Those taking a stroll down Shawville’s Main Street recently may have noticed two small signs in the otherwise empty storefront windows of what used to be Renaissance Variety, just one door east of the traffic lights.

One reads ‘HER ART STUDIO COMING SOON’, the other, ‘ABSTRACTS AND COMMISSIONED PAINTINGS’.

For three weeks, these signs have been the only clues as to what is to come for the space behind the windows, which has sat vacant for years, but on the evening of Mar. 2, passersby will finally be able to step inside.

Two months ago, Terri-Lynn Vandervelden started . . .

leasing the space with plans to transform it into a gallery for showing her abstract art pieces, as well as other local artwork.

She calls the space HER, an acronym for ‘hepatic erratic response’, a state which Vandervelden describes as being at the heart of her artistic practice.

“It’s that moment when you are doing something you don’t have any plan for,” Vandervelden explained. “When you’re an abstract painter you don’t really know what you’re doing until you’re a third done.”

Unlike conventional minimalist gallery spaces, HER is designed to feel like a home.

Since taking over the space, Vandervelden has put in a small kitchen, a couch, a dining room table, and ambient lighting.

The goal, she said, is to help visitors imagine how her art would look in their own homes.

The studio will be used to display artworks she already has for sale, and invite potential customers to come and discuss their visions for commissioned works.

Vandeverlden, who studied interior design at Algonquin College, understands the value of a well placed piece of art that is synchronized with the colour pallet of the space in which it hangs.

The first time she tried her hand at abstract art was to fill a wall in a new home in Arnprior 10 years ago.

“I had this massive seven-foot spot above my fireplace. Canvases alone are so expensive. To buy a painting to fit that space, there was no way I could afford that.”

Vandervelden bought herself a $50 canvas and used it to create her first piece of abstract art, and she has been experimenting with different techniques and materials ever since.

Her first exhibition in her new gallery, which will open to the public by way of vernissage at 6 p.m. on Mar. 2, will feature works she created with pieces of glass, gems and rocks, as well as a small collection of works from other artists that have already expressed interest in her project.

Vandervelden also has plans to run an after school arts program for kids in the back room of her gallery, an idea she had when a group of young girls dropped by her studio one afternoon, expressing eagerness to do some kind of painting.

“I really want it to be a close-knit family space,” she said.

Once the weather warms up, she would like for the space to become a community hub, where people walking by feel welcome to pop in, maybe for one of her mother Inger Elliott’s famous pies, and where live jazz music inside the gallery streams out onto the sidewalk.

Terri-Lynn Vandervelden, the artist behind Shawville’s new HER art studio, says she is excited to finally open the gallery space to the public at her vernissage on Mar. 2.

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