Inside Art with Michael Rose -- Preview of Summer Exhibit at Newport’s Coastal Contemporary Gallery

Inside Art with Michael Rose -- Preview of Summer Exhibit at Newport’s Coastal Contemporary Gallery

Newport, Rhode Island, has historically been regarded as a playground for the well-to-do. Today’s Newport, however, has shifted from a summer enclave for robber barons to a tourist destination for a broad audience. One of the city’s art galleries continues to forge ahead with an exciting vision for what a commercial art space can be. A younger venue, Coastal Contemporary Gallery was founded in 2018 and offers visitors an opportunity to experience a diverse range of new visual art on the city’s bustling Thames Street. This summer the gallery has exciting programs scheduled, making it well worth a trip to the city by the sea.

Coastal Contemporary Gallery is a gem of the local art scene and in the last three years has become something of a nexus for artists from throughout the region and beyond to share their work with a Newport audience. Housed in a remodeled storefront, the fresh and bright gallery space is an ideal backdrop for equally crisp and current artworks. When visiting Newport, one might expect that maritime scenes would dominate the art offerings but Coastal’s stable of artists upends expectations and labels, giving patrons access to a breadth of artistic visions. As the busy season gets underway, Coastal is geared up to provide a unique opportunity to see and to collect contemporary art.

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Over the summer, Coastal will host salon-style exhibitions which will fill the walls with artworks to celebrate the array of work proffered by the gallery. These in-person shows will be accompanied by special live gatherings on July 17th and August 21st from 6:00-8:00 pm each evening. As cultural venues reopen in earnest, the opportunity to mix and mingle with artists is an unexpected delight. Against the backdrop of rotating floor-to-ceiling exhibitions, art aficionados and novices alike will undoubtedly make new connections and find inspiration.

The slate of individuals represented by this modestly-sized gallery is impressive and shows off art-makers who run the gamut from emerging and self-taught to mid-career artists holding master's degrees. In addition to celebratory gatherings, Coastal Contemporary Gallery will also play host to demonstrations on how a painting is made. This addition to their summer program is an engaging means to tell the deeper story of the art on the walls.

Scheduled for June 26 and 27th from 2:00-4:00 pm each day, British artist Annie Wildey will participate in these live painting sessions. The resulting experience means audiences, normally separated from the act of making art, will have the chance to see a painting come together in real-time. Wildey is a talented artist whose recent “Big Little Skies” series consists of richly painted and dramatic skyscapes produced in an intimate scale.

Later this summer, the gallery will complement its feature of Wildey with a special focus on the studio process of self-taught artist Angelo Desista, who focuses on the human form. Desista is a Rhode Islander with a growing social media following. His gritty figurative work employs as its medium everything from wire and canvas to paper and concrete. The gallery’s educative programs focused on Wildey and Desista are a fitting antidote to the sometimes sterile world of gallery-going.

Other creatives who will be featured in Coastal Contemporary Gallery’s summer salon series include emerging artists like Lydia Mozzone and Douglas Breault. A painter, Mozzone creates quiet images that leverage the nude in order to study moments of inward-looking solitude. Breault is a mixed media artist who utilizes sculptural elements combined with his background in photography resulting in boundary-breaking work. The inclusion of promising younger artists in the gallery’s program is a great asset. If Rhode Island is to be a state with a rich art culture then artists must be given such opportunities to begin their careers within its borders.

Coastal Contemporary Gallery’s director, Shari Weschler, is not only an inventive creative entrepreneur but is also an artist. Working under the name Sumo Bunni, she has exhibited her own work widely. Perhaps this has given her the unique point of view necessary to become a passionate promoter of the artists she represents. Under her leadership, Coastal Contemporary Gallery has evolved into a bastion of contemporary art making and art dealing in Rhode Island and beyond. As this space continues to build its reputation for sharing fine art in Newport, its summer programs offer an artful accompaniment to the other summer pursuits for which the Ocean State is renowned.

Coastal Contemporary Gallery is located at 491 Thames Street in Newport. The gallery’s summer hours are Tuesday - Friday 12:00pm - 3:00pm and Saturday and Sunday 12:00pm - 5:00pm.

For updates and more information, visit www.coastalcontemporarygallery.com.

- Learn more about Michael Rose.