Paula in front of her work
I recently spoke to Paula Martiesian about her involvement with Gallery Night Providence and her work at the Bank RI Gallery at Turks Head;
Tell us about the Bank RI Gallery, how long has it been open and how long have you been involved?
The bank galleries have been around since the 1990s. There are galleries in three BankRI branches – Pitman Street, Turks Head and North Kingstown. BankRI branches are unlike many banks, each branch reflects the community it is in.
One of the bank's vice presidents, Jim Derentis (now a real estate agent at Residential Properties), came up with the idea of the gallery at Turks Head. He wanted to support area artists and give them a place to showcase their work. He ran it himself for a year, expanded to the two other branches, and then hired others to run it. I came along in 2003 with the official title Exhibitions Curator. The galleries feature work by artists from Rhode Island and Southern Massachusetts.
Can you tell us about yourself and your own work?
I'm a lifelong artist. I've first trudged up the granite stairs at RISD when I was six years old and have been painting and drawing ever since. Along the way, I became an arts advocate - serving on boards, starting and running various arts organizations such as Quix Arts Magazine (an arts magazine that my husband Ken Carpenter and I developed, designed and published for almost a decade), Centercity Contemporary Arts, Raku Rhody-o, and Gallery Night Providence.
I've almost entirely retired from my community work to focus on my painting. I exhibit and sell my work through the Bert Gallery in Providence and the Charlestown Gallery in Charlestown
What do you think makes Gallery Night Providence important to the community?
Along with Teresa Level (Gallery Flux) and Cathy Bert (Bert Gallery), I founded Gallery Night in 1996. The creative culture here in Rhode Island is huge. There are so many artists of incredibly diverse viewpoints and talents, but there was no cohesive way to access them. Gallery Night provided the vehicles (quite literally) for people to search out and find artists and the galleries that exhibit their work. We were the first organization to embrace the concept of cultural tourism and we hoped to build a gallery community worthy of the artists that live here.
Is there anything you hope to see in the future for GNP?
More on line access, more commercial galleries, more access points for people to find the wonderful art and artists that live and work in Providence.
How do you think the arts benefit humanity?
Arts do not benefit humanity, they are humanity. People use to make everything they needed. They made their own clothes, their own houses, their own food. Everything they did was creative. It's only recently that humanity has separated everyday life from the arts. When you distill art down to its most basic core, it is the making. The making is what elevates humanity from other creatures. People today do not make much. They absorb and want to be entertained. We are beginning to lose what makes us truly human.
“The Wire” 2018