artscope magazine: July/August 2010 Welcome Statement: Brian Goslow, managing editor cornered: a conversation with an art museum attendee featured artist - INGRID ELLISON: painting beyond nature through the lens - FRAMING THE CURATORIAL MIND: SURPRISING PAIRINGS FROM THE SMITH COLLEGE COLLECTION museum spotlight - CHASING THE IDEAL: CORNISH COLONY MUSEUM PRESERVES a Lesser-Known Legacy JOHN STORRS - machine-age modernist THE COLORS OF WHITE: PHOTOGRAPHS BY DEBBY KRIM IT TAKES A VILLAGE - TWO YOUNG VERMONTERS ARE PROOF POSITIVE Art Needs Community and Community Needs Art WIDE-ANGLE PAINTING, Joerg Dressler in Provincetown by way of these eyes - the sublime, exotic and familiar MENTOR | PUPIL | PUSH | PULL INDUSTRIAL INSPIRATION MINGLES WITH MAINE'S NATURAL MUSE A LABYRINTH LINE EXISTENCE - Amber Maida VOICEOVER: narrative in sculpture IN DELICATE BALANACE - GEORGE SHERWOOD A MIX OF MARRIAGES - couples exhibition features a wealth of talent and variety wanderlust - PORTSMOUTH, NEW HAMPSHIRE: NO BETTER HARBOR wanderlust - A WEEKEND IN LOWELL, CITY OF CULTURE theater - LIVING THE COMMUNAL FAIRYTALE: DOUBLE EDGE THEATRE industry focus- portrait of the artists' mother: SUZANNE SCHULTZ AND THE ART OF REPRESENTATION Capsule Previews

THE COLORS OF WHITE: PHOTOGRAPHS BY DEBBY KRIM Catherine Laferriere Copley Society of Art 158 Newbury Street Boston Through July 23 In a manner pensive and exuberant, Debby Krim cultivates a multicolored garden of white flowers. The frothy, glistening photographs reveal themselves slowly — almost secretly — in her debut solo show at the Copley Society of Art. Patience is rewarded in the form of silky plumes and petals. The subset of full frontal flower shots are commercial, and unapologetically so. Krim’s website advertises the inclusion of her work in Sandra Bullock’s “The Proposal” and her photographs double as décor in Marriott Hotels. The crisp floral bursts in their entirety are calming and pretty but they’re not wildly unique. Krim ventures into a far more ethereal realm when her photographs slip into biomorphic abstraction. As her flowers lose their holistic form they transcend notions of scale. Arches are amplified, blades are deeply ribbed and buds stand alert. In the way Georgia O’Keefe synthesizes the natural and abstract world with her paintbrush, Krim actualizes the effect with her camera. Though Krim has always been attracted to botanical imagery, much of her previous work is saturated with color. The vibrant, primal hues are scene-stealers. Her turn to white magnifies the abstract quality of the photographs; it allows a focus on the play between shadows. It also endows the work with a highly architectural feel as though Krim were catching fragments of chiseled marble. Ultimately, Krim permits her deconstructed flowers to become exactly what you want them to be. Take “Blanket,” for example. I stood before this photograph for several minutes guessing the flower species. The delicate, swelling leaves recall an expensive and elegant flower. I guessed the peony. “That’s what a lot of people say,” said Krim, “But this is the much maligned carnation. Doesn’t it give you a renewed respect for the common carnation?” It did. In minutes, this throw away flower was elevated in my mind, first to a peony. Then it sprang to life as the plush trimmings of a wedding dress, splashing across the dance floor and happily discarded thereafter. Or take “Anthesis,” a yin-yang of whipped milk and dark shadows. Here a gardenia billows into a Fibonacci spiral, effortless but exact. The top half is bathed in sunlight, the white is warm. The underside of the spiral is cloaked in shade, and the white becomes clouded. The contrast is striking; and like many of Krim’s “whites” it exudes tranquility. Yet there is an energy in Krim’s serenity. In “Wayfarer,” a calla lily masquerades as a lithe suspension bridge. Floating from the flower’s sturdy lip are spiny veins. The lily’s folds manipulate light, and the photograph takes on three shades of ivory. Krim conceded that this is a favorite — however fleeting that top spot may be. Through her lens the lily becomes less of a flower, and more of a peaceful idea. Pure and undemanding. “It’s an experience — looking through the lens,” Krim said. “What you see in the lens isn’t different from reality, but at the same time you create your own reality. That’s a place that is really soothing to me.” Krim’s milky menagerie takes many forms as it jumps to life. An old English rose reaffirms my faith that flowers are relentlessly, if subliminally, sexual. Fringed plumage juts across the frame as tiny white icicles. An iris is so iridescent it can be confused with Read the entire article in our magazine pages...