Art aficionados rejoice — a new art gallery has opened on the Main Road in Jamesport. Kimberly Crumm, a painter and a Mattituck resident, opened Elaine Harris Gallery this past August. The gallery is named in honor of Crumm’s two grandmothers, Elaine Murphy and Eva Harris, who encouraged her creativity.
Crumm has always dreamed of having a brick-and-mortar gallery. “My vision is to share stories and give artists who are underrepresented a platform to speak their truth,” she says. The gallery will provide a special focus on work by women artists.
Photos Courtesy Elaine Harris Gallery
Housed in a hundred-year-old building that was formerly Three Sisters Antiques (and a barber shop before that), the gallery has been completely renovated with a fresh coat of paint, new flooring, and an open-beamed ceiling painted black.
Crumm, who grew up in Wading River, returned to the North Fork two years ago from the Washington D.C. area, where she worked at a large corporate firm that provides human resources outsourcing for small businesses.
Her life changed drastically after she was diagnosed with chronic Lyme disease 13 years ago. “It’s such a sneaky disease,” Crumm relates. “It hides in your immune system and masks itself … your body doesn’t even know what to attack.”
The current exhibition, From Grief to Gratitude, features 13 abstract paintings by Crumm that describe her journey through the chronic disease. There is a corresponding painting for each of the seven stages of grief that Crumm has focused on: disbelief, denial, bargaining, regret, anger, acceptance and hope.
During her experience with Lyme, Crumm confronted the loss of her career and the difficulty those close to her had in accepting her chronic illness. “It was a very scary time,” she says. “I went from running a division in a publicly traded company to not being able to walk to the end of my driveway.”
“This has been a road back to gratitude and recovery,” she notes. “In this journey, it’s been important for me to find beauty, and I think that’s how art really healed me,” she says.
While the paintings that came out of the experience are all linked, they look quite different.
Managed Chaos is a dark-colored abstract piece with sharp shapes, straight lines and funnels. “The title represents the period of time in my life where I tried to recreate structure in my life after a loss of control,” says Crumm.
A piece made of a carrot dangling from a fishing line is called Denial and channels that psychological response. “Chasing these carrots trick us into thinking that we’re going to be okay, but what we are really doing is living in denial … that denial ends up tying a noose around your neck and ends up being the thing that strangles you,” Crumm says.
A painting called Acceptance is made with hundreds of eggshells. “They were ground into the paint itself and placed throughout [the work], each one painstakingly and purposefully,” says Crumm.
“I listened to a Deepak Chopra interview about the power of acceptance, and that’s what really got me chewing on this idea. We’ve all been told the story of Humpty Dumpty, but really, it’s a story of acceptance — something broke and couldn’t be put back together. But that doesn’t mean that it wasn’t beautiful and that beauty couldn’t come from it still.”
Crumm confirms that she is in good health now. “I had Lyme twice; both times stem cell treatments helped me — I really believe it cured me. I feel remarkably different,” she says.
The reception to her new business has been positive so far. “There’s been lots of ‘welcome to the neighborhoods,’ “says Crumm.
The gallery will be open from now until the end of November, except for Thanksgiving weekend; Crumm plans to close for the winter and reopen in the spring.
Hours are Monday-Wednesday by appointment, Thursday 11 a.m.-5 p.m., Friday-Saturday 11 a.m.-7 p.m., and Sunday noon-5 p.m. Crumm may be reached at [email protected] or through her Instagram account @ehg.ny.
Elaine Harris Gallery, 1550 Main Road, Jamesport, 631-268-8109
