Art gallery at west end adds eclectic touch to Main Street By Paul Gately / pgately@cnc.com Wednesday, August 6, 2003 It's about images Main Street, Buzzards Bay, is Gasoline Alley. Antique Alley in places. New sidewalks are going in. Perhaps a new restaurant soon. Room for another car dealership and additional service station? Surely. Even another convenience store. But an art gallery too? Count on it. Vagabond Gallery has opened at 145 Main St. in the Christopoulos block. The opening reception is Aug. 9. The shop adds an eclectic touch to Main Street this summer, which is a veritable construction site. But there is a hint of change. The gallery might help transform the street, which remains rough around the edges in places. The name suggests a wanderer or rover. The gallery, however, seeks permanence. It may help return the street to what many villagers suggest were its better days. The gallery, specializing in imagery, is thus an instant image itself. The owners are Michael Conti and Elizabeth Hottinger. He is a photographer who specializes in computer-enhanced negatives with coloring. She's a painter and expert at Web site design. The gallery will feature glassworks, jewelry, sculpture and painting, especially Hottinger's sunflower in red, black and yellow. The gallery features a giant sandbox in the middle of the display space, which is a peach-colored rowboat. Hand-crafted jewelry is nestled in the sand for effect along with sculpture. Hand-made copper mobiles hang from the ceiling. The place has attracted attention. It is sandwiched between Bridgeway Realtors, Bourne Pharmacy and The Chocolate Flounder. It moved in where others, notably a first-rate crafts store and photography business, tried to help change business fortunes along the street in a rapidly-changing trading market, but ultimately moved out. The gallery may endure. There is foot traffic these soon-to-be dog days along neighboring Antique Alley. It is an attraction of sorts already with Bridgewater State College professor Rob Lorenson's giant stainless steel elliptical sphere sculpture set up outside. Matt Noiseaux, a student of Lorensen, displays a large bronze structure that delineates the life of a flower from beginning to end. Conti and Hottinger plan to run a shop that supports artists of all stripes. "We feel it's important to support artists within the community," Conti said. "To allow fairness in representation." Hottinger says local artists are featured. They include Derek Riley of Monument Beach with his metal tables and Anne MacRae MacLeod of Onset, an artist whose garden is called "Stone River." The tile artist John Derry, meanwhile, is the self-styled "Cape Cod Scribbler." He does marine drawings on napkins in doughnut shops, makes prints, hand-colors them, transfers them to ceramic tiles, encloses them in a protective covering, places hangers on the back and sells them. Derry's nautical themes blend old marine memories in the canal region with background imagery and color. The gallery is open most days. It maintains a Web site at vagabondgallery.com with each artist represented. Hottinger works in her gallery studio, painting, drawing and illustrating. And planning. "All very time consuming," she said. The gallery is named after her mother's Vagabond Inn at Naples, N.Y., in the Finger Lakes region. ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Visit the Upper Cape Codder at Townonline.com back
		Home | Featured Artists | Conti Photographic | The Vagabond Inn and Gallery  Directions | Contact Us  Vagabond Gallery ©2003/2004 All Rights Reserved.