Newburyport Art (NAA) presents Saltwater Grounding, a Featured Artist exhibition by Deb Desmond Meserve on view in the Hills Gallery. A reception will be held on Friday, April 5th from 5:00–7:00 pm.

Deb’s love of photography stemmed from her childhood. She grew up surrounded by photography – she remembers the flash cubes of her mother’s Kodak Instamatic, and the appreciation of a well-printed black and white photograph she learned from her father, an offset cameraman. 

She studied at the New England School of Photography in Boston and went on to become a photojournalist and freelance photographer. Later, she owned a commercial photography and portrait studio, became a custom picture framer, created a local art gallery and exhibited her work in New York City, Los Angeles and throughout New England. Deb’s career has spanned many decades of change in the industry and she has continued studying photography at the Maine College of Art and through various seminars and conferences.

Her latest endeavor involves mounting archival digital photographs on cradled birch panels and painting the surface with encaustic wax medium. She then carves and manipulates that wax surface while using a heat gun to fuse and spread the wax. Pieces are enhanced with an infusion of oil pastel, oil pigment sticks and loose powdered pigments.

Running alongside Saltwater Grounding is the multi-media group exhibition We Share One Sky in the Sargent, Hartson, and Mural Galleries. The galleries are free and open to the public Tuesday through Saturday from 11:00am–5:00pm and Sunday from 1:00pm–5:00pm. Newburyport Art is closed on Mondays. The ground-floor Hills Gallery has an accessible entrance. More information, as well as an online gallery is available at newburyportart.org.

Founded in 1948, Newburyport Art is dedicated to promoting and exhibiting members’ work and to providing art education and access to the visual arts for the entire community.