By Gina Malone
During Earth Month in April, join the Flow Gallery in Marshall for Inspired by Nature, an exhibition of new work honoring Mother Nature by the gallery’s artists. A show opening on Earth Day has been a tradition at the gallery for more than 15 years, says gallery co-owner and founding member Connie Molland. The show will run from Wednesday, April 22, through May 30, and features the work of 12 artists working in mediums ranging from basketmaking to watercolor. Participating artists include Joe Bruneau, Deb Guess, Michael Hatch, Dagmar Haubold, Beth Herdman, Jacqueline Maloney, Jaana Mattson, Cyndie Mayer, Barbara Portwood, Lauren Rutten, Jude Stuecker and Amanda Taylor.
Jude Stuecker, artist
Jacqueline Maloney has been with Flow Gallery for 13 years, and her paintings are inspired by her recognition of how much a part of the natural world humans are. “The piece I’m submitting to Inspired by Nature shows a meadow overtaking a wooden structure built by human hands,” she says. “I sat in that field for most days of a January a few years ago because I wanted to understand the adaptive, opportunistic way that plants integrate habitat and to observe the slow return of architecture to the soil. I pray that humans re-orient to the way everything that ever passes through our hands or our lives will continue to live and change forms long after us.”
Nature invited Joe Bruneau to become an artist. “It is because of nature that I fell in love with basket weaving,” he says. “I find much joy in harvesting vines, roots and sticks to create the frames for each basket.” His work has been exhibited by Flow Gallery since 2022.
Lauren Rutten calls her relationship with the natural world one of the most important influences on her creative work for the last 40 years. “At the heart of my practice is a meditation on impermanence and the deep interconnection between body, spirit and land, and the vulnerability that runs through them all,” she says. “The work I’ll be exhibiting at Flow comes out of recent experimentation with new mediums and ways of combining digital and hand-drawn processes. I’m primarily known for my photography, but I love having the opportunity to share other directions I’m exploring creatively—something the gallery’s thematic shows really encourage.”
Flow Gallery was begun in 2010 by eight local women, all artists or makers in need of a retail outlet. The gallery now features the work of 70 Western North Carolina artists with roughly two-thirds of them Madison County residents. The founders embrace the concept of the Slow Craft Movement, which seeks to connect the public to the beauty of handmade art and objects and the people who make them.
Flow Gallery is located at 14 South Main Street, Marshall. Hours are 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. Tuesday through Saturday. Learn more at FlowMarshall.com.
