Peabody Historical Society & Museum: Historic Interpretation

If you click the title you will be taken to the Peabody Historical Society's site with further information on location, show dates, etc.


There are three of my reverse glass paintings in this show, and they are for sale. Previous entries detail the progress of the work, to see the finale, you must go to the museum. The following 4 works are donated for the raffle. All proceeds to benefit the museum. There is a lot of great work in this show, and the venue is charming with a warm grandparent's home kind of feel.

"Peabody Historical Society's B&W Bath"

18x20", unframed, reverse glass

"An Elephant in the Room"

20x20" mixed media on canvas

"An American Collection"

12x12" reverse glass with metal leaf

"the Things We Keep"

10x10" mixed media, antique lace

a copy of my blurb to accompany my work.

Dear Heather (Lovell curator PHS&M),

Here's the info for the work I will deliver on Saturday sometime between 4 and 5.

1. "An Elephant in the Room": mixed media on canvas, 2009, 20x20"
2. "What we Keep": old lace mixed media, 2009, 10x10"
3. "Peabody Historical B&W Bathroom" verre eglomise mixed media, 2009, 18x20"
4: "An American Collection, artist on art" verre eglomise mixed media, 2009, 12x12"

short bio:

Debbie Clarke works in her kitchen studio in East Gloucester. A life long artist, she began her studies at age 13, in exchange for modeling for his classes, with landscape painter Ken Gore in his East Gloucester studio. A graduate of The Art Institute of Boston '77. Debbie was a founding memeber of Gloucester's longest running artist's cooperative "Local Colors. She taught hundreds of students the art of drawing through her studio/gallery on Lexington Avenue in Magnolia, which ran for 10 years. Her work is in many local and international private and public collections, most notably "The Species", 7 reverse glass paintings of fish at The Cape Ann Museum in Gloucester MA. She is a self representing artist who works regularly on a commissioned basis to manifest the visions of her patrons.

The work produced for the Peabody Historical Society's Historic Interpretation Show has allowed Debbie to work outside of her usual focus on fish and expand her visual language through her discovery of the common ties of 'objects' that define an American legacy: cups, dishes, chairs, lace, etc.

Heather, I would also like to add how important local historical societies are to the communities they represent. As a child I lived for a few years behind the Wenham Museum. For a few pennies donation they regularly allowed me into their museum to spend somewhat unspervised time looking at their doll collection and I explored the world through their stereographs. Seeing the American flag in your society reminded me of the Betsy Ross doll that was (perhaps still is) the centerpiece of their doll collection. and later The Cape Ann Museum (then historical society) and Judith Sargeant Murray House opened my eyes to the reality of how the world literally touched our shores and that the objects of the refined became objects of emulation which defined and represented the cultured mind. I was a religious educator at The Independent Christian Church Unitarian Universalist for 15 years. As I went through your collection it suddenly struck me that every object, and wall paper could be used in a home environment to introduce young minds to the greater world.