Sandwich Gallery Offers Unique ‘Local And Beyond’ Art

Larinda Meade is one of the featured artists at the Patricia Ladd Carega Gallery in Sandwich. (Tom Caldwell Photo)

By Thomas P. Caldwell

The Patricia Ladd Carega Gallery in Sandwich, which operates seasonally from Memorial Day to Columbus Day, reflects a commitment to showcasing unique art in all media, created by both emerging and established artists. While 80 percent of the artists have local connections, the reach is much farther, with the gallery’s roots stretching all the way to Paris, France.

Founder and owner Patricia Carega relates, “We were living in Paris, and I have a very good friend who opened a gallery there, and several nights before we were due to leave and come to Washington [DC], we had a little bit too much champagne, and she said, ‘Wouldn’t it be nice if you opened a gallery in Washington, an international city? Take some of my artists, and off you go.”

She took that advice and opened her first gallery in Washington in 1983, operating it for nearly a decade.

“I very quickly learned that Washington supports Washington DC artists,” she said. While patrons appreciated the international art, there was such a strong local art community that those artists were the ones people were most interested in seeing.

Economic concerns led to her closing the DC gallery in 1993, and she moved to Miami; but she also maintained a love for New England.

“I was born in Massachusetts, and I love New England,” she said. “My brother lived here … and so I was visiting my brother, and I said, ‘Well, if you find me a barn, I’ll go back in the gallery business.’ Well, the barn found me. I found the barn, and here we are.”

She moved to Sandwich and opened the gallery in 2002, using the contacts she still had around the world to create the original exhibits. As time went by, she found more artists from around the Lakes Region and beyond who were happy to have a place to showcase their talent.

Shani McLane is one of the featured artists at the Patricia Ladd Carega Gallery in Sandwich. (Tom Caldwell Photo)

The gallery’s eclectic collection of contemporary art includes painting, printmaking, sculpture, ceramics, and jewelry, displayed with an eye toward ensuring that the works on the walls are in harmony with each other. Patricia regularly changes the way they are exhibited to enliven the collection, and she is happy to discuss the exhibits with those who stop by.

Because the barn is unheated, the gallery only opens during the warmer months, but she is able to extend the start and end of the season if the weather permits. She presents bi-weekly exhibits during the summer, swapping out the featured art to showcase other works, and holds opening receptions to introduce the artists. When interviewed in late September, the gallery was featuring works by Shani McLane and Larinda Meade.

Shani describes her prints as “individual essays capturing my personal thoughts and influences at a particular time in my life.” She brings her Scandinavia heritage to bear on interpreting natural patterns, “representing the importance of the natural world and its ever-changing existence as we know it. … I am more drawn to the interpretation and simplification of the overlooked beauty around us.”

Larinda is a painter and printmaker who focuses on the landscapes of Maine and New England. She sketches and takes snapshots of what appeals to her as she walks, using them as the basis for her images and prints. Her background as a studio arts major at SUNY Potsdam has allowed her to create work that is exhibited nationally and internationally, and has been placed in both public and private collections. 

The Patricia Ladd Carega Gallery also holds creative activities and talks to engage the community.

Patricia says she is not herself an artist, but she was inspired by living with an art-collecting family, and has an interest in art history. Her time spent in Italy, France, and the United Kingdom broadened her background and further shaped her appreciation for all types of art.

The Patricia Ladd Carega Gallery is the exclusive exhibitor of the photography of Brook Hedge of Sandwich. (Courtesy Photo)

Artists exhibiting at the gallery include Margery Thomas Mueller, who works with Yupo paper, a polypropylene sheet that can be difficult to control. “The moving ink and moving graphite speak to … emotions,” she has said. “Knowing that I can erase the entire picture plane with strokes of water and ammonia relates to what is happening in the human landscape as it transforms.” She starts with a basic composition and lets the medium lead her along.

Dayna Talbot is a multidisciplinary artist who works with fiber, paint, and sculpture to create a broad range of artistic pieces of both two and three dimensions. Her installations and sculptures are displayed alongside her paintings, prints, and handmade paper. “Ritual and repetition guide my creative process,” she said, “with colors serving as metaphors for purity, protection, and introspection.”

Pam Urda takes a whimsical approach to art, using found objects to create sculptures and tiles to create unusual shapes or beautiful globes — whatever strikes her fancy. “All I know for sure,” she says, “is that my art cracks me up on a daily basis and, in my opinion, that is a great way to live.”

Brook Hedge is a Sandwich photographer who spent 40 years in the legal profession in Washington, DC. She studied with a variety of professionals and, after exhibiting around the country, now uses the Patricia Ladd Carega Gallery as her exclusive venue.

One of the more unusual artists at the gallery is Dan Falby, who uses “meticulously worked clay slabs” to create hardened ceramics that retain fluid impressions from being dropped and tossed. “I use play, chance, and a collaboration with gravity to create ceramics that are a visceral record of movement and materials colliding,” he says. “I am drawn to how forms in nature tell the stories of their creation in the marks on their surfaces and the posture of their bodies. Erosion by wind and rain, freeze-thaw cycles, tectonic upheavals, and biological growth and decomposition create an intricate web of contingencies that shape our world. I strive to make sculptures that possess a similar elemental happenstance.”

The gallery has many more artists using various media to offer their unique visions.

The gallery is open Thursday - Saturday from 10 am to 5 pm and Sunday from 12:30 to 4 pm. Patricia planned to hold a season-closing party on Oct. 4 from 5 to 7 pm. Its last day open is set for Saturday, Oct. 11, although if the weather holds out, Patricia may extend the season.