Shelburne Artists Market
The Shelburne Farmers Market had such a plethora of artisans wishing to ply their wares that Holly Boardman, creative director at Shelburne Art Center (SAC), and Tod Whitaker, president of Shelburne Business and Professional Association (SBPA) and organizer of the Shelburne Farmers Market, got together and decided it was time to give the artisans their own summer market.

Starting this weekend, May 29, and continuing each Saturday through Oct. 2 from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m., the Farmers Market will be on the Village Green and the Artists Market will be in the courtyard at SAC.

Local artisans will sell a variety of arts and crafts, including paintings, photography, clothing, jewelry, metal sculpture, wood carvings, handmade books, furniture baskets, etchings, dog toys, pottery, and more.

Coordinator of the Artists Market and SAC instructor Sarah Grillo, estimates that between 12-15 vendors will be perched under their tents for this first of the season Artists Market, and hopes that over time the Artists Market will grow larger. Grillo encourages artists to participate, even if they are not able to attend the first market. The price to participate in the market is very modest in order to make it affordable, explained Grilo, because "it is about the artists' [opportunity and success] more than anything."

"Interesting Perspectives" opens at the Shelburne Art Center
New shows open at the Shelburne Art Center (SAC) on the first Thursday of each month. This month's show, "Intersecting Perspectives," opens on June 3, from 5-7 p.m.
"Intersecting Perspectives" features two local artists: Britta Johnson and Kristen Lesperance. The following explains a bit more about the artists and their muses. Shows at SAC are open Monday through Friday from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m.

Kristen L'Espérance is a Shelburne native and fifth generation Vermonter. She studied painting at The University of Vermont and was represented locally by The Doll-Anstadt Gallery in Burlington. Upon graduation in 2003 she began exhibiting at several other venues including the Firehouse Gallery and The Fletcher Free Library. In 2006 Kristen left Vermont to pursue an M.S. degree in interior architecture at the Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, N.Y. She has recently returned to Vermont and to her painting.

"The Imposing Grid" is a continuing series of new paintings by L'Espérance inspired by an investigation of the geographical, topographical and architectural history of Brooklyn, N.Y. Through her research, L'Espérance has observed that as man-made infrastructure permeated New York's landscape its boarders began to expand. Its natural landforms were distended and subdivided by an emerging grid while fill spread into The Hudson as the river's edge was transformed into a thriving industrial port. This phenomenon is evidenced graphically when maps are overlaid chronologically. The resulting collage provides an interesting opportunity to explore the change through solid and void. These abstract maps are examples of a process of elimination and inclusion.

Britta Johnson is a native Vermonter, raised in Shelburne. She received her B.F.A. degree in graphic design from the New England School of Art & Design at Suffolk University in Boston, Mass. She attended the pre-college program at the School of Visual Arts in Manhattan, N.Y., focusing in fine arts. She has taken numerous courses in drawing through Burlington Art Space and the Shelburne Craft School. She has shown in various shops and restaurants around Burlington and Shelburne. This summer, she will have work included in a group show at Penny Cluse cafe, as well as being a part of the Art in the Garden series at the Shelburne Museum. Johnson's current work is inspired by the simplicity of landscapes around Vermont. She was attracted to the bold, linear designs seen while exploring her native land. Britta intertwines silhouettes of trees and split rail fences with languid washes of color fields. Mixing media and content, she combines all aspects of a tree from natural form, to practical use of its wood in the form of a fence, to the collaged newspaper she uses as a textural element in her works. This group of paintings is a glimpse at the shapes which epitomize the Vermont countryside.