Personally, painting the birds, plants, and land around me is a source of happiness and inspiration. As a local artist, it was my good fortune to have my paintings at NBNC last year, with sales that supported my professional life as well as NBNC’s mission.
— Susan Bull Riley
The gallery is open during our normal business hours, but call ahead if you’re coming far, as our gallery space is also used for meetings and events. A portion of art sales supports NBNC’s mission and programs. If you are interested in purchasing work, please contact us or stop by NBNC.
Interested in exhibiting your work? Our gallery committee meets yearly to choose artists for upcoming shows. We are currently booking out about two years, but we’re always considering new artists for future shows. Please contact us for consideration, with photos of your work or a link to your website.
All images on this page are property of the artists and may not be used for other purposes.
NBNC is seeking submissions of fish-themed artwork for a juried group show running from July through September, 2026. We welcome work in all visual art media from both amateur and professional artists. If you are interested, email Chelsea by May 15, 2026. Please include:
If any of your pieces are selected, you must be able to drop off and pick up your work in person in Montpelier, VT. Drop off will be in late June and pick up will be in late September or early October. We regret we are unable to accept mailed work or mail work back to artists.
A Critical Balance features a group of Vermont and New Hampshire artists working with Biodiversity Research Institute to highlight the endangered birds of Amboseli Park in Kenya. This traveling exhibit, organized by artists Linda Mirabile and Adelaide Murphy Tyrol, also includes work by Heidi Broner, Susan Bull Riley, Susan Parmenter, Gabriel Tempesta, and Ann Young. From huge flamingos, eagles, vultures, and cranes to tiny warblers and shrikes, each bird, chosen from the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species, is portrayed life size in striking detail. These portraits reach beyond data and policy to show both the beauty and vulnerability of these birds as well as the urgent need to protect them.
Join us for the opening reception on Friday, April 10, 5 – 7 pm to tour the gallery, meet the artists, and enjoy light refreshments. NBNC Program Director Sean Beckett will give a short talk on African birds at 5:30 based on NBNC’s safari to South Africa. Proceeds from this show will support conservation, split between NBNC and conservation organizations working in Amboseli Park.
January – March 2026
Zooming In includes work by Mark La Rosa and NBNC’s own Matt Delligatti. These two photographers use very different techniques, but both reveal the hidden details of the world around us. Discover up-close views of tiny insects and wildly colorful flowers, contrasted with intricately detailed leaves captured with traditional black-and-white darkroom techniques.
About Mark and his work:
Mark La Rosa is a photographer and artist based in Montpelier VT. He studied at the International Center of Photography in New York and currently manages the photography labs at Burlington City Arts. Mark’s current work employs traditional film and darkroom processes in observation of everyday objects.
The black and white photographs of tree leaves in this show combine time spent in the woods collecting leaves with an analog exposure and printing process using black-and-white negatives. Mark uses a darkroom technique where the leaves are placed directly onto 4×5-inch black-and -white sheet film and exposed to light to make contact negatives. Preparing the leaves for the exposure takes place in complete darkness. The negatives are developed by hand and the final images are printed using the analog darkroom process.
About Matt and his work:
Matt Delligatti is a photographer, musician, and educator living in Worcester, VT. His photography is focused on insects shot in the field, with a particular emphasis on bees, wasps, files, and moths. When he is not camped out in the garden searching for kleptoparasitic bees or batesian mimics, he enjoys playing country blues guitar, making cider, and playing in the snow.
The photos in this show are all taken at Matt’s home or in his garden. Each year during the warmer months he tries to maintain a regular photography practice at his home. Matt loves macro-photography because it necessitates slow, intentional observation of small and easily overlooked subjects. Taken together over the course of the year, these observations reveal nature’s rhythms, the cycles of each species’ emergence and disappearance, which helps him feel a connection to place.
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October – December 2025
Nature for All includes work by Sunniva Dutcher, Amy Hook-Therrien, Dominique Gustin, Katama Murray, and NBNC’s own Chelsea Clarke Sawyer. Browse watercolor paintings, prints, illustrations, encaustics, and fiber art. Discover a bestiary of celestial creatures, see what birds are thinking about, and appreciate the local flora from lichens to ferns to flowers as depicted by Vermont artists. This exhibit also includes unframed prints, cards, stickers, and other small goods.
About the Artists:
Amy Hook-Therrien grew up in Vermont, where she formed deep connections with the forests surrounding her. She went on to study art at the University of Maine in Orono, where she earned her BFA in painting. After graduating, Amy returned to rural Vermont to immerse herself in nature and painting. She has since been featured in multiple publications as well as gaining representation in galleries throughout the state. She was awarded the 2019 Abenaki Artists Association’s Artist of the Year Award, and was the 2022 Artist in Residence at Marsh-Billings-Rockefeller National Historical Park.
Chelsea Clarke Sawyer has always been fascinated by the small and overlooked parts of nature and driven to share them with others. After earning her B.F.A. in printmaking from Maine College of Art, she spent several years traveling the country searching for ways to combine her loves of art, nature, and adventure. After returning to New England, a series of connections set off by a red eft led Chelsea to Vermont where she received her M.S. from the University of Vermont Field Naturalist and Ecological Planning Program. A hopeless generalist, she is always experimenting with different mediums and currently works mostly in watercolor, mixed media drawing, and wool.
Dominique Gustin is a multi-disciplinary artist working across photography, digital and mixed media, encaustic painting, poetry, contemporary collage, video and sound. She created SomnMigratory Studio to share her contemporary digital collage and encaustic paintings. Dominique studied at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and has been making art and working in the arts for over thirty years. She lives in St. Johnsbury, Vermont.
Katama Murray is an artist, educator, naturalist, and small business owner from the Blue Hill peninsula in Maine. Her mixed media work and company, Teach Peace Prints, are inspired by place-based making and our interconnectedness to the environment. While living and studying throughout New England and the Midwest, she has always been influenced by the outdoors and the ways in which we coexist with the natural world. Utilizing locally foraged natural materials, she layers print and fiber processes to visually communicate ideas, observations, and perpetual experimentation. With a passion for multidisciplinary making, she enjoys inspiring others to become more connected to the earth through the power of art and community.
Sunniva Dutcher, the artist behind Moth Folk Studio, is a Vermont based artist and illustrator whose work combines elements of nature, magic, and various esoteric studies. Flora, fauna, fungi, minerals, celestial bodies, tarot, and sacred geometry define her aesthetic, regardless of medium. She primarily works with 2D or digital illustration, though as a tactile soul she is occasionally drawn to creating sculptural work. Much of Sunniva’s work is place-specific and she is deeply inspired by the beautiful Green Mountains she calls home. Her work references the ecosystems around her, both seen and unseen, to inspire a deep sense of awe and reverence for the mysteries of the natural world.
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July – September 2025
Light & Shadow: Botanical Dualities features a collection of multidisciplinary cyanotype prints and poems inspired by seasonal plant species and elements of nature. This series of work explores and honors an amalgamation of wild, local New England plants which bloom throughout spring, summer, and autumn, and offers an alternate avenue of experiencing their multitude of characteristics. Using this photographic printmaking process, each print on paper and fabric is created using the chemistry of natural sunlight, water, and time, thus transforming shapes and textures into a memory that is tied to time and place.
Katama Murray (she/her) is an artist, educator, naturalist, and small business owner from the Blue Hill peninsula now residing in Deer Isle, Maine. Her mixed media work and company, Teach Peace Prints, are inspired by place-based making and our interconnectedness to the environment. While living and studying throughout regions of New England and the Midwest, she has always been influenced by the outdoors and the ways in which we coexist with the natural world. Utilizing locally foraged natural materials, she layers print and fiber processes to visually communicate ideas, observations, and perpetual experimentation. Through hands-on techniques, Katama teaches regional workshops focused on versatile methods that encourage exploration and foster life-long learning. Katama also teaches at the Blue Hill Harbor School as their Visual Arts Educator. With a passion for multidisciplinary making, she enjoys inspiring others to become more connected to the earth through the power of art and community.
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March – June 2025
Explore the world of frogs, toads, salamanders, turtles, snakes, and lizards through the eyes of 30 Vermont artists! This juried group show included painting, printmaking, photography, pastels, colored pencil, ink, fiber arts, ceramics, metalsmithing, woodworking, and collage. From the common Eastern Newt to the rare Timber Rattlesnake, this show highlighted how different Vermont artists are inspired by amphibians and reptiles.
Artists:
Ariela Paulsen, Caitlin Gildrien, Carol Leinwohl, Chelsea Clarke Sawyer, Christine Terry, Cindy Griffith, Claire Dacey, Emma Dannenberg, Erin Talmage, Fiona Modrak, George Seiffert, Heidi Albright, Jennefer Jolls, Jenni Belotserkovsky, Julie Longstreth, Kiley Briggs, Linda Hall, Lindsey Benton, Lizabeth Moniz, Lori Stroutsos, Martha Chaiken, Maya Faulstich-Hon, O.W. Wellard, Rachel Mirus, Rick Powell, Ruth Coppersmith, Sally Myers, Sean Beckett, Stephanie Garguilo, and Susan Bull Riley.
January – February 2025
This exhibit showcases the work of four selected local high school artists: Erica DeBona (Twinfield HS), Asher Casper (U-32), Mars Sciarrotta (Montpelier HS), and Chloe Benoit Stubbs (Montpelier HS). The artwork includes watercolor, pencil, acrylic, oil, collage, and mixed media pieces featuring creatures and scenes from the natural world, as well as pieces highlighting the relationship between humans and nature.
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October – December 2024
Wool and Water is a collaborative project that blends fiber art with scientific information to visually represent changing water quality conditions in the Adirondacks and Lake Champlain Basin. Originally created for the 50th anniversary of the Clean Water Act in 2022, this project aims to showcase the legacy of protecting clean water in the Champlain Basin and beyond. Knitting, crochet, weaving and other fiber arts are used to illustrate concepts and trends related to our waterways, and to provide inspiration for their protection.
Wool and Water features more than 50 works that highlight water-related concepts and stressors ranging from the basics of lake stratification and turnover to the impacts of pollutants on aquatic life. Several pieces highlight some of the major research and monitoring subjects of the Adirondack Watershed Institute and the Lake Champlain Basin Program including road salt contamination, aquatic invasive species, and climate change. Many pieces were created by Michale Glennon, Senior Research Scientist for the Adirondack Watershed Institute, but the growing collection now includes works by more than 30 additional artists and makers.
Visit the Wool and Water website
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July – September 2024
Rachel Mirus is a STEAM teaching artist, nature writer, and lifelong learner. Her passion is to inspire observation, experimentation, and creativity in students of all ages through her visual art, writing, and teaching. Originally trained in biology, she has worked in research labs and museums across the country, including the California Academy of Sciences and the Harvard Museum of Natural History. She actively practices the skills of learning by pursuing hobbies she’s bad at, including Celtic harp, rock climbing, and belly dance.
Rachel’s Exhibit Statement: Nature provides so many fascinations that my artistic curiosity frequently pounces on new subjects. But some themes do recur in my work: I really like spiders, and lichens… the small things that are underfoot, or overhead, everywhere, every day, that are easy to disregard, but that contain whole worlds, should you pause to reflect on them. So, here is a collection of things that caught my curiosity, I hope they will catch yours.
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April – June 2024
Nick Neddo has been making art since he could first pick up a crayon. He grew up exploring the wetlands, forests, and fields of his bioregion and developed a profound curiosity, respect, and love for the community of life around him. As a youngster, Nick identified primary focuses that would become life-long pursuits: study of the natural world, Stone Age technology (popularly known as primitive skills), and creating art. Trusting the inherent value of these skills, he continues to embrace their pursuit with a ravenous appetite fueled by a genuine love of the living world and the creative process.
Nick works with art media that he crafts from raw materials he forages from the landscape. He transforms these fibers, furs, berries, beeswax, muds, sticks, and stones into pens, paintbrushes, crayons, charcoal, inks, paints, paper, inkwells, and sketchbooks. He is the author of two guides to making your own art supplies from nature: The Organic Artist and The Organic Artist for Kids.
Most recently, Nick illustrated former NBNC Director of Education Amy Butler’s book Educating Children Outdoors: Lessons in Nature-Based Learning. His show at NBNC was made up of pieces from that project, three quarters of which were created specifically for this book.
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January – March 2024
This group show included felting, knitting, weaving, basket making, hooked rugs, and more from fiber artists across Vermont. About half of the work was from a project organized by Kimberly Hagen to promote the use of felted wool as an attractive, sustainable, and sound dampening option for restaurant decor. The remaining work highlighted the wide variety of other styles and techniques used by fiber artists in Vermont.
The felted portion of the show was funded by a 2018 grant from the American Sheep Industry Association and was previously exhibited at the Vermont Sheep and Wool Festival and the Hildene Estate in Manchester, VT.
Artists:
Alison Forest, Bradie Hansen, Chelsea Clarke Sawyer, Eve Jacobs-Carnahan, Jenny Brown, Jennifer Davey, Katelynn Latz, Kerry Wood, Kim Goodling, Kimberly Hagen, Kris McDermet, Laurie Curtis, Muffy Grolier, Neysa Russo, Pamela Wilson, Robin Courtney, Sheri Schenk, Suzanne Taylor.
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September – December 2023
This mushroom-themed juried group show included painting, printmaking, sculpture, photography, fiber arts, ceramics, jewelry, poetry, and more by artists from across New England! It was timed to coincide with our Fungi Fest event featuring mushroom forays, presentations, and activities.
Artists:
Alanna Facchin | Amanda Ann Palmer Ashley Strobridge | Bethany Farrell Carole Hass | Caroline Weaver | Emily Seiffert Frances Cannon | George Seiffert | Grace Hopkins | Hannah Regier | Heather Ritchie | Kasandra Reid |Kelly Finan | Lacretia Flash | Linda DiSante | Lindsey Benton | Lynnette Hesser | Margarete Immel | Meg Madden | Micah Lynch | Patrick McAllister | Rachel Mirus | Rick Powell | Shelby Perry | Simon Schreier | Stephanie Vaus | Susan Bull Riley | Susan Sawyer
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July – September 2023
Patty Meriam is a painter, research-based multimedia artist, and conservator who is exploring and documenting the harmful effects of environmental exploitation while also celebrating nature’s ability to recover and reestablish itself. Her work invites conscious awareness of the position from which nature is observed, from close examination of details and pattern to unique points of view, and questions the implications of the human imprint on the land and commodification of it. Patty is driven by a protective response to the places she lives, her concern for the survival of biodiversity on the planet, and the collective power of art and nature to heal.
Patty grew up in Nyack, NY on the Hudson River with proximity to New York City. She took a circuitous route around art and is currently living her dream as an MFA candidate in Visual Art at Vermont College of Fine Arts. She earned a BA in Art History and Premed from Boston College and worked postgrad in medical research. A short stint in archeology in Cyprus directed her toward an MS in Historic Preservation at Columbia University and a career in architectural conservation and project management. She is now fully engaged in developing a meaningful art practice.
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April – June 2023
Hilary Ann Love Glass is a Printmaker, Tattoo Artist and Illustrator. She has been drawing her whole life and uses this practice to feel grounded and purposeful in the world. She draws flora and fauna from local woods as well as imaginary creatures from other worlds entirely. She uses pen and ink, graphite, colored pencils, watercolor, and gouache as her primary illustration tools. Most of her printmaking experience is in intaglio etching but she intends to incorporate more letterpress, woodcut and silkscreen methods into her work as she continues to learn and create.
Much of Hilary’s work explores the nature and relationships of creatures both real and imagined, all rendered with lots of detail and narrative in their postures and expressions. Studying the world around her has often revealed what kinds of other worlds exist in her own imagination. For Hilary, it is nourishing to work on both the inventive drawings as well as more literal, realistic types of illustrations. It is a balancing act. The realistic work has an emphasis on technical detail which is a really meditative process, while the imaginative work opens up many layers of possibility for an emotional attunement. Each practice deepens the other.
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March 2023
This exhibit presented three-dimensional collages and shadow boxes created by collagist Gabrielle Dietzel as a visual response to literature about birds. These include poems, haiku, historic and scientific documents, memoirs, and quotes collected by writer Howard Norman for an anthology. The project was initiated by Howard and Gabrielle in 2020 during the Covid pandemic.
About Howard: Howard Norman is the author of novels, (including The Bird Artist), memoirs, books for children, radio dramas, and the episodic graphic story Detective Levy Detects. He was awarded the Lannan Award in Literature. His forthcoming novel is Come To The Window, and he is working on a collection of ornithological travel diaries, A Theology of Birds, for Yale University Press. He lives in East Calais, Vermont.
About Gabrielle: Gabrielle Dietzel started to cut out images and glue them together at a very young age, much to the consternation of her family members, who found that their books and magazines had provided her with source material. This is to say that she has been refining the art of collage ever since. Gabrielle moved from Germany to Vermont in 1979. She is a member of the “Collagistas”, a group of collage artists that meets and exhibits in Central Vermont. Her collages have become predominantly three-dimensional, considering space, depth, light and shadows, layered in found boxes or constructed frames.
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January – February 2023
About Phillip: Phillip Robertson is an interdisciplinary artist, educator and printmaker, living in Vermont since 1994. Phillip is inspired by the natural landscape, using his imagination and memory to look beyond realism to make a statement about the pastoral landscape tradition in the 21st century. He earned his BFA in Painting with a Minor in Art History from the University of Massachusetts in Amherst in 1989 and earned an MFA in Interdisciplinary Arts from Goddard College in 2008. Robertson currently teaches printmaking, drawing, painting and art history at Northern Vermont University (Johnson Campus) and the Community College of Vermont. He is the Director of the Julian Scott Memorial Gallery on the Johnson campus of Northern Vermont University and has been involved as a volunteer at the T.W. Wood Gallery in Montpelier, Vermont since 1997. Visit Phillip’s website
About Ed: An artist and musician all his life, Ed Epstein started drawing very early, like most kids, but he stayed with it while most others moved on to other things. Music and art have been the throughline for his life. From childhood, Ed was always drawing the world around him and filled many sketchbooks with his observations. Over the years he made woodcuts, lithographs and etchings. He seldom exhibited his artwork, but used his skills as an artist to earn a living through courtroom illustrations, technical drawings, and engravings on granite.
When Ed returned to Vermont in 2010 after living in Trinidad for 10 years, he focused on painting portraits. In Trinidad, he had discovered black sketchbooks in which you draw light on dark. This opened his eyes to a completely new way of seeing and renewed his interest in drawing. Visit Ed’s website
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October – December 2022
Robin Crofut-Brittingham’s large scale watercolor paintings address themes of nature, extinction, and mythology. Originally from Western Massachusetts, Robin received her BA from Bard College in Annandale-on-Hudson, New York with a focus in Poetry and Art History. She completed her MFA at the San Francisco Art Institute. She was the recipient of the Murphy Cadogan Award from the San Francisco Foundation and a Martha Boschen Porter Award through the Berkshire Taconic Foundation. Her work has been featured in Juxtapoz, Novella, Frankie, My Modern Met, Hi Fructose and on Booooooom, among others, and has been exhibited in solo and group exhibitions throughout the US and Canada.
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July – September 2022
Amy Hook-Therrien grew up in a small Vermont town, where she formed deep connections with the forests surrounding her. She went on to study art at the University of Maine in Orono, where she earned her BFA in painting. After graduating, Amy returned to rural Vermont to immerse herself in nature and painting. She has since been featured in multiple publications as well as gaining representation in galleries throughout the state. She was awarded the 2019 Abenaki Artists Association’s Artist of the Year Award, and is the 2022 Artist in Residence at Marsh-Billings-Rockefeller National Historical Park. She is currently working on a series of watercolor paintings portraying the tranquility and fragility found in nature.
Amy also painted the backgrounds for NBNC’s Nature Connection Trail.
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June – December 2021
Susan writes “These paintings reflect my desire to translate the intensity of my feelings for the natural world into images that speak to others. Sometimes it’s easier to use watercolors to communicate what I need to say, and sometimes oils work better. I am still trying to decide if I prefer one medium over the other, but at least it’s clear that for most of the subject matter in this exhibit, watercolor is my preferred medium because of the ease of rendering detail and its capacity for both translucency and opacity.”
CloseI think works of art have the capability to give people a certain hope and passion and belief and conviction that nothing else can. It can be incredibly moving and provoke people in all the right directions.
— Shirin Neshat
