The Time Tunnel Opens at Nina's Nook Through June

Adrian Montegano of Wendell has a way to transform vintage knick knacks and kitchen items into amusing time pieces. He just completed installing over two hundred of these unique clocks on the walls of the Nook in downtown TUrners Falls MA. I have shelves full of toasters and coffee pots, samovars and lunchboxes that tick away merrily and wave their little hands. THe walls are full of pie plates, platters, graters, strainers, decorative tins, boxes, rat traps,hubcaps and other things. It sounds like thousands of insects are munching away in here.

Two Shows in April at Other Locations!

This is a Busy month: I have my work in two towns during April: a show of recent work at the Burnett Gallery in Amherst (Jones Library) opening April 6, and the Arts Block in Greenfield (a show with my son Jon Bander) with an opening April 15. I have saved my most recent work for the Greenfield venue and I am very excited to fill the downstairs with work. And Jon has made some amazing pieces that he is going to show, too. I'll even be playing with my band, She Said, during a special opening night concert on the main stage! 
I won't have another special show at the Nook until May 12, when the Nook turns into a "TIME TUNNEL"!!! But I will be open this April on the Avenue with the usual frivolous and fancy and fun items that you all have come to expect in this tiny, sweet little space.

This Flag was made by Jon:

THis is a Bowl of Apples made with fabric applique on steel annelaing foil with paint and washers.

I've created a band called The Anchovies out of bobbina and wire and bottlecaps and other things.

Thanks for Looking! I had intended to do more regular web site entries, but have been working nonstop on pieces for these shows and getting ready to play our first big concert with She Said on the 15th! WooHoo!

What Does Your Flag Look Like?

Update on Saturday, February 18, 2017 at 4:50PM by Nina Rossi

Also in the exhibit: "Don't Bug Me" flag: screening, flies.

"Made in America" by Jon Bander: steel, with nuts and bolts and pennies.

Chard Day's Night!

These Chard Paintings were done for a Carolina seed company to decorate their packets. I received a small gift certificate for seeds in return for these images, which I enjoyed creating on stainless steel annealing foil over wood, with tacks holding a central image that is an applique of fabric with machine embroidery. The oil paint over steel has a luminosity that satisfies me and craetes a contrast to the flatness fo the fabric. I also really love chard. It completes something essential in my diet, even though it shrinks down to nothing when cooked. 

These do not have big ideas involved with them. They are decorative. However, it was the beginning of a new desire to grow a few vegetables in the yard, which was not as successful an attempt as I had hoped, due to the quality of the soil where I laid out my beds (where an aboveground pool had been for a dozen years, very sandy even with 100$ of additives I dug into it). However, the work is successful I think.

Divine or Design?

This is one of my all time favorite pieces. It is the second one I did where I collected materials that were primarily black or metal as the basis of selection. I was not too sure, when I began, what the theme of the piece would be. I had gotten those enormous saw blades and wanted to use them, as well as the numbered ring on the left side of the picture that came from the local shop LOOT which specializes in industrial antiques and dead stock. 

The piece became about beliefs: belief in a superior being who created things, or belief in the micro cosmos of biological origin. Eash side opposing the other. The circle onthe left, criss crossed iwth bicycle spokes that hold a face inside a gear, and the other side is an ovum full of typewriter parts being attacked by sperm made out of the ends of loom wire that carry the warp.