artscope magazine: July/August 2007 Art Goes Wild: Innovation with Native Plants Niki Sarantos Pulp Function New Art Collective: Emerging Curators Select Emerging Artists Out of the Blue Gallery Robert Henry: Triptych Paintings, Elspeth Halvorsen: Constructions, Sky Power: Large Abstract Paintings, Selina Teriff: Drawings Lalie Schewadron: Synthesis Joel Janowitz: the Monotypes A World in Grosz Disarray: Works on Paper by George Grosz Michael Kenna: Hokkaido Jane Deering Galleries Somerville Madonnas: Photographs of Religious Iconography Jessie Morgan: New Paintings Ron Rosenstock: Hymn to the Earth Varujan Boghosian - A Survey: Collage, Watercolors, & Sculpture Inside/Outside/Small/Tall Still Life - Wild Life Sleight of Hands: Contemporary Hooked Rugs Making it New: The Art and Style of Sara and Gerald Murphy Summer Preview: Four Bigh Higway Highlights in the Little State of Rhode Island The Forest Hills Cemetary Educational Trust and Contemporary Sculpture Path Summer Theater on the Coast Sharp Lines and Mystyc Shadows: The Vision of Two Physicists artscope Capsule Previews Edward Hopper at the Museum of Fine Arts CURATOR’S CORNER - Carol Troyen on the MFA Boston's Hopper Exhibition

Lalie Schewadron: Synthesis Catherine Laferriere Copley Society of Art 158 Newbury Street Boston August 2 through 25 Jet-setting artist Lalie Schewadron unveils a timely and compelling study of contemporary scientific discussion this summer at the Copley Society of Art. Pausing in Boston between ventures in Switzerland and England, Schewadron’s fusion of technology and nature explores the “artificial realities” created by genetic engineering and synthetic biology. Considering the current political climate and ongoing ethics debate, “Synthesis” couldn’t be more relevant. But besides providing a platform for academic conversation, Schewadron crafts a visually captivating and energetic body of artwork. The creative process starts with a photograph of a subject from the natural world that exhibits properties of growth (saplings/trees) or transformation (water/ice). Schewadron divides the image into smaller units and uses digital tools to manipulate each piece. Most often the pieces are put back together in a rearranged fashion – effectively rendering a manipulated reality. The derived images serve as the basis for digital prints, painting, wall drawings and animations. Where some end results are abstracted almost completely from their former shapes, Schewadron’s major aesthetic successes come from those illustrations where the original image exerts a relatively stronger nuance over the finished product. The black and white prints are especially transfixing; the tangled tree branches emanate ghostly tranquility when stripped of time and season. At first I imagine these woods to be snowy, dark, and deep – but only until I spot signs of summery vegetation. Or is it foliage? In Schewadron’s nature-based menagerie, it’s exactly that evolution that counts. Read the entire article in our magazine pages...