Bayberry Design launches featured artist gallery

The pandemic has prompted many individuals and businesses to reinvent themselves, and you need look no further than Opeongo Line in Barry’s Bay for several examples. To illustrate just one, The Current visited Bayberry Design to enjoy their new featured artist gallery. Co-owners Liam Gansterer (above) and Victoria Lutz, with assistant designer Noel Wright, cater to the thriving community of local artists.

Gansterer said the artists like Bayberry’s approach to high quality scanning and printing because they not only devote individual attention to each job but also offer the capacity for all sizes of print runs. Bayberry produces all kinds of prints ranging from artist cards to reproductions on various papers including watercolour paper and giclee prints on canvas.

Ketha Newman’s work is featured at Bayberry this fall. Newman lives off-grid with her husband and two children in a log cabin overlooking the forested hills south of Algonquin Park. She is inspired by the surrounding wilderness as she strives to portray landscape and landscape elements in a stylized way emphasizing pattern and luminous colour. Newman told The Current, “Local artists are so fortunate to have Bayberry, a really professional quality design/print business in our community! It’s exciting that Liam has created a beautiful gallery space and I am pleased to be the first featured artist.”

After launching online sales on its website in early 2022, from March Bayberry Design will feature a different artist every two months. Gansterer said he is always on the lookout for high-quality, two-dimensional work with a local connection that lends itself to various forms of reproduction. Along with the featured artist, at any given time Bayberry will always have work from multiple artists, including well-known local names (past and present) such as Alex Sztasko, and the Wild Women Painters: Joyce Burkholder, Kathy Haycock, and Linda Sorensen.

Liam Gansterer’s family has a longstanding history of respect for the arts: his late mother Catherine was a founding member of the Madawaska Valley Arts & Crafts Show, his sister Anya was curator at South of 60 Gallery for twelve years and now runs Placemaking Design, a business that enlivens public spaces with arts. His partner, Victoria, also an artist, was responsible for the design and construction of the new display system in Bayberry Gallery. Both Liam and Victoria are arts graduates from Ontario College of Art and Design, and Sheridan College respectively.