K. Grant Fine Art Gallery Opens in Vergennes

• Courtesy
• “Lilac Memorial” by Cameron Davis

At this stage of the summer, fuchsia bee balm battles goldenrod for a corner of the garden; a mass of plume poppies, with their plate-size leaves, rises 12 feet tall. No flower is exactly a shrinking violet. The same is true of the images in “Soft Openings,” the strong inaugural show at K. Grant Fine Art in Vergennes.

The loosely flower-themed exhibition features works by Arista Alanis, Megan Bogonovich, Cameron Davis, Pamela Fraser and Wylie Garcia. Curator Kristen Grant, 32, grew up in Addison and went to school in Vergennes, which her family has called home for generations. Looking out from the porch of her new business, Grant said, “My grandpa went to high school across the street.”

• Alice Dodge
• Kristen Grant

After spending time in New York and almost a decade in New Orleans, Grant moved back to Vergennes about a year ago with plans to start an art consulting business. She’s happy to be “closer to family, closer to roots,” she said. “It’s just such a beautiful place, and I care about this city.”

In New Orleans, where she was deeply involved in the art community, Grant learned the ropes of running a commercial exhibition space at Martine Chaisson Gallery. Just a few months after Grant returned to Vergennes, local gallery Northern Daughters closed — a big loss for the Little City that left a “void,” she said. A week after her consulting LLC was official, artist Ross Sheehan’s studio on Green Street became available.

“It all just felt too good to be true,” Grant said. “They were looking for a gallerist to take over … I was like, ‘I can do that. I want to do that. I love the artists here.'”

Grant’s goal is to show primarily Vermont artists who are emerging, overlooked or doing interesting work without local gallery representation. She aims for an inclusive, welcoming vibe, she said.

She has achieved that with “Soft Openings.” A former carriage house, the gallery has a vaulted ceiling, exposed beams and tilting floorboards that give it historic charm.

Grant is swiftly learning which walls aren’t flat, she said, and not to measure from the floor. She has managed to squeeze in works by all five artists while allowing each of them room to breathe and comfortably hold their own. The gallery is, frankly, adorable. That said, serious skill and complexity come across in the artworks on display.

Alanis paints with electric colors and patterns, creating 6-by-6-inch worlds that have moments of depth. In “Joy #9,” a sunset reflects on water, blocked by patterns of leaves and (let’s call them) fish, which interrupt the scene yet coax the viewer through it. It’s a contained chaos that, as the title suggests, is purely joyful. The effect is even more pronounced in the 30-by-24-inch “The Ocean Isn’t a Color,” which adds dripping paint and broad yellow brushwork to great effect.

• Courtesy
• “Drama” by Pamela Fraser

Fraser’s paintings, which also employ a square format but at a larger scale — most are 20 by 20 inches — are thoroughly intriguing, with strange, well-balanced palettes. In “Drama,” she uses two different shades of burgundy behind pink and yellow flowers with complementary green highlights that make them pop.

A professor at the University of Vermont, Fraser authored a book on color theory, and that level of investigation comes through in her work. Stylized and flat, her blooms nonetheless have weight. They bend toward each other, resting gently in clusters against saturated backgrounds.

Tension — physical rather than spectrum-based — is even more pronounced in her ceramic sculptures, which are eight inches high. Grant has paired “Rest,” a blue-glazed, flaccid form that barely leans on a more rectilinear volume, with “Rest II,” an orange blob that stands a twinge apart from its smaller, pyramidal companion. Chunky and geometric, Fraser’s ceramics approach anthropomorphism — as in the charming “Friend,” whose title conjures a whole story involving arrangements of leaning shapes.

• Courtesy
• “Rest II” by Pamela Fraser

The show also features three ceramic sculptures by Bogonovich. These intricate, fragile, cartoonish creations suggest organisms halfway between plants and underwater corals. One spouts a gold, light bulb-shaped appendage; another, mushroomlike growths. These are dangerous flowers.

A dark undercurrent similarly runs through Wiley Garcia’s luscious paintings. Even when presented as still lifes in vases, Garcia’s flowers come across as a blizzard of blossoms sinking into blackness. This aspect is especially apparent in “A Clear Night Sky Reflected in a Garden Puddle,” a 10-by-20-inch vertical painting in which white blooms highlighted with neon green and pink surround glimpses of space. It was the first work Grant hung in the show. “What I like about it,” she said, “is that the void is the subject.”

Davis’ 50-by-48-inch painting “Lilac Memorial” anchors the show, offering a wild, green and gold abstract jungle. Carefully drawn passages that recall crinkled leaves play against broad swipes of semitransparent gold paint and bigger oblong shapes. Pinks and turquoises peek out, interspersed with blue and black drips.

So much is going on in this one painting that it almost makes up for the absence of other works by Davis on the wall. Visitors shouldn’t hesitate to ask Grant to see more; when asked, she brought out a portfolio of smaller works on paper whose composition and palette echo and expand on Davis’ large canvas. They would make a great addition to the show, if only there were more walls.

Within a few weeks, Grant has assembled a remarkable first exhibition with a clear and unusual vision. “I wanted an all-women show to open with, and I wanted it to be a group show,” she said. “I wanted it to be vibrant, loud, bright and powerful and potent, and I think it succeeded in being all of those things.”