Food for the Soul and Gifts from the Heart at Edgewood Orchard Galleries in Fish Creek

“Uncle Bill’s Plum Island Jam” by William Suys.

Edgewood Orchard Galleries will celebrate the opening of its fifth and final show of the season with a reception from 1 – 5 pm on Saturday, September 27. Refreshments will be served in the main gallery, and the public is welcome.

Exhibit V will be a group show titled “An Artist’s Food for the Soul” with the artwork included in this show serving as the inspiration for a new cookbook that is currently being compiled by Edgewood Orchard Galleries co-founder Anne Emerson and her daughter Nell Emerson Jarosh, the gallery’s current owner.

The mother-daughter team put together their first cookbook, titled An Artist’s Food for Thought, in 2004 to celebrate the gallery’s 35th Anniversary. Their plan was to donate all of the proceeds from sales of that cookbook to fight hunger. An Artist’s Food for Thought has since sold out, and in the process over $75,000 was raised and donated to hunger-related programs.

“Making Ginger Cookies” by John Sayers.

With the tremendous success of their first cookbook and the gallery’s 40th anniversary coming up in June 2009, Anne and Nell have started gathering recipes for their next cookbook, and they plan to have An Artist’s Food for the Soul completed and available for purchase when the gallery opens next May. All proceeds from sales of the An Artist’s Food for the Soul cookbook will be donated to programs benefiting children.

To gather much of artwork that will be included in the “An Artist’s Food for the Soul” exhibit and the cookbook of the same name, all of the artists represented by Edgewood Orchard Galleries were asked to create artwork that was “soulful” to them. The result has been a diverse collection of paintings of food and inspiring places, as well as jewelry, glass, clay and sculpture pieces that have special meaning to the artists that created them. Many of the artists featured in the show will be present at the show’s opening reception on September 27, and will be available to answer questions about their artwork. Exhibit V will run through November 2, when the gallery closes for the 2008 season.

“Clay Angels” by Jeanne Aurelius.

The final exhibit of Edgewood Orchard’s season also includes the gallery’s 10th annual “Gifts from the Heart” show of artwork especially good for gift-giving. Always a favorite exhibit, in addition to smaller paintings, it includes the work of well-known Connecticut jeweler Michael Michaud, Newport, Rhode Island glass artist Matthew Buechner, and the sought-after glass icicle ornaments of Mineral Point, Wisconsin glass artist Ann Cabezas. Free holiday gift wrapping is available.

Edgewood Orchard Galleries is located on Peninsula Players Road, one block east of Hwy. 42, between Egg Harbor and Fish Creek. Regular hours are 10 am – 5 pm daily through November 2, 2008.

For more information, call 920.868.3579, email [email protected], or visit http://www.edgewoodorchard.com