On the evening of Friday, Oct. 2, a piano will be waiting in a new courtyard at 51 Main St. in Meredith, and anyone who walks up to it will be allowed to sit down and play.
The instrument is the work of a small chain of local hands. It was found and sanded down by Paul Moreau, co-owner of Hale & Moreau Gallery, then painted with bright colors and New Hampshire scenery by the artist and instructor Marilee Sundius and two young students, Troy and Talia Smith. The finished piano will be unveiled at 6 p.m. during the Winnipesaukee Art First Friday Art Walk, the monthly evening when Meredith's galleries throw open their doors from 4 to 7 p.m. and visitors move between them, raffle tickets in hand.
The piano is the latest addition to a downtown that has spent the past several years deliberately turning itself into an art destination. Meredith, a lakefront village on the northwest shore of Lake Winnipesaukee, has long drawn summer visitors for its shops, restaurants, and water views. In recent years, a group of galleries has organized to make the town a year-round stop for people who care about art. Eight of them now operate as a collective: Art of Turning at 5 Main St., Jeremy Noyes Gallery at 23 Main St., Acacia Coll Gallery and Art School at 30 Main St., Bleu Waves Art Gallery at 38 Main St., Artistic Exploration at 51 Main St., Hale & Moreau Gallery at 4 Water St., BayView Artisan Gallery at 285 Daniel Webster Highway, and Meredith Fine Craft Gallery, the League of New Hampshire Craftsmen shop at 279 Daniel Webster Highway.
The gallery owners meet once a month to collaborate and to plan ways of bringing art to the wider community. Out of those meetings came the Winnipesaukee Art Walk, a self-guided route linking all the galleries, with participating restaurants offering a little something extra to walkers. The centerpiece is the First Friday Art Walk, held the first Friday of each month from 4 to 7 p.m., with a raffle. The group has also been working to make the walk easy to find, with cards and flyers at information centers and a website in development.
The piano's site sits within that network. The 51 Main St. building is home to Artistic Exploration, Sundius's studio and classroom, tucked behind Lake Life 603 with its entrance on the Water Street side, where she teaches multi-medium art to students from age 5 through adult. It is also the building owned by Amy Grimm, a Shop Main Street member, who described the piano as "a wonderful addition to Main Street" and "yet another reason to visit our historic center of town."
Shop Main Street is the group of small, local businesses that banded together to support and enhance the historic downtown, and it is the organization behind the piano. The masonry work around the piano's site was done by Miracle Farms, a landscaping and masonry outfit, a contribution Shop Main Street singled out for special thanks.
The people who made the piano are themselves part of Meredith's art scene. Moreau, who grew up in Laconia, is an accomplished painter known for highly realistic portraits, murals, and landscapes in oil and charcoal, whose work has drawn national attention. He is a co-owner of The Galleries at 30 Main, which opened in February after months of planning and renovation, and which houses three galleries in one space: his own work alongside that of painter Vynnie Hale and photographer John Ferreira. The partnership grew out of a gallery Hale had run for about a decade, taking it over from the artist Christine Hodecker George and turning it into a gathering place for Lakes Region artists. Hale and Moreau later opened their Hale & Moreau Gallery at 4 Water St.
Sundius brings a different kind of experience. She has run Sundius Design, a graphic design studio, for more than 37 years, and teaches art classes through Artistic Exploration while showing her own work. For the piano, she took on the role of guiding two young painters through the project. "The kids did a great job. Their additions really add to this wonderful creation," she said. "We're so pleased with how it looks, and we are excited for many future nights of having Main Street filled with music."
The piano will not be a one-night novelty. It is meant to stay in the courtyard, open for anyone to sit down and play, with organized performances also planned at the site. It will be covered during bad weather to protect the paint and the instrument. In that sense it joins a broader tradition in Meredith of putting art outdoors where no ticket is required. The Meredith Sculpture Walk, a project of the Greater Meredith Program, is a free, year-round juried exhibition that places more than 30 sculptures through the village and along Meredith Bay.
A painted piano in a courtyard is a smaller gesture than a sculpture walk, but it works on the same premise: that art belongs in the open, and that the best way to fill a Main Street with music is simply to leave an instrument there and trust people to play it. The unveiling begins at 6 p.m. on Friday, Oct. 2, at 51 Main St., during the Art Walk. More information is available at mainstreetmeredithnh.com.