This week Greg Marshall of the Park Record wrote an article about the exciting new changes and additions to the Park City Gallery Association Gallery Stroll. Below is an excerpt from the article, featuring Gallery MAR’s exhibition of works by Sharon Jackman and Brooks Yates.

A new website, brochure and an end to the $7 requested donation at the Kimball Art Center are some of the changes those attending Friday’s gallery stroll can expect. Art sellers are starting the New Year with a smorgasbord of exhibits, meet-and-greet receptions and a more inclusive scope that includes businesses north of Main Street and elsewhere in Park City. Kimball won’t be the place to kick off festivities anymore, said Connie Katz, one of the heads of the association. Instead, 24 different art sellers and nonprofit organizations, including the Kimball, will offer passersby hors d’œuvre, drinks and plenty of eye candy.

The Park City Gallery Stroll runs from 6 until 9 p.m. on the last Friday of every month.

“Our whole message is that you can start anywhere,” said Katz, who owns Coda Gallery on Lower Main Street. “You can start north of Main or you can start at the top. You don’t have to go and pay. You can go and stroll.”

The economy hasn’t dampened enthusiasm for the rejuvenated Gallery Association, Katz said. Mike Hale Chevrolet, a sponsor of the stroll, will display a Chevy Traverse on Main Street, and organizers plan to hold a drawing as part of a newfangled sense of unity in tough economic times.

Joining the gallery association was a “no-brainer” for Maren Bargreen, who opened Gallery MAR in the summer and is listed in the association’s brochure for the first time. Before she owned her own gallery, Bargeen directed other spaces in town. “For the first time in a long time we’re all working together,” she said.

As a general rule, Bargreen will pay for an artist’s lodging in a hotel. When she has played host, though, she said visiting artists make polite houseguests. “You stay up talking late at night,” she said. “Sometimes you gotta put them up.”

Urban landscapes, figurative oil paintings and crystal-encrusted ceramics will be on display during the January stroll. Here are some of highlights. Sharon Jackman’s ceramics don’t always take the familiar form of bowls, vases and plates. Instead, Jackman shapes smooth, white porcelain into flowers, trees and birds. Then she pours on a liquid crystal glaze and fires her pieces at 2,000 degrees. At white-hot temperatures, thick crystals grow on the surface. Jackman can’t control exactly where patterns form, but she can determine the color of crystals by applying different minerals and metals. Copper breeds green, cobalt blue and iron orange.

Jackman, who exhibit at Gallery MAR will be her first in Park City, earned her bachelor’s degree in modern dance and has spent much of her adult life working as a choreographer. She decided to retire from performing about 10 years ago and starting making ceramics. She has glazed her work with crystal for about four of those years. Bargreen saw Jackman’s work in a show in Las Vegas and knew she wanted to represent Jackman in Gallery MAR. “They were luminous and tribal,” Bargreen remembers. Some of the crystals are shaped like snowflakes. Others resemble mushrooms, thick and glassy.

“What draws people to my work are the shapes,” Jackman said. For more information on the gallery stroll, visit www.Parkcitygalleryassociation.com .

Tags: Brooks Yates, Park City Gallery Association, Park Record, sharon jackman
Posted in Park City Life