On Friday, Sept. 26, from 7 to 9pm in the Belfast Co-op Café, there will be a free wine tasting of highlighted seasonal wines and the opening for Corlis Carroll's photography exhibit "After Wallace Nutting," which will be on display in the Co-op Cafe through late October.

Karolyn Melino of Pine State Beverages, Jaap Helder from the Co-op's wine department and artist Corlis Carroll will be available to answer questions. Featured wines will be 10% off during the tasting; participants must be 21 years of age or older to attend.

Carroll began taking photographs in 1981. After spending eight uninstructed years with the camera, she decided to get into a darkroom at the University at Albany, where she earned a degree in art with concentrations in painting and photography. For a while, painting dominated her artistic expression as a result of being told by a respected artist that unless she could render, paint or draw, she would never be respected as an artist. So she painted, including some works that sold off the easel before they were completed on the streets of Monhegan Island, where she has summered since 1999.

Inspired by Wallace Nutting, Monhegan’s Samuel Peter Rolt Triscott and others, she now works in the realm of painted photographs.  Working basically with six media, four water-based and two oil-based, she looks for beautiful landscapes with her camera, interesting elements of geometric design and aims for drama in light. The camera now does the drawing for her and the palette that emerges by coloring the black and white photographic image is one she said one will find nowhere else in two-dimensional artistic expression. In her mind, it is a perfect marriage of elements.

All are welcome at the community-owned Belfast Co-op, open 7:30am to 8pm daily at 123 High Street in downtown Belfast. For more information, call (207) 338-2532 or visit belfast.coop.