Machina Arts Gallery
Art is an Experience
Art is an Experience
We view art as an interactive experience in which guests are active participants rather than passive observers. We want our guest to feel immersed in the experience that we have curated from when they walk through the door to when they interact with each staff member or enjoy each dish that they are served. Towards this end, our space is filled with installation art and hidden stories that can be discovered over time should the guest choose to explore. Our food and drinks are creatively presented and we strive to have our staff be knowledgeable and kind, cultivating an experience of intrigue, ease, excellence, and excitement.
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The ArtBar is created to be a blank canvas for a site-specific contemporary installation artist to come in once a year and do a full install in our space. Instead of a white walled gallery, we have decided to push the norms and have a black walled gallery.
The Kitchen will hold a 3 month rotating gallery with a focus on contemporary 2D artwork. The Kitchen will also be home to a permanent collection created by Jeff Scott.
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Our Current Artists
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Wendy Klemperer I ArtBar Gallery
Brooklyn, NY & Nelson, NH The imagery that pervades my work reflects a lifelong fascination with animals. As a child this led to hours of watching, drawing, and imagining. When I began making sculpture as an adult I developed these mental images in three dimensions. Facility is not the objective of my work, but a means to convey an expressive moment. The materials I use retain a raw, immediate quality. Presence and absence reverberate in the sculptures: a network of steel lines builds the form, drawing and re-drawing the animal, creating a tension like the sudden sighting of a wild beast. The surrounding environment penetrates the negative spaces between the lines of metal; the landscape itself is imbedded in the work.To make the sculptures I search scrap yards for pieces that have been discarded and ravaged by life in the yard. Bent and twisted, such pieces contain energy and a potential new life. Industrial refuse is transformed to living form.
Hillary Baker l Kitchen Gallery
NH Hilary Baker is a New England artist whose work focuses on the jeopardy of our Earth’s clean water. After earning a BFA in computer arts, she then co-ran a photogravure atelier before embarking on a career in higher education. Hilary now focuses on her own artistic endeavors, using her digital and alternative photo expertise, and integrating both with the traditions of painting and printmaking.
Working with her own developed processes of wet-plate image transfers, and discovering encaustic painting, her work primarily flows back and forth within these mediums, both of which include nuances of botanical contact printing. Drawn to the juxtapositions of images, her work continplates the old next to the new, the abstract co-mingled with the real, micro verses macro. Using these visual tools she looks for themes of irony and metaphor evoked by her own personal connection to the Earth’s water. “Nature has been my most important teacher and continues to be.” Chris Jeffrey l ArtBar Gallery
Light Studio J l Montpelier, VT LightStudioJ documents my efforts to create art works that explore the interaction of light and color, and the ways that this interaction can take us outside of our day-to-day experience and give us opportunities to experience the world on a deeper, less ego-driven level.
I have been a stained glass artist for many years. My glass work can be found at www.chrisjeffrey.com. But at some point I realized that what truly excites me about stained glass isn’t really the imagery or the finished window. What fully engages me is the visceral response I have to the colors with which I work, and the light that creates and amplifies those colors. When there isn’t the distraction of imagery or even a physical framework, those pure colors inspire in me a sense of mystery, introspection and penetrating beauty. It’s the feeling I get when I take the time to stop working for a while and watch as cobalt blue and crimson red, pure colors projected by the sun through a stained glass panel hanging in a window of my studio, slowly make their way over the floor and up the wall. The image in the panel, its dimensions, the motivation for its creation, fade to irrelevance. All that matters are the nebulous colors before me, not telling me what to think or feel, just allowing me to become absorbed in their intensity and beauty. LightStudioJ is my attempt to recreate and extend this experience by experimenting with different artistic expressions that have at their core the immense and consuming power and beauty of light and color. Nat Schmee l Installation Artist l Restroom Gallery
Winchester, NH Nat truly believes that art is in everything and everyone, so it should be anywhere and everywhere - on a vacant wall, a sidewalk, or even in a bathroom. Nat moved here from outside NYC where the art scene is strong and established and Nat is committed to helping make NH a thriving art hub, where the arts are more weird and prevalent.
"Art should hit you when you least expect it. It should make you think, feel, and question what you thought you knew. Everyone can make art. So make it wherever you can and make it often." -Nat Schmee. Nat has commissioned numerous pieces and events for Machina Arts and the Monadnock Community and hopes to continue to "Make Keene Weird." Rebecca & Chris Hamilton
Design Directors and Installation Artists/ Machina Partners and Co-Founder Gilsum NH Jaime Mcguigan l Illustration Artist
Marlow NH |
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Danya Landis
Art Director / Machina Partner / Co Founder Danya Landis graduated from The Maine College of Art in 2011 with a Bachelors in Fine Arts in Sculpture. Danya specialized in metalworking, installation art, performance art, and jewelry. Although her studies focused on fine art, her passion, even then, was for craft, design. and curation. In 2013 Danya co-founded Machina Arts because she saw a need in our community for art based cultural activities and with their art-based business started offering art-based event management, experiential interior design, curated interactive galleries, and in 2019 co-founded Machina Kitchen & ArtBar merging art, food, community. Danya has been a welder for over a decade, and has been an artist since childhood, and her work has been exhibited across the country. In addition to Danya’s work with Machina she teaches steel sculpture classes at The Carving Studio in Rutland VT, serves on the Governor's Millennial Advisory Council, and was a founding member of TEDxKeene and Keene First Friday ArtHop. Danya is an active voice for her community speaking out about her passion to create the opportunity for artists to showcase their work, building culture, and mission driven business. Danya is passionate, organized, and has a deep understanding of the need for art in our community and is excited to live, build, and create in Keene.
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