BRATTLEBORO — Gallery in the Woods, 145 Main Street, hosts the opening reception of new works by Lahri Bond on Friday, Nov. 4, from 5 to 8 p.m., during downtown Brattleboro's Gallery Walk.
Bond is a designer, illustrator, writer, musician, and teacher, who lives and works in the Pioneer Valley of Western Massachusetts. He illustrates and designs magazines, posters, books, and CD covers, and has recently completed several environmentally themed murals.
Bond says he was profoundly affected as a child by viewing Russian-born surrealist Pavel Tchelitchew's classic Hide and Seek painting at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City. He has formed a lifelong love of the artistic use of cryptesthesia, in which images are camouflaged within images, and hidden meanings are revealed to the consciousness through sensory hallucinations.
Organizers say this series of paintings combines Bond's kinship with the elemental forces of the natural world with his exploration of the Celtic folklore, myths, and archetypes of his family's ancestral home in Scotland. He has recently begun to describe his work as “Celt-edelic.”
Also featured in the month of November with an opening during November Gallery Walk are paintings by Mayan artists from the villages around Lake Atitlan in Guatemala. More prevalent themes are planting and harvesting of coffee and corn, the outdoor marketplace, typical foods, nature and the environment, traditional ceremonies, Mayan “Cosmovision,” and the impact of colonization and globalization on their world. The artists being presented are from the villages of San Pedro La Laguna and San Juan La Laguna.
For more information, visit galleryinthewoods.com or call 802-257-4777.