Dash Around Town: Hope Gallery’s Anita Trezvant, Imago and The Wilson Collection

Art Galleries in this economic climate are really small miracles that require real same, business sensibilities and luck up the yin-yang. Anita Trezvant has most of that working for her. Since she took over the Co-op and reignited the Hope Gallery in Bristol a few years ago, she has had the right navigational skills to put this gem of a small gallery on the map of art viewers with one good show after another.

Anita is charming and with good humor and is a talented artist herself; she makes small soft sculptures that are fascinating and hip. Her work is as colorful as her personality and the Hope Gallery is all her.

Anita is within range of the IMAGO CO-OP Center for the Arts in Warren and the WILSON COLLECTION in Portsmouth. Gary Wilson, longtime framer and gallery owner of East Bay Picture Frame, previously of Warren and now, with his latest venture into design, exhibitions, workshops, lectures and experts in yarn and the like, of Portsmouth. And all this is along RT 114 and West Main Road. Wilson has on display a fine collection of work in varied media and a hand-stained collection of his own. Very creative stuff and very specialized indeed.

THE IMAGO has been at this now for the long haul and has boasted an ambitious exhibition schedule for a dozen years or so and every show (whether you window shop or make the openings) is professionally produced, hung, advertised and attended. Like our Second Story Theatre in Warren, IMAGO is a City Gallery in a Village setting.

As a real believer of free enterprise and a champion for small businesses, I see this triad — and of course there are other galleries along the same route Newport — as what drives good business. When like shops are within range of one another (not fast food joints, or Giant-marts), the range of support or clients grows to make it an art district or an shoe district, or a car district. You get to experience a good overall spectrum of what you yearn for.  That brings me back to THE HOPE GALLERY.

THE CURRENT EXHIBITION at THE HOPE GALLERY is dedicated to more than two dozen land3scape, scenery and cityscape painters, all equally talented, prolific and genuine in the art of reflecting our surroundings to us in plastic metaphoric terms.  These are all small, masterfully done and very affordable paintings that will be hard for anyone in that persuasion to resist or walk away from. I liked what I saw and I think you might be just in time to see it for yourself. These are a nifty collection of dazzling little paintings.

Anita Trezvant is a joy to deal with, or buy from, and most folks register great reports on what they experience at her gallery. This is the perfect time to see this show. Stop in and say that Angelo sent you, and you’ll get a million dollar smile, I promise you.