Sculptor Gordon Chandler and painter Adrienne Kernan LaVallee return to their hometown of Lenox for Home Coming, a two-person art exhibition on view in the Library’s Welles Gallery July 3-30, 2025. The Artists’ reception will be on Saturday, July 19, from 1:30 to 4:00 p.m.
The exhibit is a homecoming for Chandler and LaVallee, who both graduated from Lenox Memorial High School in 1971. Devoted to their art at a young age, their mentor was their high school art teacher, John Lewarn, who was beloved by generations of students. Fittingly, the last time Chandler and LaVallee exhibited their work together was at the Lenox Library when Lewarn’s students held an art show there during their senior year. Both artists went on to study art in college and graduate school and continue to create and exhibit their work.
Adrienne Kernan LaVallee earned degrees from the University of Massachusetts, Dartmouth (BFA) and the Maryland Institute College of Art (MFA). She spent two five-week sessions at Richmond College in Florence, Italy, where she studied Italian Renaissance Art History. Her work has been exhibited in many solo, invitational, and juried shows in the United States, including at the Currier Museum in Manchester, NH; Clark University in Worcester; and the Berkshire Museum, Pittsfield. She is represented by the following galleries: Maine Art Hill in Kennebunk; the Blue Raven Gallery in Rockland, ME; Gleason Fine Art in Boothbay Harbor, ME; and Threadneedle Gallery in Newburyport MA. For many years she was represented by the Lenox Gallery of Art. Her art can be found in private collections throughout the United States and abroad in Canada, Mexico, Japan, Italy, the United Kingdom, and Holland.
LaVallee’s landscape paintings come to life with her use of color and aggressive brush and palette knife work. She is inspired mostly by the New England landscape including the sounds and sights found in nature: “I enjoy melding reality with memory and imagination to create my energized, abstracted images.”
Gordon Chandler earned degrees in sculpting from Syracuse University (BFA) and the University of Massachusetts Amherst (MFA). He attended the Skowhegan School of Painting & Sculpture, Skowhegan, ME, after his junior year.
Chandler creates works out of salvaged metal, making kimonos and usable furniture. Public collections that hold, or have held, his work include The Chattahoochee Valley Art Museum (LaGrange, GA), the Honolulu Museum of Art, the National Ornamental Metal Museum (Memphis, TN), and the Runnymede Sculpture Farm (Woodside, CA). For several years his works have been shown at the Burning Man festival in Nevada’s Black Rock Desert. Private collectors who have owned his work include Walter and Ann Nathan of Chicago, Roger Brown of La Conchita, CA, and singer Elton John. He is represented by several galleries, including Pagoda Red Gallery in Chicago, Lois Lambert Gallery, Santa Monica, CA, and Bernay Fine Art Gallery in Great Barrington. For 20 years he was represented by Ute Stebich and Leslie Ferrin galleries in Lenox.
Chandler finds inspiration in scrap yards and roadsides and from a palette of materials he has collected over the years: “I am inspired by our cultural landscape, materials thrown away in an increasingly disposable world. I alloy these cast-off objects into a sculptural form.”
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