The Franklin Gallery at RiverStones Custom Framing, 33 N. Main Street, Rochester, will host an exhibit during November featuring hand-woven tapestries from Farmington artist, Suzanne Pretty. An opening reception will be held on Thursday, November 3, from 5-6:30pm. Light refreshments will be served and the public is invited to attend.

Suzanne Pretty graduated from Massachusetts College of Art and Design with a BA in painting. Her work then evolved from thick paint and texture into quilted, stuffed, and painted pieces and eventually into tapestry.

“My grandmother was a lady’s tailor in London and planted the seeds of her love of fiber with her knitting, crocheting, and interesting fabric samples,” said Pretty. “I did production weaving for a number of years when I first moved to New Hampshire, but then I set this aside as my focus shifted to tapestry. I became involved with a group of weavers from Maine and started to get drawn into tapestry.”

Pretty has multiple looms and dyes much of her own yarn for weaving. Recently, she has been working on dinosaur imagery; her latest piece is an Allosaurus.

“With the outbreak of Covid, I thought the safest place was my tapestry studio so I have spent a lot of time weaving away,” said Pretty. “I find it very relaxing to build images thread by thread, a contrast to the fast-paced world of sound bytes that technology represents, providing a chance for me to step back and put these images in a different context to allow a refocusing on the world around us.”

The Franklin Gallery and RiverStones Custom Framing are open Wednesday through Friday, 11 a.m. to 5 p.m., and Saturday, 10 a.m. to 2 p.m.  Unless otherwise indicated, all exhibited Franklin Gallery artworks are available for purchase. For information about this and future Franklin Gallery exhibits, contact Kris Ebbeson at krisebbeson@comcast.netor 603-812-1488.