The Harris-Stanton Gallery in Akron is celebrating one of our most beloved artists with a career retrospective. Barbara Gillette has been a force in the Ohio art scene for more than 25 years and has been represented by the Harris-Stanton Gallery since 1993. She was the 2011 recipient of the Akron Area Arts Alliance award for Outstanding Visual Artist. She is a member of the Artists Archives of the Western Reserve and her work has been included in shows at The Cleveland Museum of Art, The Butler Museum, Canton Art Institute, The Riffe Gallery in Columbus, Spaces, and The Southern Ohio Museum in Portsmouth.

Barbara works primarily in pastel and derives her drawings directly from the rural landscape of Medina County and her travels across the Midwest. She is extremely concerned with the damage and loss that urban sprawl has brought to her cherished farmlands, and much of her work in the past two decades dealt with this tension between suburban and rural areas. In her newest body of work, she is continuing her exploration of line and color with a focus on flowers from her garden and an emphasis on calla lilies.

The show will open on Friday, January 15th with a wine and cheese reception from 5:30-8:00pm, which is free and open to the public. Parking is available at the gallery location at 2301 W. Market St. in West Akron’s Pilgrim Square. Meet the artist at the opening reception as she provides a brief talk and answers questions from guests throughout the evening.

Works from this exhibition may be viewed online at www.HarrisStantonGallery.com. For more information about the artist and the exhibition, please contact Meg Harris or Kat Wentz at 330-867-7600 or info@HarrisStantonGallery.com.