August 2026 in the Crowell Gallery

Sharon Myers and Erika Radich

The Comfort of Color: Kindness, community, and joy in fabric and collage art

August 4 – 28, 2026 An artist’s reception will be held Saturday, August 8, 2026 from 1:00 – 3:00pm

Two local artists’ emergence from the darkness of COVID into the bright light of playfulness and hope will be featured at the Crowell Art Gallery in August. Fabric artist Sharon Myers of Brattleboro and printmaker Erika Radich of Lake Spofford, New Hampshire, have exhibited their work widely in New England. This is their fifth joint show.

The two friends met 16 years ago as commuters to Heartwood College of Art in Biddeford, Maine, where both received MFA degrees. They have remained friends and co-exhibitors since then.

“Skyscapes I and II,” Myers’ new works in the Crowell show, are quilts that reflect the “joy I feel in using fabric to express emotion on a large scale,” she said. Myers’ creative process is “very personal. I work intuitively, selecting fabrics, choosing colors, and devising shapes to suggest elements of our landscape – mountains, forest, or clouds passing overhead. Both Skyscape quilts convey the passage of time during the day, with ‘wings’ of silvery fabric to indicate that magical fleeting light of sunrise and sunset – my favorite times of day.”

Radich’s collages reflect the “silver linings” she found during and after the pandemic. Her new work, based on repurposed prints, is meant to evoke a “sense of stability, lightness and hope. The elements are playful and irreverent, falling over and into each other. The colors extend the thoughts of future brightness,” she said. Overall, Radich’s main message is “village and how important that concept has been, whether it be physical or conceptual presence. The inspiration is the multitude of kindnesses and the immense mutual care for each other,” she said.

Both Myers and Radich worked in creative fields as they developed their own artwork. Myers taught art and was chef and owner of Sharon Myers Fine Catering (37 years) and of The Purple Chef (15 years). Radich worked in arts administration locally and regionally.

September 2026 in the Crowell Gallery

The Family Tree

Artists: Fred F. Scherer, Cicely Aikman, Deidre Scherer, Gianna Robinson and Corina Willette

September 3 – 30, 2026
An artist’s reception will be held Sunday, September 6, 2026 from 1:00 – 3:00pm
Artist Talk will be help Saturday, September 19, 2026 at 1:00pm

Artists Deidre Scherer, Gianna Robinson and Corina Willette will be showing their work alongside their treasured
works by Fred F. Scherer (1915-2013) and Cicely Aikman (1923-2013). 

The Family Tree considers the influences and challenges that all five artists and family members have had on each
other. The work of three generations of this artistic family include; Deidre Scherer: figurative works in thread on
fabric; Cicely Aikman: works in oil; Fred F. Scherer: landscapes in oil; Gianna Robinson: landscapes and abstractions
in oils and acrylic paint; and Corina Willette: oil painting in both figurative and landscape genre.

Fred F. Scherer painted for over 80 years. For 38 years he worked at the American Museum of Natural History in
New York City painting landscape backgrounds for many of their world-renown dioramas. He exhibited at the
Farnsworth Museum in Rockland, ME and at the Portland Museum of Art. His work is in the collections of the Maine
State Museum and The American Museum of Natural History as well as many private collections.

Cicely Aikman, whose early years were spent in the Texas desert country and on the Pacific coast, credits these early
environments as a long-lasting influence on her work. She studied art at the University of Chicago and the Art
Students League in NYC. Aikman has shown in New York City including The Artists’ Gallery, Blue Mountain
Gallery, and Pyramid Gallery, and is represented by the Caldbeck Gallery in Rockland, Maine. She and her husband
Fred F. Scherer lived on the Maine coast for over thirty years, and 5 years in Townshend, Vermont.

Deidre Scherer’s exhibitions, Surrounded by Family & Friends and The Last Year, have shown at sites in the United
States, Japan, England and Canada. She is featured in Camilla Rockwell’s documentary Holding Our Own, which
screened at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. Scherer’s work is represented by Mitchell-Giddings Fine Arts,
Brattleboro, VT, and is in the collections of The Baltimore Museum of Art; the Bennington Museum, VT; The
Crowell Collection, Newfane, VT; and the Rhode Island School of Design Museum.

Gianna Robinson grew up surrounded by artists in Williamsville, VT. Her artistic mother and grandparents nurtured
her creative spirit, instilling the belief that art is essential to life. In the early 2000’s Gianna took art studio courses at
Community College of Vermont and Independent Painting and Drawing at River Gallery School of Art in Brattleboro,
VT. Robinson earned a degree in Women’s Studies at Smith College in 2006, and she is a self-taught artist through
years of rigorous studio practice and by the mentorship of her grandparents.

Corina Willette’s work is attentive to themes of connection, longing, belonging, and community. Willette earned her
BFA from the New England College (formerly: New Hampshire Institute of Art). While working at Galerie St.
Etienne in New York City, she studied at the New York Academy of Art and the Art Students League, and then
pursued her MFA in Drawing and Painting from the State University of New York at New Paltz. Willette currently
teaches Studio Art at SUNY New Paltz and maintains a studio practice in the Hudson Valley.