Rehoboth Art League Opens 45th Members’ Fine Craft Exhibition

The Rehoboth Art League opened its 45th annual members’ fine craft exhibition this past Friday featuring the work of 30-some member artists. “The majority is very fine craft which sort of blurs the edge of fine art and craft,” says Jay Pastore, RAL’s artistic director who has been curating the shows for the past four years. The RAL has actually been hosting this exhibition for the last 80 years, he explained, but 45 years ago the RAL split the members’ fine art and members’ fine craft from a single larger show.

“This show has really grown since I have been here,” Pastore points out, “I think particularly because we are curating master-level artists to sort of spotlight exhibitions. The award winners are doing spotlight exhibitions which add a whole level of skill and talent to the crowd,” he observes.

An exhibition currently in the Tubbs Gallery spotlights award winners from last year’s members’ fine craft exhibition. Two new solo-shows of fine art appear in the Ventures Gallery featuring Susan Frey, who is a member artist, and in the Homestead Gallery featuring Megan Burak who is a young artist who graduated from Salisbury University.

Gail Gingrich, one of the artists with work on display, lives on Broadkill Beach and collects items from the beach and uses a set of grinding wheels to help slice and polish stones. “It is kind of fascinating to see what is inside these stones,” she says. She hand-fabricates all her work using copper and silver and includes stones only from the beach in front of her home! The stones have been polished, tumbled and often her mountings are inspired by the stone.

These two mixed media and paper works by James Ulry are interesting in that if one keeps looking at them, different shapes and patterns become apparent. One viewer might see a woman and another sees the State of Delaware! Shown here are his works, Ms. Della and Mason-Dixon, the Divide.

“We had a great judge who was here who gave a talk and she had some interesting comments about how a lot of the work here reflects the regional landscapes and just being on the water… it was a good observation,” Pastore pointed out.

This work in fiber is not a local landscape, but could almost pass as a local barn! It is the Wyoming Homestead by John Flourney.

These exhibitions will be on display through July 22. Please see the RAL website for details.