Art galleries across Homer feature artists as part of its First Friday offerings. This month, Homer Council on the Arts is hosting a show from Leo Vait.
The HCOA gallery hosts various exhibits and shows throughout the year, from paintings and ceramics to jam sessions and theater performances. This month, the gallery is filled with paintings, carvings and sculptures.
Homer artist Leo Vait is there too. He talks about the different pieces, including a wooden fox made of cedar that washed up on the beach.
“There’s the fox here, which in itself was quite a challenge in that I took two pieces of cedar, because I didn’t have a wide enough piece to accommodate a fox. So I glued those together.”
Vait said the fox wouldn’t stand with cedar legs, so he came up with another way to make it work.
“I made the legs out of mahogany, and, you know, kind of fused them in here, and also on the ears, because that would potentially break easier, but not now,” he said, “I mean, you’d have to hit it pretty hard to break it.”
The fox stands with its back arched and one paw lifted slightly off the ground. Vait said he wanted to show that movement in the piece.
“Having observed foxes, I wanted to make a fox that is not static, like it’s ready to move quickly,” Vait said, “and yet, if you look at his eyes, he’s not menacing.”
The show is called “For Nancy” in honor of Nancy Vait, his wife of 47 years.
Vait said his wife would look at and critique most of his work in the past. Following her death in Sept. 2022, Vait found many unfinished projects in his studio.
“There were a lot of sculptures that I had partially finished, and a few that she had seen in the making. And I felt a responsibility to finish those in honor of our life together,” he said.
Vait said Nancy often would give feedback when she couldn’t see Vait’s vision for a piece, especially if he was early in the process.
“It’s hard to explain where it’s going to her. It has to arrive at a more complete state, then she can get it,” Vait said.
He said working on the show made him feel lonely, but many of those emotions didn’t hit him until he moved the pieces to the gallery.
“When we brought all of those pieces in here from the studio. It’s like, ‘Ah, it’s really here. This is really it.’ And I went home, and I just sobbed because it was that completion.”
In addition to these newly finished pieces, the show also features previous works throughout his lifelong career as an artist, including a stone carving from nearly 50 years ago. Vait said it’s been overwhelming to see the number of people that have seen the show.
“A person can tell if it’s successful, just by the way, people are looking at work. You can tell that there’s a kind of a little transcendence, you know, for, for the viewer,” he said, “at least, that’s what I’ve been perceiving.”
He hopes that people can experience the magic he got from creating each piece.
After the show wraps up, Vait wants to step away from the large sculptures and continue work on abstract stone pieces.
“For Nancy” will run until July 29.
