Marina Broere

After her successful debut during last year's December Art Crawl, Frans Beelen (from my native country, Holland) is back with a new collection of her amazing soft jewelry.
Frans began her career as a jeweler with traditional metals, like silver, gold and gemstones. Unsatisfied with the somewhat cold and hard feel of these metals, she started experimenting with different materials. Now she sculpts the shape of her necklaces out of velvets and silks, incorporating not only semi-precious stones, but such wide-ranging materials as corals, fossils, found shells, driftwood, feathers and furs. This results in totally unique, colorful, and very feminine (although sometimes distictly wild) pieces of jewelry that will not let you pass unnoticed when wearing them!

New to MB Gallery is Rebecca Crowell. With galleries in New York, Arizona and Minneapolis showing her work, I feel quite honored that she answered positively to my request to show her work from my gallery. During the Art Crawl, a collection of Rebecca's smaller abstract paintings in oil on panel will be on display. Although totally abstract, her works evoke a stong sense of nature. She translates her close observations of nature into layers of translucent colors and movements that are monumental even in the small size panels. Although her method of painting includes such rough and unusual tools as metal pot scrubbers, dish brushes and scrapers, the result is a painting surface that is smooth as satin and that breathes a sense of quiet contemplation.

Another new name to MB Gallery is Kristine Kjos. Kristine moved from Milwaukee to Alma WI 9 years ago where she owns what I think is by far the most beautiful art/home décor store of Wisconsin. A multi-talented artist herself, she will show a collection of handmade scarves that are all unique pieces of craftsmanship. Composed of several pieces of fabrics with wonderful textures added, her scarves are unusual, subtle and elegant.