SUMMER IN BLACK AND WHITE
July 10 - August 29, 2025
In July and August NHG’s summer hours are 11-5 Monday through Friday. The normal Tuesday through Saturday schedule resumes after Labor Day when an exhibition entitled WaterWays, works by Nicole Phungrasamee Fein opens the season.
Escaping summer’s heat and intense color NHG focuses on the coolness of black and white in drawing, painting, photography and sculpture. Some of the artists in the exhibition work exclusively in black and white, notably Bill Richards whose drawings of grasses, reeds, ground cover and flowers invite the viewer into an intimist’s view of nature. Working from left to right over many months the artist uses only graphite to create his complex images of nature. He captures what the eye does not see, or cannot hold, the treasures that lie at our feet on walks in parks or grasslands.
Nathalia Edenmont’s black and white photographs of eggs are studies on the fragility of
life. In 2012 the artist acquired a collection of unfertilized goose eggs. When
Edenmont was told she was incapable of bearing a child, she rediscovered these
beautiful objects, and realized they were a metaphor for her life. She set out to
transform them into evocative, mysterious sculptural forms she could photograph as
subject and object. Mostly white against a stark black background each egg is
symbolic of a new life for the artist.
Michael Gregory’s black and white oil paintings of barns have a timeless quality. Since 2000 Gregory has focused on the iconic rural American landscape. A sense of loneliness pervades his paintings, which may include a barn or farm community, a silo, telephone poles, fences, fields of hay, cloud or star-filled skies. His point of departure is love of the land, particularly the West that John Steinbeck described in his books. Each painting in oil on canvas is a reimagined vision of what he has seen as he drives through vast stretches of the land and skyscape. Silence permeates each canvas. From pink sunset skies to plowed hay fields to snow-covered barns, quiet prevails.
Nancy Koenigsberg’s “Edges” exemplifies the duality in her work. Created from two colors in narrow gauge steel wire, woven and knotted to create a three-dimensional drawing on the wall, this black and white work has both fragility and strength. The artist says: “Even as I create my drawings in metal, I’m fascinated with the interlocking lines and the spaces they form. Lace Like layers allow for transparency, the passage of light and the formation of shadows.”
These are a few of the works the gallery will highlight for summer. Gallery hours for July, and August will be Monday through Friday from 11 to 5.