Summer 2025 Exhibition
The Art of Appetite
From donuts to deep reflections – our summer art opening was a feast for the senses. Over 70 guests explored The Art of Appetite, showcasing how food inspires art, memory, and meaning. Guests encountered works by 14 artists, from whimsical and surreal imaginings to deeply personal reflections on nourishment, offering cultural commentary, still lifes, and delightfully offbeat interpretations of food as story, symbol, and shared experience.”
Visitors laughed at Richard Baker’s witty “Food Comics,” while others were captivated by Raquel Fornasaro’s politically resonant painting and William Turville’s bold, idiosyncratic sculptural works. Fay Senner’s striking fruit-and-vegetable aluminum prints, handmade jewelry, and bags were a surprise discovery.
The highlight of the evening was an artist panel featuring four exhibiting artists. The discussion sparked thoughtful conversation about artistic process, meaning, and the role of food in our lives and greater society.
The Cordon Bleu Cook Book
Richard Baker
Gouache on 300 lb watercolor
Making paintings of cookbooks is an act of hope and of despair — hope that the contents within the depicted object are delicious and nourishing; despair because there is rarely enough time to make Beef Wellington or hunt down enough wild eggplants to make a good dinner party.
Drawing comics of what I have consumed is an act of praise to the featured cooks and chefs and fast food workers. There is criticism for some of the same. The comics are a way to humorously regurgitate my culinary experiences. Every good burp deserves a laugh!
The act of depicting/describing, either in words or images, negative or positive, is an embrace of this complex world we inhabit. Burp…
Avocados
Mary Damas
Watercolors
Mary Demas has been painting watercolors for more than five years, as a creative outlet from her job in IT. Her work is profoundly influenced by the mentorship of her teacher, local artist Sheila Foley.
Her work is a depiction of some of the favorite fresh produce she enjoys eating. She likes how fruit is beautiful in all stages and it can look completely different depending on its ripeness. Mary hopes these watercolors evoke a longing for simple nutritious, food options instead of eating something out of a package.
Sustenance
Sheila Falco
Following retirement as a Nurse Practitioner and my belief in lifelong learning I took a painting class with a local artist. Since then, I have ventured out taking myriad painting classes with local artists, and artists from the Museum of Fine Arts, Rockport and Concord Art Associations.
I love the magic of Watercolor, the smoothness of Oil and the precision of Acrylic. Painting helps me to find the beauty in each day and gratitude for living life in this beauty.
Pizza Box
Sheila Foley Acrylic on pizza box
Stoneham artist/educator Sheila Foley has been drawing and painting since at least second grade. Long, long ago. But she didn’t go professional until receiving her art degree in 1975. Sheila is also a published author/illustrator, amateur musician, and Whistler aficionado. Yes, the guy who painted his mother. Since 2010, she’s been painting events, mostly weddings, live as they happen.
Sheila’s painting titled, “That’s Amore” came about when her evening adult class mentioned that some of them came directly from work and often skipped dinner. No starving artists on my watch, she thought. So they ordered pizzas and ate before class, with a plan that they’d capture any leftovers on canvas. As their teacher, Sheila wasn’t planning to paint, just help her students. But they were having such fun and the inclination was too strong. With no available canvas of her own, Sheila quickly painted a slice on the least greasy box top. You art what you eat, after all.
Savage Capitalism
Raquel Fornasaro Mixed media installation on canvas with plexiglass rabbit
Raquel Fornasaro is a multidisciplinary artist whose work investigates the complex relationship between urban expansion, environmental impact, and the enduring legacy of colonial capitalism. Her upbringing in São Paulo and background in advertisement and media profoundly influences her practice.
Raquel’s work explores the fraught relationship between urban development and the environment. Growing up in São Paulo, she witnessed firsthand the profound and lasting effects of the colonial capitalist system. These formative experiences directly inform her practice, through which she creates visual narratives that confront our choices and highlight the urgency of adopting sustainable behaviors. Her art stands as a reminder that our decisions echo throughout generations. She aims to reveal the hidden costs of progress and the intricate interconnectedness of all living systems.
Apple Harvest
Kendall Inglese Acrylic on canvas
Kendall is a Lynnfield resident and STE(a)M instructor. A graduate of Mount Holyoke College, she has exhibited her own original works painting on tile and canvas, screen print and watercolor, and has taught design techniques to all ages.
Her Orchards series shows fruit hanging from a local farm orchard – in three different tones. The most recognizable is the apple reds. The fruit is ready and clearly dangling for picking, but these apples are not perfect. The lush leaves and shadows add to the shininess of the ripe skin, but they have their bruises and holes.
La Tormenta se Acerca
Joseph Leto Watercolor
Joseph Leto’s art training took him through the Art institute of Boston, and the Museum of Fine Arts School, Boston. He earned his living as an international award winning Commercial and Fine Artist, Certified Professional Photographer, Professional Art Framer, and Technical Designer.
Leto says “A true artist’s job is to present a story or a theme from their life’s thoughts, dreams, or experiences. As you study it, you may realize and reflect those same thoughts and feelings in your life. A Genius Loci! The reason a piece has stirred you is because you have realized or shared those same thoughts, and dreams. You remember and value them.”
Junk Food Thanksgiving
Karen Moss Acrylic on paper
Karen has been working and exhibiting in the Boston area since the late ‘60s.
Her work is driven by ideas rather than by any single recognizable style. Each exhibition or project focuses on a specific concept and materials are selected accordingly. Her ideas are inspired by a multitude of influences from history, science, environmental concerns, politics, fashion and pop culture.
Moss’ art is often humorous and satirical. In this painting she gathered various well known pop culture figures around a table of clearly unhealthy foods. Thanksgiving is traditionally a time when people gather to eat mostly healthy traditional foods such as turkey and many kinds of vegetables. She sees this painting as a satire of the widespread consumption of junk food and its promotion by companies that only think of profit rather than health. She chose this subject to call attention to a serious issue but in a way that uses humor.
Cabbage
Jane Paulson Cut Paper
Although a librarian by training, Jane Paulson has been creating mixed media work for the past 20 years. Her pieces have been in galleries, private homes, libraries and other public spaces in the metro Boston area. Graphic novels have been an enduring inspiration since childhood.
Many of her pieces are the result of happy discoveries – a toy that’s been left on a street corner, paper ephemera that’s been weathered by the elements, foot traffic or cars, or disposable items like the Sunday comics or used teabags. In fact, these items often suggest the concept behind the resulting work, whether it’s personal, social commentary or an exploration of themes like symbolism, the environment or duality.
Her Only Meal
Sophie Pearson Oil on canvas
Sophie Pearson is an oil painter currently living in Worcester, MA. In 2021, she received her BFA from Lesley University. Her work revolves primarily around self portraiture and the experiences of growing up in a tumultuous household. Her current work is exploring themes of memory loss, childhood, and trauma, using her own childhood photos as inspiration and reference.
“Her only meal” is a painting that depicts a common meal when Sophie was in the peak of her restrictive eating disorder. Something that might seem like a snack to some was often an entire day’s worth of food for her. The knife represents a quiet violence in what might otherwise look like a normal kitchen scene.
Basket and Quilt
Kim Ramsay Colored Pencil
Kim has been creating art since she was a child. She took private art lessons throughout her schooling and went on to study at the University of Lowell where she earned a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree, magna cum laude.
After she graduated, Kim worked in graphic design, but as things became more digitally generated, she decided to focus on the drawing aspect of art and discovered colored pencils. She started exploring the medium after receiving her training mostly in oil and graphite. She works in colored pencil because she loves the way she can capture the intricate details and colors and she often chooses fruits and vegetables as her subject matter.
Tuna Tacos
Karin Samatis Acrylics
Karin trained at the New England School of Art and Design in Boston and worked as a conceptual artist in a large advertising agency. From there, she became a freelance illustrator specializing in advertising, design and TV commercials, and has taught illustration and graphic arts at the college level. She is presently is a store sign artist at a local Trader Joe’s.
As a concept artist in advertising and design for many years, it took a while for Karin to find her fine artist voice. That is when she decided to start painting unusual objects and settings, from the colorful fruits and veggies at farmer’s markets, the food her daughter, a chef, has prepared, or her morning coffee in tranquil travel settings. Her style is sometimes realistic but bordering on whimsy.
Blue Cabbage
Fay Senner Dye Sublimated hardboard tiles
Fay Senner is a mixed-media visual artist and consulting astrologer, creating and reflecting from her Hudson, Massachusetts studio.
Through her work, Fay aspires to kindle a sense of wonder in others, exploring the unseen aspects of the natural world with passion and creativity, and manifesting this invisible beauty into tangible reality.
Her latest series, “The Art and Alchemy of Fruits and Vegetables,” undergoes an alchemical process – the fruits and vegetables are sliced very thin and placed into boiling water. Once ready, they are removed, collaged, dried, and pressed. In the final stage, digital files are created, transferred onto dye sublimation paper, and then printed onto aluminum panels, glass, fabric or acrylic depending using a Heat Set press. The entire process is done by hand and takes several weeks to complete.
Burger ‘n’ Chips
Bill Turville
Found rocks, cherry wood chips, diner plate
For over fifty years, William Turville has worked at the intersection of art, architecture, and environmental activism. A Pratt Institute graduate, he has created 3D art, practiced architecture, taught, held residencies, and produced public art with community groups.
Using unusual materials and techniques, he creates expressive sculptures and installations inspired by the environment and social justice. He currently exhibits with Boston’s i3c collective and works with recycled and weathered found materials.
Turville often uses humor or surprise to comment on consumerism and popular culture, as in his Burger ‘n’ Chips piece. The hamburger and fries/chips plates we all have enjoyed is surely the bedrock of casual food. So the hamburger here is rock, the chips are real wood chips, and the plate is a diner plate.
