Antique Shop to Art Gallery in Wells, ME

Gallery from Rt 1: Tony Conway Sculpture on Display

Another Tony Conway Sculpture

Four Boxes in the Front Meadow

Spheres on the Lawn

Cairn of Granite Found on the Property

Corey Daniels Antiques in Wells, ME has always carried a fine selection of antiques, objects, furniture, art prints and photographs. The antique shop was housed in a handsome 19th century farmhouse. In the last few years a transformation of the farmhouse has occurred which is in alignment with Corey's change of focus from an antiques dealer to fine artist and curator. He has become much more minimalist in his aesthetic and the changes to the building and the grounds surrounding it reflect that metamorphosis.

First off, the building has been painted a muted grayish brown color. The passageway from the house to the barn is now a bare wall which is the perfect stage for a Tony Conway sculpture now placed there. The gallery has open spaces with a minimum of objects arranged in an eclectic and spartan manner. It reminds me of what I had read Russell Page liked to do. He would spend hours taking five or six objects on a table and trying to place them in an "arrangement which appears just." Page believed that "every object emanates -sends out vibrations beyond its physical body which are specific to itself." Corey does this when positions objects in his gallery. The sculpture arrangement on the grounds feel like another successful undertaking of that exercise.

I particularly liked the placement of four simple boxes in the un-mowed field, now a meadow, in front of the gallery. The boxes are made of iron street grates from Portland, ME (I think) that Corey found. Corey credits longtime friend, Tony Elliott (see last post about Snug Harbor Farm), for collaborating with him on the grounds and the positioning of the objects on the property. Page said " I think that awareness of the interplay between objects, whether organic or inorganic, is of major importance if your garden is to also a work of art." And so it is with landscape at Corey Daniels Gallery.

Corey Daniels has a blog and was profiled in an article for the NY Times last March.

http://coreydanielsgallery.blogspot.com

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/25/garden/25drake.html?scp=1&sq=corey+daniels&st=nyt