photograph courtesy of Debbie Hagan
A contemporary realist painter working in oil and watercolor, Kathleen Kolb is known for her dramatic handling of light. She has participated in roughly 40 solo shows and 80 group exhibitions, including at the New Britain (CT) Museum of American Art and Sanford Smith Fine Art in Great Barrington, MA. She is represented by West Branch Gallery in Stowe, VT, Furchgott Sourdiffe Gallery in Shelburne, VT, Michael Findlay Gallery in West Palm Beach, FL and Mary Ann Doran Gallery in Tulsa, OK. Her large watercolor Bristol Sawmill won the Paton Prize for watercolor in 1998 from the National Academy of Design in New York. Another of her watercolors appears in John Driscoll’s The Artist and the American Landscape. Her painting Dawn Loading was published in Freedom and Unity, A History of Vermont (2004).
Kathleen describes herself as a “landscape painter, working and living along the spine of the Green Mountains of Vermont.” which provides the “emotional ignition” that infuses her art. In 2009, one of ten artists selected from over 300 applicants, Kathleen joined the ART OF ACTION, a public/private project to create and exhibit work addressing challenges facing Vermont. Her paintings of the logging industry were featured in the winter 2009-2010 issue of Vermont Life. With a grant from The Vermont Community Foundation, Kathleen created a series of paintings of icebergs to draw attention to climate change. In 2014, Kathleen accepted a commission from the Vermont Hard Cider Company to create the artwork for the nationally-distributed packaging of Woodchuck Hard Cider. She recently was a resident fellow at the Ballinglen Arts Foundation in County Mayo, Ireland. kathleenkolb.com
Verandah Porche works as a poet-in-residence, performer and writing partner.
Based in rural Vermont since 1968, she has published Sudden Eden (Verdant Books), The Body’s Symmetry (Harper and Row) and Glancing Off (See Through Books), and has pursued an alternative literary career, creating collaborative writing projects in nontraditional settings: literacy and crisis centers, hospitals, factories, nursing homes, senior centers, a 200 year-old Vermont tavern and an urban working class neighborhood. Verandah’s year-long residency, Self Portraits in Newport: The SPIN Project, was selected to represent New Hampshire in the White House initiative, Artists & Communities: America Creates for the Millennium, with funding from the National Endowment for the Arts. Broad Brook Anthology, a play for voices, honoring the elders in Guilford, Vermont was featured in the town’s 250th anniversary celebration. Listening Out Loud documents her residency with Real Art Ways in Hartford, CT.
Come Over is a CD of songs written with Patty Carpenter, performed by the Dysfunctional Family Jazz Band.
Verandah initiated and for almost 30 years taught the poetry program at Vermont’s Governor’s Institute on the Arts. As a poet in the schools, she designs innovative residencies for students and communities. She has read her work on NPR stations, in the Vermont State House and at the John Simon Guggenheim Museum. She was featured in Freedom and Unity: The Vermont Movie. The Vermont Arts Council presented her with its Award of Merit in 1998 and Marlboro College, an honorary Doctor of Humane Letters in 2012. verandahporche.com