Welcome to our Blog ~ "Enriching Lives Through Art & Beauty"!

Hello!  
Yes… we’ve started a blog!  Our plan is to post at least every other week on Thursdays. Lauren Permenter Davidson, our fantastic intern, will be doing a lot of the posting. We are so grateful to Lauren for the enthusiasm she has for this project.  Until now I (Patti!) have been holding her up :) I thought it would be good to share a bit of our history AND some of the new projects we are working on.

All the best, 
Patti
(If you have thoughts, or ideas, things you’d like to know about, let us know!  The next few blog posts will be about the owners - maybe you’ll learn something new???)

OUR HISTORY IN A NUTSHELL~
What started as a pop-up in November 2009 and continued as a sort of Co-Op in 2010, The Palette & The Page happily became an LLC in 2011.  Lynn Whitt lead us on the LLC path and we haven’t looked back!  We are a gallery that is owned by four very passionate women - Patti Paulus, Stacey Peterson, Lynn Whitt and Janet Youse.  Janet and Patti have been with the Gallery since its inception in 2009.  Lynn joined in early 2010 and Stacey joined as a represented artist in 2013 and became the fourth owner of the gallery in 2015 after Margie Blystone left her role at the Gallery. 

Since our beginnings, we have been committed to expanding the Arts & Entertainment District in Downtown Elkton through our First Friday Opening Receptions in conjunction with the Downtown Elkton Art Loop.  These evenings, from 5pm to 8pm, feature an Opening Reception for the new local visiting artists in our Special Exhibit Gallery in addition to the opportunity to enjoy talking to some of the artists and authors we represent, providing great local live music and refreshments.  We pride ourselves in offering something new to our community each month. It has been a part of our mission since the very beginning.  Installing a new show every month is a lot of work, but it brings so much opportunity to artist and customer alike for connection, learning and sharing.

We were thrilled to be awarded the Elkton Chamber & Alliance’s Small Business of the Year in 2014.  The following year we were inducted into the Cecil County Business Hall of Fame.

For the past six years, we have had a Poetry/Creative Writing evening in conjunction with Cecil 

College’s English Department.  In 2017, the Cecil College Creative Writing Prize (C3WP) was established and we are thrilled to be the venue where the student winners present their work for the first time!  Over the years there have been many collaborations with Cecil College, from showing students artwork, a Faculty show and to having Cecil students as Interns.  Working with Cecil College is very important for us and important for our community.

Our workshops started in 2014 and have grown tremendously.  We love our July “Summer Camp for Adults” offerings and our “Quick Create Mini Workshop Day” has really taken off since last July!  We currently offer the “Quick Create Day” in March, July and November.  We are proud to offer very diverse workshop opportunities from January through November.

Currently almost 40 local artists and 15 local authors are represented in our gallery along with the music CDs of local singer/songwriters and a huge collection of gently used books.  

OUR NEW EVENTS!
Our newest adventure is a collaboration with Christie McDevitt of North East Chocolates.  She has created a signature chocolate just for us!  We will be donating a dollar from each sale to help fund a Fine Arts Scholarship for a Cecil College Student - so fantastic to work with another woman owned small business to give back to our community.  You’ll be able to find the chocolate at our Gallery and North East Chocolate :)

We have more fun, new things planned, too!  On June 16th we will be having a wine tasting with John Murray from State Line Liquors.  Donations will be accepted toward the Scholarship and canned goods will be accepted for the Food Bank.  We are also looking at the potential for online sales…you just never know what we will be dreaming up next!

We are so proud to be located in Downtown Elkton on its Main Street and to be instrumental in the revitalization of this unique town in Cecil County, Maryland.