New Chester gallery celebrates the art in nature Fischer Arts owner blends love of science with love of art

By Cynthia Prairie
©2021 Telegraph Publishing LLC

Fischer Arts, a new gallery specializing in antique and modern works celebrating nature, will be holding an opening celebration from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. on Saturday, Nov. 27, at its new shop at 102 The Common on the Green in Chester.

Following the Nov. 27 event, the gallery will be open 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Thursdays through Sundays.

Fischer Arts began in November 2020 as an online shop, created by Iris Fischer-McMorrow from her then home in Henniker, N.H. But she was looking for that brick and mortar space, which she said, “gives us the ability to grow.”

They were also looking to move and, since her husband Gavin had grown up in Peru, they explored the area. The two “fell in love with Chester,” bought a home, moved in this past April. Gavin and Iris then began working to make their rental space at the corner of School Street and The Common a delight for both art and nature lovers.

And she is definitely both. While Fischer-McMorrow says she comes “a long line of artists and philosophers,” she took a different route, working as a research associate at the famed Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Massachusetts, then graduating from the Veterinary College of Ireland and becoming a small-animal vet, although not practicing now. Gavin McMorrow continues to work for a New Hampshire company that specializes in alpine ski racing technology.

Fischer-McMorrow says, “this business is part of my heritage,” and credits her mother, owner of an antique print gallery in Boston for more than 40 years, as her teacher and inspiration. “With Fischer Arts, I take the experiences from my family’s print gallery, and combine them with my own passions: science and nature. Every day I find solace and direction in the stunning beauty around me.”

The shop, Fischer-McMorrow writes in an email to The Telegraph, features original antique engravings, copperplate botanicals from the 1700 and 1800s, “colorful chromolithographs of animals from the late 1800s, as well as antique maps and nautical charts from the US and beyond.” But there is also nature-inspired jewelry by contemporary artists who “incorporate beautiful stones and minerals, antique silver, and unique metal components,” she writes, adding “We will also have hand blown glass, woodwork, contemporary photography, and more.”

There is also a charitable component to her business, with portions of all sales going to support “organizations working to preserve fragile ecosystems and protect wildlife.” Fischer-McMorrow says that because of her science and veterinary background, “this component of the gallery is very important to me.”