Canal Street Art Gallery presents: Kim Grall One Artist Bound To Earth, on view from August 18th through October 14th. Join the Gallery on 3rd Friday Gallery Night in Historic Downtown Bellows Falls from 5-7pm, August 18th, to celebrate the opening of the show. All Gallery events are free and open to the public. 

Kim Grall, in the artist’s first solo exhibition at Canal Street Art Gallery, titled One Artist Bound to Earth, shows both two and three dimensional mixed media encaustics. Created with foraged and harvested materials, Grall’s work typically uses gourds as a primary form. Most recently, the artist is exploring encaustic with mixed media on wall hanging wood panels. The artist uses techniques such as pyrography, painting, collage, and cordage making, along with vines, leaves, seed pods, handmade pigments and papers. Through an intimacy with her handmade supplies using many Native American and ancient materials and techniques, Grall’s work presents utilitarian objects, sacred objects, mixed media sculpture, and fine art. Encaustic, a medium made from beeswax and damar resin, dates as a painting technique to the 1st century A.D. by Greek painters in Egypt. The medium’s revival in the 20th century carries on, as artists continue to evolve and develop materials to achieve the results they envision. The gourd, cultivated in both the Americas, Asia, and Africa up to 12,000 years ago, is possibly the oldest domesticated plant species. The dried fruit is used for both utilitarian and artistic purposes.

“I’ve always worked with mixed media, whether on paper or gourds, and now with encaustics on wood panels. Color, texture and natural images inspire me.  When I begin a piece I have a general idea of subject matter and direction, but am always led on by what is happening as materials get layered and accidents happen. I have consciously moved towards working as much as possible with materials that are natural, making my own encaustic medium with beeswax and damar resin, cordage from plant materials I forage and harvest, growing gourds, collecting and growing plants for seed pods, dyes, seeds and leaves, foraging vines and harvesting bamboo… the list goes on. People often ask me why I do what I do and the best answer I can come up with is: Why do you breathe?” -Kim Grall

Artworks in the Show

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