We have TWO new local artists exhibiting at the Co-op this month: Leah Berry and Kelli Cayley.

Here is what Kelli has to say about her work. I love the simplicity of black and white photography. The absence of color helps to focus on the subject and simplifies the evoked emotional expression of the pieces. I love to travel and bring home memories of my journey, but I rarely see my subjects in their whole form, preferring to focus on the pieces that call out to me, demanding attention.

Kelli Cayley grew up in Florida, avoiding the heat and the sunlight as much as possible. After graduate school and working as a Nurse Anesthetist in Houston, she moved to her “heart home” of Vermont as quickly as she could. Recently married to a beautiful Italian, she spends her time working at APD in the recovery room, doting on her labradoodle Schuyler, and continues to view the world in its exquisite pieces.

Leah is a Vermont-born visual storyteller whose work dwells in the spaces most people overlook. Now living in Tunbridge, she has spent her life rooted in rural landscapes, developing a deep sensitivity to the quiet lives of hidden things. The figures in frost, the ghosts in the tree line, the moments that disappear as quickly as they appear. Her current body of work, Land of Ice, drifts between presence and absence. Inspired in part by her travels through Iceland’s frozen expanses, Berry captures snow and ice not as stillness, but as movement, paused while nature holds its breath. Within these surfaces, she searches for what lingers beneath: shapes, echoes, and silent witnesses waiting to be noticed. Berry’s art is less about spectacle and more about invitation. She asks viewers to look longer, to see the passengers beside them that go unseen. In nature, in others, and within themselves. She can be contacted at hiddenpassangerart@gmail.com.

Please come and view their art in person at the store before the month is over. Supporting local art is an excellent way of strengthening our local economy as well as our local culture!