For 40 years, the artists of Spring Street Gallery have created art-based events that bring the whole community together. We proudly present our artist members and their work.
Susan Newman Coffin
I love to paint. I like to take photos of nature that speak to me and try to capture the light or the movement or the feeling of the place. I look for shade and shadow, colors, a certain emotion or celebration of what I see and feel. Birds and ocean views, clouds, sunsets, stone walls, fields of wildflowers… I love to try to put those down on canvas. I am constantly learning and I am lucky to have a family of artists who coach and encourage me to keep at it. It’s great fun
I have been working on Block Island and in Italy for more than 30 years. For many of those years my medium has been terracotta and my majolica wreaths of flowers and fruits, my fanciful Arcimboldo inspired faces and my unique serving dishes ornament numerous homes all over the island.
I also love oil painting. Some years ago I painted a series of beautiful birds, another year I painted still-lifes of fruits and vegetables and wrote recipes to go with each painting. Those recipes and the photos of the paintings were turned into books called Eat the Paintings. They are available for purchase in the gallery store.
During the winter of 2024 I made a series of charcuterie plates. They are made of terracotta with a majolica glaze and are all different with varying appetizers which I think would be delicious together. They come with handwritten descriptions of the ingredients on each plate and suggestions for how to make them
More information can be found on my website.
Tom Kalb
Analog photography/ Silver Gelatin Prints
We’ve been coming to BI each summer since the mid-90’s, and extended that to the shoulders as time goes by. Pre-dawn stripers started things, but the way the early morning light merges sea with land competes for my attention and I often bring on the kayak an old clunky film SLR with a 50mm lens and wait for minor inspiration. Colors are muted as my eyes adjust, so mostly black and white to match the instant. If I have to put a name to it, I would say that my eye/frame is drawn to the edges where you have to work a bit to absorb the image.
Most interesting to me are the inland’s shelters like the ponds and trails, buffering the winds and suffused with a new light afforded by the fall of leaves. This oblong pearl of an island comes alive after Memorial Day. There is another place and time to appreciate the underlying beauty and serenity. The off-season BI has its own treasures to reveal, as the chill breeze sets in. I am interested in the muted tones and shadows and abstract shapes that emerge in the viewfinder of my old Pentax 6/7 120mm film camera, and they are developed by hand and composed in the analog darkroom to get the tone right. A brisk Fall or Winter’s day has its rich rewards, if you are lucky enough to have the time to look, to see, and to observe.
Robin Langsdorf
Robin B Langsdorf Photography
Robin B. Langsdorf has been experimenting with photography for over 25 years and works as a photographer on Block Island and New York City. Robin loves to travel and is inspired by what she has seen and experienced in other cultures. Her current photographic passion is to create small, painterly digital images. Her work is primarily inspired by nature and her love for the sea. Robin feels a strong connection to the art of the handwritten note and has developed an extensive line of notecards she hopes will inspire people to express themselves by putting pen to paper.
Sharon Lehman
Sharon Lehman has taught art to high school students, done layout and graphic design for a newspaper and acted as assistant to the owner of a fine art conservation business while she cataloged his large personal art collection. She began drawing and painting "House Portraits" as her own business. In addition to House Portraits, studying at workshops and classes led her from painting in watercolor to oils and, recently, to pastels. She's won an array of awards, and enjoys commercial success.
Commissions are welcomed for all paintings. House Portraits may be completed using photographs taken by the artist or supplied by the client.
Sharon is a Signature Member in both the Georgia Watercolor Society and Alabama Watercolor Society.
Susan Marte
Creativity and nature are inextricably linked for me. Most of my ideas come when I’m walking outside observing my surroundings. I love the interplay of color and texture and the way light can change any view. My favorite time of day is early morning and most of my greeting cards are photos from my walks along the beach on BI during the off season. Living on Block Island means I have a constant playground in which to explore ideas.
My favorite medium to work in is lino print. I use most of my designs to hand print onto fabric such as tea towels and t-shirts.
Writing is another love of mine and The Ocean Oracle is one of my favorite creations. It combines Story and Messages with images (most of the photos were taken on Block Island) to offer guidance and healing to those who work with the deck.
I grew up thinking I wasn’t creative at all and I have learned that we are all creative in our own ways. I feel like once my creative genie was released from the bottle I’ve been on a mission to try everything that comes my way. Art is so personal and it lights me up when something I’ve created makes someone else smile.
Eileen Miller
Most of my paintings are nature-based. I love tangled swirls of sea weed, layers of cloud and color at sunset, and the translucence of the sea. We see it every day ~~ if we are lucky enough to live here ~~ our on-going Island miracle. The process of painting for me involves a love of color and texture and the qualities of oil paint. I like to vary the thicknesses or the paint, using light washes, thick smudges, streaks, drips and splashes. I might make a sweeping mark of orange, then ground it with some cooler washes of green and blues. Colors are a form of light and are very nourishing to us on an unconscious level.
Always working with what is appearing on the canvas, I may try to find the right gestures and color combinations to evoke something I saw during a recent beach walk-- a bunch of flowers scattered down a fallen patch of clay bluff, the cool of a secluded salt marsh with its burst of red winged blackbirds, or how it feels swimming underwater with eyes open. This form of painting is a mixture of pleasure and experiment. Working from heartfelt and sensory levels makes it easier to bypass the insistent ego, and the creative process gains ground. In this way, a more direct relationship between nature, self and creativity align with a quiet and expansive source of being, a very big freedom.
Steve Miller
Steve Miller Photography
Miller’s photos express his profound love of the island, seen at its most beautiful. The images attempt (and sometimes succeed) to capture the emotions felt while out in the early morning and late afternoon hours. The moods in the images bring to the viewer’s mind the specialness of the island we all love.
Madyn Gwynne
I am an artist living in Connecticut and Rhode Island where I make acrylic and watercolor paintings of landscape, figurative waterscapes, architecture and still lifes primarily. Although my subjects vary, I am interested in creating space and distance that feels like the familiar world around us, but is also ambiguous and abstracted. To achieve this I use brushes, my fingers, paper towels, scrapers and my favorite orange kitchen spatula to move paint in pleasing and unexpected ways. Nature, my biggest inspiration, calls my attention like a magnet and I strive to make paintings that have a similar pull. I’m perpetually interested in the possibilities of paint. I paint for the sake of art, for the celebration of color and for my own joy. I paint in my home studio where I live with my husband and the youngest of my four children and two dogs. You can also find me on Instagram @madyngwynne.
Jerry Powers
From an early age I have been hypnotized by the magic of paintings. The manipulation of paint on board or canvas to manifest ideas, environments, & personalities just strikes me as wonderful. In my 23rd year of residing on Block Island, I don’t go looking for subjects to paint. I go for walks, I go fishing. I look out my window and I see things that are astounding! I use my cell phone to retain reminders of what I saw, but understanding for me comes from the process of making paintings...
John Warfel
I’ve been working with clay on and off since the early 70’s. I was introduced to pottery while at SUNY Oswego and was fortunate to have some very dynamic and talented teachers in both industrial and art ceramics. My early work was all functional stoneware and in a few years I started working in porcelain as well. Now all of my work is low fired and includes terra-cotta, Raku, and pit-fired pieces.
My wife and I moved to Block Island in 1981 and have been living here year round since then. I know that living on Block Island has shaped me as an artist. I feel that my work is subtler and more organic these days. The colors and textures of winter can be found in my pit-fired work while Raku is more spontaneous and bright like the vivid colors of a clear winter’s day. My forms evolve from what I see in nature; the erosion of a bank that exposes the stratifications of the soil, the wind blown weathering of all that’s around me, the texture and color of seaweed and driftwood washed up on the shore, and the various colors and images of the changing seasons. The winter brings long quiet hours of contentment in my studio while working with wood and clay as my wood stove warms my space.
Katherine Clarke Langlands
KATHERINE CLARKE LANGLANDS is a visual and conceptual artist. Freely mixing elements of painting, sculpture, assemblage, collage, and drawing, she conducts explorations that examine color’s materiality and provoke dialogues about the sensations it elicits. Langlands uses these associations to conjure an energetic, divergent alchemy of vibrant colors, provocative shapes, diverse materials and asks the viewer to consider why textures, patterns, or colors which may seem antagonistic, harmonize when subjected to compositional techniques. Her work reflects an urge to redefine, re-assign, deconstruct, destruct, and transform and ultimately, her work seeks to arrive at deeper, preverbal resonances between color, shape, and form, between the earthly, natural, and wild, where she believes more complex perspectives toward essence, experience, and value — especially humor — reveal themselves and draw out our less-guarded selves.
Langlands studied studio art and sociology at the University of Vermont and completed her MFA at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. She is also a studio resident at the Vermont Studio Center. She lives between Block Island and Vermont.
Tracey Lee Michaelson
Painting Daisies Photography
From an early age, I have used my camera to document the world, most recently with a focus on the magic I find in my daily life on Block Island. My pictures tell many stories of island beaches and sunsets, sailboats and fishing ports, wide open fields and sky, iconic island architecture and sweet local interiors, stunning flowers and favorite pets. Through my prints and photo greeting cards, I invite you to bring bits of my stories into your life and home. I offer these images in fine art prints, photo greeting cards, canvas prints and photo ornaments.
Joe Buda
I grew up in Yorkshire England but summered in Robin Hoods Bay on the east coast of England. It’s here that painting with watercolors became my first love. Whether it was sketching seaweed, barnacles or shells along the beach…I was in painting heaven. In 1979 I came to the USA to work as a nurse and its here that I met my husband, Rob. More recently I have applied my love of painting with my passion for sewing. I have been having fun creating fiber art dolls. They are one-of-a-kind pieces using recycled materials. They stand 12-18 inches tall and have taken on their own personalities. Each doll has a story to tell…but then again…don’t we all?
