It’s a rare occasion for Studio 53  gallery owners Terry Seaman and Heidi Seidelhuber to have an exhibition of their own work, and that occasion is now. The shows, “Tangled” and “Footbridge Relics Revisited,” respectively, come to the end of their run on Sunday, May 21. On Friday, May 19 a reception for the artists was set to be held at the gallery (53 Townsend Avenue, Boothbay Harbor).

The shows are on the first floor of the gallery with Terry’s drawings and paintings in the front rooms to the left and Heidi’s in the two rooms to the right. 

Terry’s show “Entangled” is aptly named. It describes his obsessive search of the Grand Unified Theory (referred to by physicists as GUT) of the Cosmos, the Sub-atomic world and the “Fugues” of J.S. Bach. As one travels through his works, it is easy to get caught up in the movement and complexity of the 22 new works – some in watercolors on paper, and  graphite on mylar sheets.

“All of the new work references these (GUT) subjects. In quantum physics there is stuff moving around all the time and it’s moving so fast that often the same particles are in half a dozen places at once. They literally run into their own selves at times. Trying to cope with that kind of weirdness is interesting,” Terry said with enthusiasm and intensity.  “What I like about Bach and quantum physics is neither one is visible and as a visual artist, I have a fair amount of latitude in how I approach it. My work attempts to visualize things that are simply not visual.”

When it comes to these works, I am really drawn to those with color as though Bach’s music, or the movement of all these subatomic particles creates color – despite the “fact” that color doesn’t exist in that world – color is all due to the impact of light on the human eye – but who can tell? Really. Right?

For example, one of the works in his search of GUT  is entitled, “No Path Goes Untraveled.”  It shows subatomic particles moving to a jerky rhythm. And the color work entitled “Entrapped, Enslaved, Entangled, and Enraged, Subatomic Particles rise up against their Wicked Quantum Physicist Oppressors in Instantaneous Spooky Action Vengeance!” will give you a chuckle to see Seaman’s humor coloring his creativity. 

Terry Seaman’s work is mind-blowing, to say the least. 

Heidi’s show, features 30 new paintings, including the series “Footbridge Relics Revisited,” and a collection of self-portraits that begin with the artist at age 13. The colors in her watercolor paintings leap off the canvases — and that’s quite alright, ’cause you’ll be more than happy to drink them in, and the light contained within them cannot be confined by the boundary of a frame. She likes highly saturated colors and working with light.

Take a good look at “Port Clyde Painted Rug.” Sunlight is reflected in the windows of the buildings around the pier, and fairly becomes the water flowing slowly in during a low tide. The exposed sand, mud and rock have so much depth – the browns in gradually deepening shades ... as you invest yourself in this painting the scents of salt and earth are experienced; the air temperature is keenly felt as the water leads you under the pier and loose within the pilings. And the color! The lobster traps stacked on pier are of many colors and light bounces ever so lightly off of them. Are single elements within this painting the “braided rug?”  Or are the patterns created by the traps, water and pilings the very fiber of the rug? Only the artist knows for sure ...

“I’ll probably go further with the ‘Footbridge Relic Y’ in a series of studies,” Heidi said. “To see where you want to go in the future – that’s what having a show can be very useful for; you can see how the pieces work together and decide from there.”

This is a fabulous show - experience it.

Fascinating.