With highlights like new images from Michael Winters, a comeback for Drift Gallery, and the season opener in a historic house, this month’s Art ’Round Town is going to be a bright one. Here are some of the Portsmouth galleries celebrating new art exhibits with receptions this Friday, June 3, from 5 to 8 p.m.
Strawbery Banke Museum
At the peak of last year’s growing season, local photographer Michael Winters captured the spirit of Strawbery Banke’s historic gardens. “In Bloom” features expertly styled and costumed models wearing flower crowns and accessories handcrafted by Erik Wochholz, the museum’s curator of historic landscapes. The photos are set in the neighborhood and in some of the elaborately decorated houses on the property. On view through July 31 in the TYCO Visitor Center’s lecture hall at Strawbery Banke, 14 Hancock St.
Todd Bonita Gallery/Drift Gallery
Detail of a painting by Sean Ware.
A collaborative pop-up exhibition curated by the Drift Gallery and hosted by the Todd Bonita Gallery presents paintings by Seacoast artist Sean Ware. His distinctive paintings focus on the relationship between the landscape and architecture, surveying human presence and community from a distance. This recent work is inspired by changing light and other continuous shifts in the natural world. The show runs through July 9 at the Todd Bonita Gallery, 39 Ceres St.
Governor John Langdon House
“Domestic Bliss: Discarded, Remembered, and Imagined” is contemporary artwork by Karen Battles and Leslie Lyman incorporating found images and artifacts from the past. The artwork focuses attention on the things people leave behind, such as photos, letters, clothing, boxes, and books, and lets viewers contemplate the passage of time and question the nature of memory. On view through July 10. The public is also invited to tour the entire Georgian mansion for free during an open house on Saturday, June 4. The Governor John Langdon House is at 143 Pleasant St.
Nahcotta
Crabshell and Kelp by David Kiphuth.
This month’s featured artists share an affinity for and fascination with the natural environment, and their work complements one another. Adam Batchelor’s detailed colored pencil drawings depict animals engaged in odd behaviors, adorned with surprising elements. This show presents his avian imagery. David Kiphuth creates hyper-realistic tiny tableaus of leaves, bark, mushrooms, and the forest floor, while Brooks Salzwedel depicts the unnatural incongruity of spruce trees surrounding an abandoned truck or fog thickening around a plane crash. Wendy Whatley is influenced by the outdoors and her small ceramic sculptures convey that passion, sprouting delicate mushrooms and tiny mussels. It’s all on view at Nahcotta, 110 Congress St.
Kennedy Gallery
Detail of a painting by Christopher Volpe.
Local artist Christopher Volpe hones in on the interplay of land, sea, and sky in new oil paintings for “Borderlands: Seacoast Marshes,” on view through June 26. Featured are interpretations of the salt marshes and winding waterways of Great Bay, Rye, Newburyport, and environs.
Here’s the artist’s statement: “Some of the paintings were inspired by the work of nineteenth-century painter Martin Johnson Heade, who painted some of the same locations. But I wanted to avoid imitating the style of the past. I wanted to respond in an authentic, personal way to the landscape as it is right now, and to the experience of being there with the memory of Heade’s paintings in the back on one’s mind. Some of those marshes look somewhat the same, but I was chasing how it feels to be there, mindful of the present and past, and to revisit the place in memory later on in the studio.”
The Kennedy Gallery is at 41 Market St.
Robert Lincoln Levy Gallery
Detail of a painting by Peggy Murray.
In a new format for The New Hampshire Art Association, each wall of the main gallery has been taken over by a member artist. The show, “7 Artists,” features painters Alison Huber-Jewett, Ree Katrak, Peggy Murray, Susan Stetson and Jan Waldron along with photographers Claudia Rippee and Debra Woodward. In the other rooms, “Cross Border Pastel Connections” is a group show highlighting the Pastel Society of New Hampshire and the Pastel Painters of Maine to promote awareness and appreciation for pastel as an art medium. Both exhibits run through June 25 at the N.H. Art Association, 136 State St.
Valerie’s Gallery
Detail of a ceramic fish by Dan Ryan.
Paul Beauregard is a third-generation woodworker who carves wooden birds inspired by New England species, and potter Dan Ryan creates ceramic fish. Both will be available at a Meet the Artists event Friday night. Valerie’s Gallery is at 117 Market St.
Discover Portsmouth
A painting of the Warner House by Russell Cheney, circa 1935.
On the second floor of Discover Portsmouth, the Portsmouth Historical Society is celebrating the birthday of a landmark house with the new exhibition, “The Warner House at 300!” It includes many historic paintings, prints, and sculptures alongside se