Fledgling gallery hopes to jump-start local arts community

LEWISTON – The artists are here, in basement studios and hobby rooms all over Lewiston-Auburn.

Kerry Landry believes it.

“You talk to people and they say, ‘I’ve never sold anything or I don’t do that for money,'” he said.

They only need a little encouragement and a place to gather.

So he transformed a former apartment into a gallery, hanging paintings in his former kitchen and in closets.

Along with three partners – painters Melanie Therrien and Vincent Myrand and his brother, Jason Landry – Kerry Landry created Captive Elements Art House at 25 Landry Road.

Works by all four adorn the walls.

“We consider it a realistic beginning,” said Kerry Landry, who graduated with a creative writing degree from the University of Maine at Farmington. He has been painting for about seven years.

The idea of creating a gallery of his own has been growing in him since 2001, when he strolled up Lisbon Street one day.

At the time, there were two galleries sitting side by side.

“I remember saying to myself, ‘Good. A community is developing,'” he said. “I thought it might add something kind of funky to the downtown.”

“Of course, they were gone the next time I looked,” he said.

He learned not to soak too much money into the enterprise, at least until he can afford it.

He still can’t afford a lot, paying his household bills with a job at an Auburn restaurant. But when he hosted a gallery opening last month, he sold two pieces for a total of $1,500.

Proceeds from the sale and other money from his partners is giving the modest gallery a bit of independence.

Kerry Landry hopes to draw more artists to the gallery and sell their work for a small commission. And he hopes to draw regular traffic by rotating new art into some of his best spaces, including a sash-covered wall where several of Myrand’s unsettling paintings now hang.

He envisions bringing in sculpture and other media.

“We just hope the people come out and see us,” he said.