There will be an Opening Party for a new Little Compton art show on Saturday, July 20, from 5 to 8 p.m. The show brings together three artists with strong Little Compton ties, displaying their work in a unique new venue.

Little Compton has a long history of art and craft-making, going back to the Sakonnet and Wampanoag people, Azorean scrimshanders and artists like Izannah Walker and Sydney Richmond Burleigh. Those creators gave voice to the natural resources and social climates of the seaside hamlet as it was back then.

Today, the beauty and community remains with plenty of artists' studios peppered amongst the seaside manses and country estates.  

Isabel Mattia, Mark Gleicher and Tom Deininger are contemporary artists with ties to Little Compton, and Earle’s Country Store nee Service Station is a venerable business in town. After a few discussions (Earle’s is known as a place where locals get chatty) the artists and business owner Bruce Elwell decided to shake things up a bit this summer. 

In its own way, the back yard space at Earle’s felt like a perfect venue for Gleicher, who lives and works in Little Compton and is the show’s curator: “What better location than Earle’s for a show featuring art that is topical and aberrant? It is after all ‘Where the elite meet’.” 

Mattia, a graduate of and professor at Rhode Island School of Design, lives in town and has a unique perspective that lends a new voice to the creative tradition of its residents: “I’m totally ok with people not getting it [my work] or seeing it just as weird abstract metal art.” However, her work in this show is sensitive to the location and celebrates Little Compton in a fresh way.

Deininger is a former town resident who keeps close ties to the community and works out of a studio just over the town line in Tiverton. His work can be seen at major international art fairs and galleries in New York City and Miami. He works mostly in sculpture but is displaying large paintings for this event. The spirit of his work encompasses an environmental and social concern that is central to the soul of the show. 

The location and history of the venue as a former gas station, and the subsequent renaissance of the business plays an important role in the overarching theme. What does the future look like for Little Compton; our community and the land and the sea? How do we talk about these issues? What role does art play in that discussion? What have we as a community learned from the artist's of the past and how do we keep asking the ultimate question for every innovator and creative, “Now what?”

The show will be set up from July 19 to 21, from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. daily.