Artist Dreher will be honored in Bethel with month-long art show

BETHEL — Table Rock Arts Center has announced ts newest newest exhibition, “The Dennis Dreher Retrospective,” which will run until Sunday, April 28.
A celebration of life for Dreher, who died in July, will be held from noon to 4 p.m. Saturday, April 27, at the Sudbury Inn. Both locations are on Main Street.

Dreher’s artistic career began with painting, and later sculpture, jewelry making, silk screening, set design building and carpentry.

Dreher was a Bethel resident for nearly 40 years. His signature pieces involve intricately-woven geometric sculptures constructed of fine stainless steel wire. They are often in the form of circles linked together to suspend multi-color glass marbles. Many pieces must be touched and handled to be appreciated — they might fold, roll, or twist into new shapes altogether.
Dreher’s work has an essential and pivotal theme: “As an artist I want to give a message of joy or ecstasy, the uplifting experience. Joy and ecstasy only last a moment. It is that moment that I am trying to create in my art work,” he said.
Throughout his life, one peppered by all manner of milestone events — collaborating with architect Buckminster Fuller, serving as artist in residence at Harvard’s Laboratory for Computer Graphics and Spatial Analysis, teaching by invitation at the Rhode Island School of Design, and working the soil of an 1865 farmhouse — Dreher’s commitment to his art and the life of the artist was resolute.
“Even though I am known as a sculptor, I consider myself an ‘organic’ painter, choosing color by emotion and form from color. Early in my career I became intrigued by the color reproduction process. This led in turn to my involvement with ‘space weaving’ and computer graphics. My work has come full circle and one step up as I now weave masses of color in space,” he said.