Fine Line Designs Gallery Announces Exhibit I Opening & Reception

Lazy Afternoon by Richard Patt

Fine Line Designs Gallery is excited to announce its first exhibit of the 2018 season, which is set to premiere Friday, May 25. The gallery will celebrate Exhibit I with an artist reception on Saturday, May 26 from 4:00 to 7:00 p.m., with an artist demonstration set for the following day (Sunday, May 27) from 11:00 a.m. to 2:00 p.m.

The gallery’s first exhibit of the season will feature oil painter Dean Bradshaw, fiber artist Martha Fieber, mixed media artist Paul Klein, and acrylic painter Richard Patt. Fieber and Klein will also be featured at Sunday’s artist demonstration.

From an early age, oil painter Dean Bradshaw’s closest friend was the nature he found outside his door — courtesy of California’s Santa Monica mountains. By grade school, he was translating his experiences into art. Now living in the mountains — this time in Southern Utah — he seeks to achieve an abstract quality to his plein air work, using brushes and palette knives to turn his views into compelling landscapes. His emphasis on texture makes his work more spontaneous, and “more on the feeling side than the technical side.”

Texture is also a primary principle of fiber artist Martha Fieber’s work. Calling her work “Landscapes in Thread,” she relies on layer upon layer of hand-stitching, subtle color, and intricate details to create her complex compositions. Using single strands of silk, rayon, and hand-dyed cotton threads, and four key stitches, Fieber’s depth and perspective with her work echoes her feeling that there are several layers to everything we see in the world, and encourages her viewers to look closer.

Just as Fieber seeks to create a landscape in threat, mixed media artist Paul Klein seeks to create a landscape in the comfort of someone’s home. For nearly 20 years, creating sculptural lighting has been Klein’s passion, with the love of the waters and forests — and the wonder and discovery he experiences as a young child — leading the way in his art. His works combine this love of nature with his college studies in environmental awareness while drawing upon his need to share the constant ebb and flow of life.

Rounding out the artists for Exhibit I is acrylic painter Richard Patt, whose love for sturdy barns, peaceful farms, and sweeping fields acts as a tribute to the rural landscape of Wisconsin. Growing up on a farm west of Milwaukee, Patt’s vistas are not the sleepy, pastoral, traditional farms — they are a striking, energetic balance between representation and abstraction. Bright colors, pronounced shapes, and geometric patterning merge to bring new pleasures beyond the surface of things.

Exhibit I will run through Monday, July 2, with the second exhibit of the 2018 season set to begin on Thursday, July 5.

Fine Line Designs Gallery, located in scenic Door County, is housed in a 1950s chicken coop that was renovated in 1999 and turned into a multi-level gallery space. The gallery showcases seasonal, monthly rotating exhibitions, highlighting the works of selected artists along with the general display of works by over 100 regional and nationally-acclaimed artists. The gallery features original paintings, glass, jewelry, clay, custom wood furnishings, sculpture, and fiber-rich in color and texture in addition to a two-acre sculpture garden adorned with pieces created from bronze, stone, metal, copper, and stainless steel. For more information, please visit www.finelinedesignsgallery.com or call (920) 854-4343.