MCLA Beacon Online

By Eli Jace

A&E editor

When you mix wine with art good things usually happen and last Thurday proved the equation accurate with Main Street’s Downstreet Art.

Four galleries opened their doors to showcase new work.The North Adams Artists’ Co-Op opened with the theme, “It’s Raining Cats and Dogs,” and it certainly was. Felines and canines of all variety came through in a number of different mediums. Photos of cats in windows, paintings of sleeping dogs and two weird cats were scattered among the work.

In the North Adams Antique building, next to Gallery 51, was a collection of artwork done by high school students from the Berkshire Arts & Technology Charter Public School. The students crafted ghoulish ceramic faces and colorful triptychs.On Eagle Street Martha Flood Design showcased “The Woodlands Collections,” an assortment of patterned fabric.

The patterns are from the Berkshire landscape as a way to bring the beautiful nature into the home, according to Flood.Gallery 51 was most crowded for the new student exhibit, “Imagine. Make. Create.”

At the entrance Signe Kutzer’s 3-D alphabet, made from cardboard and newsprint, spins like a strand of DNA. To the left is an installation by Pam Buchanan, Danielle Christensen, Fiona Slattery and Joanna Gillis in memoriam of artist Susan Woolf.

When you walk in Merritt Fletcher’s “Eros Paradox” quickly scoops up the eyes. It’s a wide look into someone’s jungle dream with exotic birds nuzzling on watermelons and sketched tigers screaming above posing zebras. After the show the painting, along with Kutzer’s serene scene of an isolated seabird, will light up Bowman.Also in the gallery are charcoal sketches of still life scenes, digital photographs and digital manipulations and some interesting structural pieces done by students.

Greg Sacchetti has three darkly splattered paintings that spook. In the corner stands Michael Geary’s “Cocoon,” a fabric sculpture that looks like a fashionable extraterrestrial walking the runway.The highlight of the night was surely the paintings of Fletcher. She splits the Gallery 51 Annex with Rebecca Murdock for “Urban Garden.”

Fletcher’s paintings have the same dream-like qualities. One painting looks like a simple plant growing from a pot, but looking closer you’ll notice the flower buds are really bodies. Murdock divides the room with a series of photographs of graffiti tags.