artist Ross Bachelder shows his diverse work in Rochester

Adorning the rear wall of Ben Franklin Crafts in Rochester is a spread of paintings, photographs, drawings and multimedia collages. Some of the works depict crude caricatures of historical figures. Others are abstract acrylic images. Still others consist of found items assembled on makeshift frames. The only thing all 24 of the works have in common is their author, Ross Bachelder.

“This exhibit reflects the way my mind is organized,” the artist said as he admired the view in the Franklin Gallery. “I go out of my way to show all the different things I’m involved in.”

Bachelder has managed the craft store at 60 Wakefield St. since it originally opened about seven years ago. For the month of March, he will serve as both manager and featured artist, showing an exhibit appropriately titled “Drawings, Paintings, Photographs and Other Things: The Artworks of Ross Bachelder.”

Toward the left end of the display hang several large color photographs. One, titled “Mixed Signals,” depicts a group of geese on the side of a country road in Berwick, Maine, framed by a dilapidated wood fence and three thick tree trunks. Another, called “Blue Shakers with Tulip,” shows a pair of salt and pepper shakers with blue caps sitting atop a table in Rollinsford’s Black Bean Café beside a glass bottle containing a single pink tulip. To the right of these local images hangs a more foreign shot, taken within a stately church in Sterling, Scotland. The photograph, titled “Church of the Holy Rood,” captures a stunning pattern of light emanating through a stained glass window and projecting onto the surface of a large pillar.

Peering across the rest of the wall, the disparity of images is striking. A pencil drawing called “Life Goes On” shows a human skull hanging from the stalk of a plant, with a beetle and several smaller insects crawling across the bone. “Delicate Line Work” is a fine point ink drawing with a Jackson Pollack quality to its doodled arcs and weaves. “Starburst, Sunburst,” by contrast, is an oil painting with a bright yellow center surrounded by splotches of progressively darker colors.

The exhibit’s centerpiece is a collection of small pencil and pen drawings titled “Fifteen Notable Faces.” As the title suggests, the piece features 15 famous figures, including Ralph Waldo Emerson, Norman Mailer, Edward Albee and Honoré de Balzac. All the images are derivative, meaning that Bachelder worked from previous artistic depictions of them.

“There really is no theme in my approach to my artwork,” he said. “I would describe myself as eclectic in my tastes.”

Bachelder looks the part of an artist, wearing a thick white beard, curly gray hair and large glasses. He has been creating visual artwork for about 10 years and is also a longtime flute player. Never one to limit himself, he rejects the idea of conforming his artistic output to a certain theme or topic. Instead, he constantly shifts between art forms, adjusting his approach to correspond with his whimsical moods.

“I find a tremendous energy and inspiration from going from one thing to another,” he said.

The artist’s eclectic pursuits are exemplified in a piece called “The Separation.” Colorful acrylics partially cover a strip of sheet music and an old puzzle piece that Bachelder dug up from his childhood, thus combining his past with his current passions for both music and visual arts.

Even more telling of his artistic mindset is a piece titled “ee vs. Albert: The Stand-Off,” which consists of several bark strips brushed with blue and orange acrylics. The title, he explained, refers to the binary standoff between the realms of feeling, represented by poet E.E. Cummings, and logic, represented by Albert Einstein. (Bachelder said he lands firmly on the side of Cummings.)

Bachelder’s artistic sense does not always work well in the gallery atmosphere, where exhibits typically have a unifying theme or feeling that ties all the pieces together.
“The gallery world is a very conservative world, and the gallery world typically wouldn’t know what to do with me,” he said. “I’m not interested in painting to please a gallery.”

In Bachelder’s mind, there are two types of people in the world: “Ones that were meant to specialize and ones that weren’t.” Society needs both kinds of minds, he said, but he is clearly a “generalist,” expanding outward instead of honing in on a specific craft.

One of Bachelder’s ball point pen drawings depicts the regal head of a wolf. Titled “Portrait of the Artist as a Wolf,” he said the piece was inspired by a friend who told him that he had a “certain stealthiness” about him. That being the case, the wolf drawing may be Bachelder’s only self-portrait on display.