Art Beat: 'Gallery X Remembers' a tribute to what artists leave behind

Consider this prologue a brief local art history lesson, that takes place well after the halcyon days of Bierstadt and Ashley and Bradford and Ryder and a couple of Giffords, and well before 2011,  when urban studies theorist Richard Florida declared New Bedford the seventh “Most Artistic City in America.”

Before there were artists' studios and regular exhibitions in the Hatch Street building and in the Kilburn Mills, before there was Artworks or the New Bedford Art Museum, before the University Of Massachusetts Darmouth established a downtown campus in a one-time department store for the College of Visual and Performing Arts, before Alison Wells or Judith Klein or Robert Duff or the late Robert Hunt opened their namesake galleries, before Luis Villanueva opened the Colo Colo Gallery, even before the late Arthur Moniz set up a gallery on lower William Street … there was Gallery X.

Gallery X was formed in 1990 by a coalition of alumni of the Swain School of Design that included Chuck Hauck, Barbara Worthington, Sue Gilmore, Diane Cournoyer, Pam Power, Steve Richardson, Richard Vanasse, John Moylan and a dozen or so others including myself.

All the founders were not Swain affiliated but they were allies in the effort to establish a downtown art gallery. Some of those participants were singer and collagist Kathy Crowley, local historian Bob Maker, and First Unitarian Church Reverend Karen LeBlanc, who back then was Karen McGowen, a leather clad punk poet with an almost entirely shaved head.

The gallery was originally located in a storefront on Spring Street between Pleasant and Purchase and was named Gallery X because of its close proximity to the building that once housed the YWCA and to the Zeiterion Theater. In 1995, the gallery relocated to an 1855 building on William Street that was originally the First Universalist Church. Over the years, many other denominations settled for a time in that space.

Over the last 33 years, hundreds of visual, literary and performing artists have become members of the gallery. But out of all those devoted to the cause folks (and there have been many), there is one particular individual whose name is virtually synonymous with Gallery X. And that is Chuck Hauck. He was not the sole founder of Gallery X but he is certainly the soul of Gallery X.

With that in mind, it is perfectly fitting that Hauck be the curator of “Gallery X Remembers,” currently on display in the Frederick Douglass Gallery, the X’s street level exhibition space.

Over the decades, dozens of Gallery X members and affiliates of the gallery have passed away. The X is a place where friendships were born, alliances were formed, where courtships blossomed and sometimes ended, where arguments erupted and sometimes settled, and where food and drink and conversation were plentiful. It is community. “Remembers” is a nod to those no longer with us and what they left behind.

Marc St. Pierre (d. 2019) was not an official member but the former Swain and UMD printmaking instructor was a frequent visitor, exhibitor and unofficial advisor. His “Point Partridge,” an encaustic from 2014, is a handsome and vibrant example of his geometric abstractions, which often took the grid as a starting point, before referencing topographical and architectural elements to manipulate space and play with the field of vision.

David Loeffler Smith (d. 2012), a revered former painting and drawing teacher from Swain who eventually retired from UMD after the merger, is represented by three paintings. His oil “Concert” vibrates with a near orgiastic energy, in which musicians and dancers and revelers seem to merge and dissipate in an unbridled frenzy.

Darrel Dwelley (d. 2011) was a student of Smith’s and their shared sense of rhythm and love of color reveal a metaphorical genealogy between the two. Dwelley’s “Back Porch” is naught but a simple still life but oh, what a still life it is. It includes a terra cotta pot from which brilliant pink blossoms arise, a pair of orange handled kitchen scissors and a bowl with a deep blue concave. He, like his mentor, was capable of finding a lush sensuality even in the most common of objects.

LaDonna Johns (d. 2010) was a ceramist and among her objects on display is a set of figurines collectively referred to as “The Rasta Band.” Essentially an octet of caricature statuettes, all around six inches, Johns modeled them on the “real” Rasta Band (sometimes known as the Rasta Banned), a group of musicians with a few mainstays and an ever changing line-up of others that played (and still occasionally play) at the X for years.

For those keeping score at home, they include the aforementioned Reverend LeBlanc (note the shaved head), Hauck and Maker on vocals, Richard Vanasse on bongo, Screamin’ Johnny Nieman on drums, Doug Tuxworth on saxophone, Tom Short on flute, and Bob “Fingers” Flynn on guitar.

Other works of note: a few paintings by Vanasse (d. 2016), including his sultry “Jet Girl 2” and his humorous “Seaplane on the Bay;” a moody untitled painting with mythological undertones by Bob Henry (d. 2011); the golden-hued “Mermaid and Fish,” a bas-relief by Len Shartle (d. 2012); the haunting “Mill Worker,” a painting by Joseph Rapoza, Jr. (d. 2018); a carved wooden female figure in a near fetal position by sculptor Steph Davidson (d. 2003), and paintings by Paul Menard (d. 2022), and Don Hoaglund (d. 2021), who was also a master jeweler, pioneer artisan/business owner in downtown New Bedford.

The show is small, reserved and touching. And the work all stands the test of time. Rest in peace.

“Gallery X Remembers” is on display at Gallery X, 169 William St., New Bedford until March 5.

This article originally appeared on The Herald News: Art Beat visits "Gallery X Remembers" in New Bedford