Translucent Flower, by Bruce Babb. (Photo courtesy Pemaquid Art Gallery)
Hannah Ineson and Bruce Babb are the two Pemaquid Art Gallery artists who create objects rather than paintings, producing beautiful works of art that also can be highly functional.
Ineson is a versatile artist who is showing a broad range of her ceramic works, although she is also an accomplished painter and watercolor journaling instructor. She produces hand-built, one-of-a-kind objects from high-fired clay, creating functional items and small sculptures with rich glazes, often with highly decorated surfaces and textures, sometimes with themes inspired by Maine and the natural world.
Babb is skilled at the demanding art of creating inlaid wood marquetry, decorative patterns made using small pieces of various colored wood veneers, precisely cut and adhered to a wooden base. These decorated wood pieces may become wall plaques, tabletops, game boards, and jewelry boxes, and Babb has collaborated with a cabinet maker to create the patterned tabletops.
Ineson splits the year between Damariscotta and Naples, Fla. She started painting in her early adulthood when she began with watercolor, eventually taking many workshops with nationally known painters drawn to the Maine coast. She has always experimented with new subjects and media, from traditional watercolor and pastel to painting in oil and acrylic with palette knife.
Circle Vase, by Hannah Ineson. (Photo courtesy Pemaquid Art Gallery)
She turned to pottery over 10 years ago in Florida where she is a clay guild member and instructor at the Marco Island Center for the Arts. Teaching and mentoring the process of creating art is as compelling to her as making art. Her work has been shown widely in this area and can also be viewed on her website, hannahineson.com.
Babb is a Maine native now living in Damariscotta who worked as a research chemist for Eastman Kodak Company until he retired and moved back to Maine in 1992. He was self-taught in the art of marquetry over a 20-year period and has refined it in exciting and creative ways, inspired by anything from antique quilt designs to fanciful and unique interpretations of nature.
He assembles the pieces with skill and meticulous precision, and finishes them with multiple coats of hand rubbed varnish, producing highly original works of art. Most recently, his work has been shown at Archipelago in Rockland, Gifts at 136 in Damariscotta, and The Good Supply in Pemaquid. More can be viewed on his website, covehousestudios.com.
The other 2022 exhibiting members of the Pemaquid Group of Artists include: Barbara Applegate, Debra Arter, Julie Babb, Stephen Busch, John Butke, Dianne Dolan, Gwendolyn Evans, Peggy Farrell, Sarah Fisher, Claire Hancock, Kay Sawyer Hannah, Kathleen Horst, Will Kefauver, Jan Kilburn, Barbara Klein, Patti Leavitt, Sally Loughridge, Judy Nixon, Alexandra Perry-Weiss, Belva Ann Prycel, Paul Sherman, Marnie Sinclair, Gary Smith, Cindy Spencer, Liliana Thelander, Kim Skillin Traina, Barbara Vanderbilt, Bob Vaughan, Candace Vlcek, and Sherrie York.
