Elissa Della-Piana featured in Wenham Museum Design Show

Design Show transforms museum into favorite spaces

Excerpted from the article by Stephanie Silverstein

Interior designers from Hamilton, Wenham, the North Shore and beyond have transformed the Wenham Museum into 15 favorite spaces, showcasing their inspirations for North Shore life, past and present, encompassing the mission of the Wenham Museum.

The designers were each given approximately an 8-by-8-foot area of space in the museum--either in Burnham Hall, the Thompson Gallery, the lobby or even the coat room--and transformed it into a favorite space, inspired by North Shore life and the mission of the Wenham Museum: to protect, preserve, and interpret the history and culture of Boston's North Shore, domestic life and the artifacts of childhood.

Elissa Della-Piana, of Gallery Della-Piana in Wenham, transformed a tenXten' space in the Wenham Museum's lobby into an artist's studio corner, inspired by the Audubon Reserve in Wenham, one of Della-Piana's favorite places on the North Shore. The space, filled with nature collections and surrounded by artists' tools such as an antique easel with Della-Piana's artwork hanging on the walls, mingles nature and art.

"I spend so much time walking through the Audubon Reserve, which is right off Cherry Street in Wenham, and I simply love the place," Della-Piana said. The drawings in her vignette are some of the work she has created while in the Audubon Reserve. "This is my art, and this is the source, sort of the Audubon Reserve coming through the walls of the studio."

From the Hamilton Wenham Chronicle (Thurs May 20 2010)