Elizabeth Gadbois puts works before the public in public and commercial spaces.

Elizabeth Gadbois is blurring the lines between art museums and restaurants, businesses and public areas.

Her “gallery without walls,” Winslow Contemporary Arts, displays limited and open edition reproductions from artists like Chagall, Kandinsky, and Kahn in local spaces, without a space her own.

“I would love to fill the world with art, one shopping mall at a time,” Gadbois said.

But Winslow Contemporary Arts reaches out to more than just shopping malls. Gadbois currently has exhibitions at the Bainbridge Athletic Club in Meadowmeer, Doc’s Marina Grill, Harrison Hospital in Silverdale and several businesses in the Pavilion.

By February, she plans to open other exhibitions at Bainbridge Performing Arts, Pegasus Coffee House and Northwest Design Center in Poulsbo.

Gadbois attended the Brooks Institute of Photography in Santa Barbara before becoming a guest professor at Otis College of Art and Design in Los Angeles. Seven years ago she moved from Southern California to Bainbridge Island to be closer to her mother.

With a young child, her job as a commercial photographer posed problems.

“I couldn’t do commercial photography as much because I was a single mom so I just had to restructure my dreams,” she said.

For Gadbois the question became, “How can I make a living buying art?” She tried her hand at sales and opened a gallery in Ballard. The business had modest success, but much of the revenue went to cover rent. So she came up with a new idea: rotating exhibitions.

“I explored the concept of traveling exhibitions in public and commercial spaces, convinced that, with rotating art and interesting subject matter, almost any wall could look like an art gallery,” she said.

A year after beginning her gallery, Gadbois has expanded into art consulting services, custom framing, art copy services, and art rentals for corporate and residential clients. But her focus remains on her themed, rotating galleries, which reflect her own eclectic tastes.

“I’ve opened myself up and I purchase art that I love. If I fall in love with it I buy it,” she said. “There is an emotional pull for me to bring art in from different places. A lot of it is reflective of where my life is at the time.”

With her “A Tribute to the Degenerates” exhibition, on display at the Bainbridge Athletic Club through Dec. 31, Gadbois combines art she loves with a theme she feels passionate about. The featured artists, Paul Klee, Marc Chagall, Wassily Kandinsky and Emil Nolde, all suffered persecution or censorship in Nazi Germany.

“The Nazis told these guys they couldn’t paint anymore and purged their art from museums,” she said. “So I feel like I’m doing something important because some people don’t even know that.”

Other current displays include the landscapes of Wolf Kahn in Bainbridge Athletic Club XPress at the Pavilion; the marine photographs of Beken of Cowes, at Doc’s; and the train photographs of O. Winston Link in the Gandhi restaurant.

With plans to incorporate more local art into her exhibitions and expand into Seattle, Gadbois has an ambitious vision for Winslow Contemporary Arts. For now, she admits she is carving her own niche. But, with a gallery without walls, that niche can be as large as she chooses.

Business owners proved more than happy to have her service their walls.

“As it turns out, rotating art brings a lively change to the environment, creating customer interest and boosting morale,” she said.

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No walls

For information on Elizabeth Gadbois’ work, see www.winslowcontemporaryarts.com.