and grandmother, started working in clay about nine years ago. A volunteer at the Methuen MSPCA, Bonier often sculpts one of her great loves: dogs.
"People say I capture their character and their spirit," she said.
She now does canine commissions, although most of her clay pooches are "from imagination."
Her work will also be featured at Hair of the Dog, a cause dear to her heart.
"They need people to advocate for them," she said.
