Thank you for your interest in participating in Essex Art Center's Fourth Annual Salon Show.

The Salon Show is a yearly exhibition that fills Essex Art Center’s walls with work by artists from Lawrence, New England, and beyond. We celebrate the breadth of talent in our community, and some work is for sale. This year's show will take place July 13 - August 10, 2024. The opening reception will coincide with Fiesta en la calle, the Center’s yearly free block party on Saturday, July 13.

We hope you will submit your best work! A good rule of thumb for choosing which piece(s) to offer is that if you're excited about it, the jury and collectors likely will be too. If you choose to have your work up for sale, proceeds will be split 50/50 between the Center and the artist who sells their work. Each sale allows Essex Art Center to expand our programming, offer more discounts, and provide greater access to meaningful art experiences! Learn more by clicking the link below.

Dear Friends,

We are so excited to launch our spring session along with our summer vacation program! 

A few things to note:

1. Things look a bit different: We are using a new registration system, and you will need to create an account. We are excited about the new system and confident it will be easier to use!

2. Prices: We always do as much as possible to keep classes as affordable as we can. We have not raised prices in over four years. Everything has gotten more expensive, from paying our amazing teachers to rent and utilities. In turn, we have added between $1 and $2 per hour to our course rate. You might not know, but grants subsidize all our courses. For every hour of instruction we offer, we have to raise $40, which totals over $100,000 each year. At our old rate, the Art Center simply could not sustain everything that goes into making our classes happen. We want you to know how much we value each of you as students, and we hope you understand the decision we had to make to ensure the sustainability and longevity of the Art Center. 

We look forward to welcoming you! If you have any questions, please feel free to reply to this message.

Monica + the Essex Art Center team

Essex Art Center is thrilled to open its 2024 exhibition season with Parts and Pieces of the Universe by Leah Piepgras. Piepgras is a Texas-born North Andover resident who was raised in a family of artists. Trained formally as a sculptor, Piepgras gracefully traverses performance, painting, and installation.
Parts and Pieces of the Universe is a snapshot of a lifetime of creative work that grapples with our human mortality and explores the magic and mysteries of life. Piepgras tells the story of personal experiences in a mythological form, allowing us to see how the artist understands and relates to the world. The Earth Mother, Infinite Body, and God's Eyes are recurring figures in her work that embody ideas of generosity, labor, healing, and the presence of and our connection to the divine. 
The exhibition will feature the installation Fight Cloud, a whirling arrangement of 135 plaster-cast hands that express the power of channeling our emotions—even ones seen as unfavorable, such as anger. Parts and Pieces of the Universe will also include several never-seen-before sculptural works created this year. Through the scale and accumulation of works on view, Piegras invites us to share the wonder and awe she experiences when grounded in the natural world.
Informed by the study of paradox, physics, geology, anatomy, and her own bouts with illness, the artist considers big existential questions often spiritual in nature, such as Why am I here? and At what point do I become me? In Piepgras' work—space, time, and our physical form are woven like cloth—expanding and contracting forever.
About the Artist

Leah Piepgras (b. 1970) received her MFA from Carnegie Mellon University in 1997 and has exhibited and performed throughout the United States, including at the SPRING/BREAK Art Show in New York and the Shelter in Place Gallery in Boston, an initiative which took place during the COVID-19 pandemic. Her work has been written about in Artsy, The New York Times, and The Boston Globe, among others.
Piepgras' work is driven by a deep connection to the Earth. Her proximity to Lake Cochichewick in North Andover directly influences her practice, providing raw materials such as driftwood that washes up on the shore and metal that she’s unearthed along its banks. She believes that biology is our destiny and that we are each given a set of stories to tell and work to bring forth in this world. She feels a kinship with all living things, especially snakes, viewing their prostration as love for the land. 
Read a conversation with the artist and our Executive Director Monica Lynn Manoski

We are so grateful for the Essex Art Center community. To our staff, faculty, board, volunteers, students, and friends, we wish you hope, joy, peace, and good health on this Thanksgiving Day. Happy Thanksgiving! The building will be closed November 24-25th and will reopen Saturday, November 26th from 12:00pm-2:00pm

Chelsea Tyler Marrero is a Puerto Rican/ Dominican-American artist who was raised in Lawrence. Her work intertwines painting with an introspective journey toward a higher self and explores concepts of death and rebirth, ancestral reconnection, and the chakra system as touchpoints for healing.

In this collection of figurative oil paintings, Chelsea examines her relationship with her ancestral lineage, her discovery of healing practices, and the journey of her spiritual awakening. Chelsea has an interest in helping her community heal and create space together. Through connecting to the authentic self, she hopes to encourage liberation as a practice through movement, reflection, and creative expression.

Chelsea was selected from the open call for Essex Art Center's BIPOC Artist/Curator Program, which was inaugurated this year. The program seeks to highlight and support the work of a local BIPOC artist or curator through an exhibition, mentorship, and a stipend.

Fall enrollment is now live. Classes begin September 18th.

Enroll Here

Proceeds from the sale of each work will be split 50/50 between the Center and the artist who sells their work. Each sale allows us to expand our programming, offer more discounts, and provide greater access to art!

Shop Today

Bright colors fill the streets and joyous rhythms ring through the air during carnaval in the Dominican Republic. Throughout the country, performers wear vibrant, intricate costumes that invite curiosity and inspire spectators to join the parades. Culminating on Dominican Independence Day on February 27, carnaval has long been a part of Dominican cultural identity. Artifacts found near La Vega, the Dominican Republic’s epicenter of carnaval, indicate celebrations in the region dating to the early 1500s. Today, the imaginative costumes and narratives of carnaval flourish throughout the Dominican diaspora.

Lawrence is home to one of the largest concentrations of Dominicans in the United States. Led by Stelvyn Mirabal, the Asociación Carnavalesca de Massachusetts has preserved and honored the Dominican carnaval tradition since 2000. The Lawrence-based organization maintains a membership of forty-five performers and a corps of talented craftspeople that create and repair the elaborate ensembles. El Carnaval Continúa offers a closer look into the Asocación’s imaginative costume designs, the historical myths and narratives that inform them, and Mirabal’s tireless dedication to bringing these traditions to life.