MINOT — Terryl Esther Jensen and her husband, S. Richard Jensen, ran a design company together for more than 10 years. He would sketch and craft intricate pieces, she would sometimes paint.

“He would design, we would discuss,” she said. Once, “he designed a beautiful rocking chair. He did a mock-up, and I said, ‘It doesn’t have enough rock,’ so we would go back and work on it. We just worked on things together like that.”

When her husband of 37 years died last year, she missed being around the art. She opened a gallery this month on Route 124 in his former woodworking shop featuring his work and other Maine artists.

Alomakuam Gallery (pronounced alomah-kwam) is named in a nod to their design company, Alomakuam Designs.

The word means “heart of the tree” in Abenaki, according to Jensen.

Back in the day, the couple entered furniture shows up and down the East Coast and had their work in galleries in Maine, New Hampshire and Massachusetts.

“He had a lady send him a picture of a room and said, ‘I need a table to go in this room,’ so he designed the most beautiful table you ever saw,” Jensen said. “He would just think of things and create them. It’s like his mind was working all the time. He would have a piece of paper and pencil and he’d be designing things.”

Jensen, an English language tutor in RSU 16, said the idea for a new venture started coming together the past four months.

“I thought, ‘Well, I’ll just open a gallery. We had all these nice things and I’ll ask other people to come in with me,’ and it has just been amazing. I have a room full of beautiful things right now,” she said. “(Friends) would ask what I was doing and I would tell them, ‘Well if you have things, please bring them.’ Then friends would tell friends, you know how that goes.”

In addition to a rocking chair, sideboard and chest by her late husband, the gallery features quilts, a variety of paintings, etched glass and other woodworking pieces.

“Gary Stugard has many of his pieces over there and he’s a very talented sculptor out of wood, beautiful things,” she said.

The Alomakuam Gallery at 40 West Minot Road is open Friday and Saturday from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. and by appointment.

Jensen anticipates she’ll close in the winter when the space gets too cold.

She hopes artists feel comfortable displaying their work in the space.

“Galleries can be very intimidating, been there and done that,” she said. “Galleries can kind of put you down; it’s not a nice feeling sometimes, especially some we’ve been in.” Jensen would like to “give them confidence in themselves so they can go on if they choose to.”

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