The Parsonage Gallery, 8 Elm Street, in Searsport launched its third summer season with three new exhibitions featuring artists from across the East Coast and the United Kingdom.  All are welcome to an opening reception  Sunday, July 14, from 2 to 4 p.m. The opening includes a reading by poet Caroline Sulzer.

The upstairs gallery will feature the solo exhibition In League with Devils by Michael Petry, a leading multi-media artist, author, and director of the Museum of Contemporary Art in London.  Steeped in the history of religion, Petry’s exhibition finds the perfect home at The Parsonage, built in 1831 for the noted pastor and abolitionist Rev. Stephen Thurston.

“I feel like an archaeologist sifting through the sands of time to uncover the old stories, the old myths, the old beliefs on which modern believers act,” said Petry, in a news release.  “I have bathed in the spirit of the… gods of old. They are no longer held in the respect they were, but does that stop them from being gods? Is it simply time that morphs a god into a myth, and if so what of the current gods, and devils? Will they too just become stories told around a campfire?”

For his installation At the Foot of the Gods, Petry cast dozens of bronze toes from life from contemporary cultural icons, including British comedy legend Stephen Fry.  In another installation, Piercing the Barrier, Petry inserts patinated bronze arrows into the centuries-old beams of the Parsonage, evoking the Catholic saint (and latter-day queer icon) Saint Sebastian as well as the erotic tools of Cupid.  In League with Devils is accompanied by a book of the same title (review copies available upon request).

In the downstairs gallery, The Parsonage will host its third annual summer group exhibition.  Participating artists include Anne Alexander; Louise Bourne; Alicia Ethridge; Joan Fitzsimmons; Juliet Karelsen; Cate Pasquarelli; Claire Seidl; and Caroline Sulzer.  The exhibition continues outside in the Parsonage’s newly landscaped grounds, with sculptures by Anne Alexander and Kitty Wales. 

The Parsonage welcomes its first fully outdoor exhibition with Groundswell, a series of sculptures by Maryland-based artist Stephanie Garon.  Groundswell explores the environmental and spiritual interruption of nature through mining. Using rock cores extracted from Downeast Maine/Passamaquoddy land and hand-dug wild clay, these sculptures focus on mining’s impact on safe water supply.

The Parsonage Gallery exhibits dynamic work by a diverse slate of contemporary artists, with a special emphasis on issues of ecology and spirituality.  It is cofounded and directed by Aaron Rosen and  Carolyn Rosen and is a program of Our Common Foundation, a registered 501(c)(3).  It is open 11 a.m. to 7 p.m. daily.