Remember your brief affair with bead
art back in high school or college and
how many hours it took to make even
the smallest work? Then imagine how
many hours it took Doug W. Johnson
to create his replica of legendary
Fenway Park (“View from the Green
Monster”) out of 150,000 beads. That
work, which integrates many of the
1,000-plus colors the Newburyport,
Mass. artist utilizes, has drawn muchdeserved
attention to the Bead +
Fiber Gallery at 460 Harrison Avenue
in Boston. “Beantown to Beadtown,”
which can be seen through November
14, also features portraits of the
Boston skyline (in which Johnson
painstakingly has recreated the
landmark architecture of the city’s
signature buildings), landscape
scenes in which his alternation of
colors perfectly captures the motion
of waves and wind, and cocktail
parties (which have a warm, folk art
feel).
Merill Comeau credits the Pattern
and Decoration movement of the
1970s with inspiring her use of
discarded materials in creating works
that follow in the steps of women of
the past who’ve used fabrics to create
works that tell stories and pay tribute
to inspirational moments in their
lives. “I bring together incongruous
fabrics with past lives: artists’ brush
cleaning rags, mother-in-law’s blouse,
cast off sheets from Salvation Army,
plastic mesh bags from garlic bulbs,
vintage linens and brightly colored
fabric samples,” Comeau said. “I
use direct painting, resist painting,
block and screen printing methods
to add pattern and color.” Her latest
exhibition, “Fragments of Eden,”
studies the decline, regeneration
and mesmerizing blooms of plant
life through large mixed-media
paintings through November 19 at
the ArtSpace Gallery at 63 Summer
Street in Maynard, Mass.
Having started her three-decade
career studying sculpture at the
School of the Museum of Fine Arts,
Boston and drawing, painting and
printmaking at the New Art Center,
Newton, Mass. (where she currently
serves as a member of its exhibitions
committee), Sandra Berbeco is
well able to present a triple-layered
exhibition of her work. “Been There”
features small acrylic paintings of
landscape and seascape scenes culled
from memory, imagined scenes on
canvas and large scenes of natural
and not so natural disasters she’s labeled “Corrupted Landscapes” due
to her having reworked layer after
layer of canvas, paint and heavy gel
to get to her finished result. The show
runs from November 5 through 28 at
215 College Gallery at 215 College
Street in Burlington, Vermont.
While self-taught photographer
Adrien Broom’s bizarre and beautiful
images have been seen in the
country’s top music magazines,
she’s just now having her first solo
exhibition. “Ambient Light,” which
can be seen through November 14
at the Diane Birdsall Gallery at 10
Lyme Street in Old Lyme, Connecticut,
is broken into three parts. One series,
“Wonder,” features phantasmagoric
images of a young girl dressed in a
blue and white outfit (similar to that
equated with Alice of Wonderland)
going through naturally twisted
nature scenes; “Movement” creates an
angelic, ballet-like effect through her
shooting of women in elaborate outfits
floating in water; a recent journey to Cuba focusing on its cars captures the colors and playfulness of its people.
These are special images worthy of a
pre-winter journey.
As you’ve observed in the original
sketchings of the landmark works
of Christo and Jeanne-Claude at
the front of this issue, there’s
much magic to be culled from the
notebooks of artists, whether they’re
known around the world or are just
contemplating their first show. “On
Location: Drawing Every Day,” on
view at the Montserrat College
of Art from November 11 through
January 22, 2011, is a combination
exhibition/work-in-progress. Original
drawings and notebook sketches by
Peter Arkle, Gabriel Campanario,
Elissa Della-Piana, Danny Gregory,
Margaret Hurst, Veronica Lawlor,
Kyle David Lindholm and Fred Lynch
utilize images from around the globe,
including Seattle and Afghanistan,
that, according to the show’s
announcement, are connected to the tradition of artists as reporters and
travelogue illustrators as well as the
growing number of “Urban Sketchers”
whose works are being shared on
a growing number of websites.
Throughout the exhibition, drawing
assignments (and the most recent
contributions) will be posted every
Monday on the Montserrat Galleries’
Facebook page, while new drawings
will be added on a daily basis in the
gallery at 23 Essex Street in Beverly
on Massachusetts’ North Shore.
Renowned realist painter George
Nick (featured in our January/
February 2010 issue) juried over 800
submissions from artists around the
United States before selecting the
105 works featured in the “Body
Language” exhibition on view
through December 19 in the Bancroft
Gallery at the South Shore Art
Center, 119 Ripley Road in Cohasset,
Mass. Top honors went to Janyce
Conklin (Norfolk, Mass.), Joan
Sowada (Gillette, Wyoming) and Kim Frohsin (San Francisco). In summing
up the choices, Nick noted there was
a wide variety of painting styles in
oil, watercolor, gouache, drawings,
and prints; sculpture in bronze,
stone, wood, plaster and cardboard;
ceramic pieces; photographs of
caught scenes, improved upon
improvised scenes and creative,
imagined scenes; and one quilt.
Lisa Costanzo spent a year of her life immersed in the lives and stories of Jane Austen, Charlotte Bronte and Mary Shelley enroute to creating the Victorian-inspired but definitely modern paintings, installations and sculptures featured in her solo “And a peculiar mourning it was” exhibition on display through September 26 at the Laconia Gallery, 433 Harrison Avenue, Boston. Her dark mourning costumes, love (lost) letters sealed in wax and symbols of romance turned into a perfect storm of devastation will drain and enthrall you at the same time — and verify the belief of those who believe in art as a therapeutic experience — for creator and viewer alike.
Willye Roberts is primarily known
as a master printmaker, but her
career retrospective, which runs from November 6 through 21 at the
DeBlois Gallery at 138 Bellevue
Avenue in Newport, Rhode Island,
will also include her watercolor
paintings, etchings, collages and
silk screen creations, genres she
explored as a long-time member of
the Providence Art Club. Roberts,
who now lives in Oklahoma, said her
variety of styles is due to her desire to
duplicate the way she sees the world: “These (works) may vary in degrees
of reality and abstraction, just as my
perceptions move in space between
these two extremes. My work seems
to strive toward a resolution of this
dichotomy.”
“George Segal: Fragments and
Pastels” is a unique opportunity to see
what happened to the career of the
Pop Art pioneer after his trademark
white plaster figurines helped blow
the minds of a generation at the start
of the 1960s. Culled from works made
between 1964 and 1980, the show
was curated by artscope contributor
David B. Boyce, who channeled his
long-time relationship with Segal in
a variety of professional capacities,
as both a critic and cohort. This
show features his pastel renderings
of the human body and exploration
of color and composition as well as
life-castings of bronze and plaster,
recalling his earlier ground-breaking
work. The show opens on November
27 and runs through January 15,
2011 at the University Art Gallery
of the College of Visual and
Performing Arts of the University
of Massachusetts Dartmouth, 715 Purchase Street in New Bedford,
Massachusetts. If you plan on visiting
the gallery during the holiday season,
call (508) 999-8555 in advance of
traveling to confirm gallery hours.
“Humanimal,” on view at the Portsmouth Museum of Fine Art, One Harbour Place in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, through October 3, explores our relationship with the animals of Planet Earth through sculpture, photography and video. Nineteen artists explore our similar bodies and conduct. Highlights include Valerie Hammond’s “The Beast,” a blue-tinted negative of a person wearing a huge furry costume that is haunting, eerie and guaranteed to bring a huge laugh, and Isabel Samaras’ “Mocking Box,” in which a chorus of birds sings along with a boombox radio lodged in a tree. Irene Hardwicke Olivieri’s “My Maybe Kids” features a human-faced monkey fronting a dozen or so monkeys — and one curious cat (making you consider felines’ place in evolution) — watching their viewer’s next move.
Robert C. Jackson’s soda box
renditions (featured in the May/June
2009 artscope) have found a perfect
foil. From December 1 through 31,
they’ll share the Arden Gallery,
129 Newbury Street in Boston, with
the boxes of the childhood games
of the baby boomer generation as
recreated by Missouri’s Tim Liddy.
Battleship, Cootie, Monopoly and Life
are amongst those old time favorites,
along with Candyland and Sorry!,
which have found themselves in great
demand, judging by the many “sold”
signs alongside them on his website.
Just as Jackson strives for authentic
reproductions, Liddy includes the
effect of time in his paintings,
that are applied on copper, with
remnants of Scotch tape, pizza sauce
or soaked-in soda stains, or perhaps
the name and phone number of its
long-lost original owner. Never mind
the kids, this might be provide a gift
you’ll want for yourself.
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