artscope magazine: May/June 2007

Joseph Cornell: Navigating the Imagination

Gary Duehr

Peabody Essex Museum
East India Square

Salem, Massachusetts

Through August 19

Threading through the half-dark galleries a week before "Cornell" opened felt like the ideal approach. Among the shadowy recesses, shipping crates and coils of black wire, I could glimpse the weird little worlds he created: the lobster ballet, the matchbook dollhouse, the penny arcade tribute to Lauren Bacall, the collection of corks - as if I were poking through his mind’s attic. It’s a fascinating task. The sheer scope of the show - 180 of his boxes, collages, dossiers and films, including 30 never before on public view - allows you to follow the obsessions and tangents of this self-taught artist (1903-1972) who made surrealism into his personal folk art and transformed simple boxes into a new art form. His first major retrospective in 26 years, this is a rare chance to get an overview of his life’s work.

While Cornell’s elaborate box constructions may be what get you in the door, there are strange little gems everywhere you look, sometimes literally. A small jewelry box filled with glass ice cubes. A collage honoring Susan Sontag as a young girl, featuring a photo of her big black eyes and cascade of dark hair, with a constellation pasted in the corner. A model palace sprouting branches from its roof, with mirrors in all the tiny windows. Scattered in a vitrine, a whole dossier (a work in a suitcase) on Bérénice, a fictional Victorian girl he created, including photos, magazine clippings, letters and star maps - whose adventures center on her playhouse in a stone French tower. Begun in 1934, sparked by images of a Chinese pagoda, "The Crystal Cage: Portrait of Bérénice" remained in progress until 1967, and the open-ended format of loose items in a suitcase was intended to let viewers play with them the same way he did.

From all the odds and ends you begin to get a sense of how Cornell tried to hold onto memory, and give shape to his daydreams and desires.

Inside Eyes: A Collection of Paintings by David Madsen

Leon Nigrosh

Ivy Corset Art Gallery
40 Jackson Street

344 Broadway

Worcester, Massachusetts

May 5 through June 1

David Madsen: White Knight or Don Quixote? More about this shortly.

Born and raised in Worcester, Madsen is a primarily self-taught painter. He doesn’t travel much and sees little need to. In fact he still lives in a house that’s been in his family for three generations. He conducts his framing business in the basement, just as he has for more than a quarter century. He’s never advertised his business, it’s all been done by word-of-mouth. Yet the operation has thrived. Many Civil War and WWII memorabilia collectors constantly seek his services. When he’s not producing his magnificent frames, he walks the 20 or so feet to his garage that serves as his painting studio – where he often works on several paintings at a time. He doesn’t go far for his inspiration, either. The grape vines and other flora in his backyard do just fine. He does numerous sketches plein air but then takes photos for later reference.

Madsen does admit that many of his canvases are based on dreams as well, but this gets really complicated.

Women In Print: Extraordinary Examples from the 20th Century

Leon Nigrosh

Liberty and Justice: American Ideals Portrayed by Currier and Ives

Museum of Fine Arts

Quadrangle
21 Edwards Street

Springfield, Massachusetts

Through April 22

When was the last time you visited the Quadrangle in Springfield? It’s filled with treats galore. Not only will you get an unavoidable smile from seeing the large bronze sculptures on the green of many Dr. Seuss characters, but also for one small admission fee, you can visit four separate museums. The George Walter Vincent Smith Museum is famous for its Greek and Roman artwork as well as its fascinating collection of Asian arms, armor and artifacts. The Springfield Science Museum is currently hosting a group of anamatronic dinosaurs, and the Connecticut Valley Historical Museum is featuring "The Cat in the Hat Turns Fifty." And the Museum of Fine Arts is featuring, not one, but two print exhibitions.

As surprising as it may seem, the Springfield MFA has the United States’ only permanent museum gallery devoted to the 19th century lithographs created by Currier and Ives. It houses nearly 800 individual prints, has a research library and conducts changing shows throughout the year. We’ve all seen examples of C&I work reproduced on calendars and cookie tins, and to tell the truth, to our eyes the images may seem a little trite and corny. But remember, back in the early 1800s photography was in its infancy and Currier and Ives became the major supplier of Civil War news, fires and other disaster images for a still young nation hungry for information about itself. What’s even more amazing is that each and every print, after rolling through the massive ink presses, was hand tinted by a bevy of young women (mostly German – for whatever implications you can imagine).

Master of Fine Arts Thesis Exhibitions

James Foritano

Bakalar and Paine Galleries
Massachusetts College of Art

621 Huntington Avenue

Boston

Through May 19

The words "plenitude" and "gratitude" vie for my attention as I struggle, pleasurably, to pick the first word of this review of the Master of Fine Arts Thesis Exhibition at the Massachusetts College of Art.

There is, on the one hand, a feeling of the plenitude of experimentation and professionalism on view here; and on the other, a sense of gratitude for the freshness of this preview of young artists on the first steps of their career. In what’s been a hesitant spring, it’s a bouquet of unfolding talent: fervent, sure, and even visionary.

Downstairs in the Bakalar galleries, Nicole Pierce gives us a roomful of memories toted into a small space on the twinned backs of technology and artful props.

A New Key: Modern Belgian Art from the Simon Collection

James Foritano

McMullen Museum of Art
Boston College

140 Commonwealth

Chestnut Hill, Massachusetts

Through July 22

A woman friend of another generation, but youthful in spirit, often saluted me with the greeting "Well met!" – especially if we were about to go on an expedition that whetted her keen sense of adventure. That greeting floated back to me as I visited "A New Key: Modern Belgian Art from the Simon Collection." The title and approach is in keeping with a tradition at the McMullen of presenting art that challenges and enriches our conception of artists, art history and even art itself while pleasing our senses with high and varied quality.

Valerius de Saedeleer’s "Old Orchard in Winter," greeting us at the door, is redolent with that love of landscape and the earth-hugging dwellings of the Flemish countryside that stretches back to Pieter Breugel and beyond. It is a masterful and traditional interpretation of bare branches, rolling hills and the snow-loaded eves of snug cottages. And yet, as curator Jeffrey Howe notes in his web slide show, there is an arresting and decorative flatness to the foreground of this picture which brings it rushing forward, in art-historical time, to the Modernist discovery, around the turn of the last century, of Japanese print techniques emphasizing line over space.

Also undeniably in the Modernist vein is Belgian Surrealism, represented by such exemplars as James Ensor, Rene Magritte and Paul Delvaux. Surrealism is always "well-met" - both for itself and for its contribution to so many currents of contemporary art.

The Encounter of Buddha: Antique Buddhas and Contemporary Paintings by Virginia Peck

Britt Beedenbender

Gallery Anthony Curtis
186 South Street

Boston

May 11 through June 9

Landscape: A Place on Earth, A Place in Mind: The Abstract Paintings of American Artist Lorna J. Ritz and Australian Aboriginal Artists from the Central Desert

June 15 through July 7

The opening of the Gallery Anthony Curtis in March corrected a long-standing omission from the New England gallery scene. When it opened its doors, it became the only commercial art gallery in New England that exhibits antique and contemporary art from Asia and Oceania.

This "pioneering experiment," as co-owner Anthony Shu describes it, merged Shu’s passion for Asian art and artifacts and partner Curtis Rudbart’s reverence for Australian aboriginal objects. Avid traveler’s and ravenous students of the cultures and lands they explore, the idea of opening a gallery of non-western art was one that had immediate resonance as according to Shu, "this type of art has no representation here." The opening exhibition, which closes on May 3, showcases artworks created by several aboriginal artists. It highlights just one aspect of this gallery’s ongoing collection of works from a part of the world that has been absent from commercial art galleries in New England and relegated to anthropological exhibitions in major museums. Rather than being viewed as primitive art, these works are presented, says Shu, "as a vital part of the modern art movement."

Both internationally celebrated and upcoming artists are represented in the Australian aboriginal collection.

Drawn to the Sea: Janis Sanders, Cameron Watson, James Mullen, Rob Franco and Trish Hurley

Roanna Forman

Alpers Fine Art
Two Main Street

Andover, Massachusetts

May 2 through May 13

The landscapes and seascapes of these paintings, like the scenes that inspired them, never compete for the viewer’s attention, but slow the viewing rhythm down to a pleasurable pace in solitary places, real or imagined. The show includes two watercolors, but oil dominates. One wonders if theme, tradition or curatorial predilections dictate the dominance of oil.

Rob Franco paints lone boats at sea. Symbols of shelter, journey, even loss (where is the sailor?), they comment on our relationship with the ocean (nature’s vastness and human intrepidness in braving it). Franco’s boats are vessels that catch natural effects, like the orange-coral of a sunset cradled in a blue hull.

Celestial Bodies

Catherine LaFerriere

Gurari Collections
91 Charles Street

Boston

June 7 through July 1

Russ Gerard pays homage to the drama and inscrutability of the nights skies at the Gurari Collections this June. Juxtaposing antique celestial maps with brilliant Hubble telescope imagery Gerard showcases the evolving relationship between the universe and mankind. The result is an unusually thoughtful compilation and an aesthetic and intellectual success.

The exhibit was inspired by Gerard’s personal acquisition of one the largest and rarest atlases of celestial charts ever produced. The 18th century atlases feature a vast and complex set of constellations that debuted on an astronomer’s impulse and faded just as arbitrarily. In 1801, Johann Elert Bode published the last major celestial atlas to include extensive artistic representation. Though Bode’s "Uranographia" was a bastion of astronomic accuracy, it was overwhelmed with constellations. The astronomer introduced several figures including politicians, a machine for movable type and a hot air balloon. The quirky menagerie was a far cry from the Greek originals but spoke to a spirit of ingenuity.

Donatello to Giambologna: Italian Renaissance Sculpture at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

William Corbett

Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
Avenue of the Arts

465 Huntington Avenue

Through July 8

Through Six Generations: The Weng Collection of Chinese Painting and Calligraphy

Through August 1

War and Discontent

Through August 5

No museum lives by blockbuster shows alone. While the MFA readies its big Edward Hopper show - really a small b blockbuster because of the number of times this work has been recently shown in Manhattan - I visited the museum’s out of the way galleries to look in on three bread and butter shows.

Weng family patriarch Weng Tenge (1830-1904), a painter himself, assembled the family collection, which somehow survived the considerable upheavals in the past century of China’s history. Many of the scrolls and albums are on display for the first time in "Through Six Generations: The Weng Collection of Chinese Painting and Calligraphy."

American modernist poet Wallace Stevens said, "Poetry is a scholar’s art." In China, the arts of poetry, painting and scholarship were, and may well still be, intertwined in a most fruitful way. One looks and reads - well, this Westerner knows that the Chinese characters are equivalent to words but can only admire their design. Chinese art, whether it be the Sung bowls visible on the way to this gallery or the 53 foot handscroll "Ten Thousand Li up the Yangtze" by Wang Hui (1699) slow the viewer. It is a calm and soothing art one that invites the reader to stop in the middle-distance and contemplate. It is an all-of-a-piece art, balanced and principled.

David Forest Thompson: The Other Side of Newbury Street

Brian Goslow

Red Dot Gallery
1162 Washington Street

(Lower Mills)

Dorchester, Massachusetts

May 18 through July 1

By utilizing private property as its canvas, each work of street art is technically a criminal act. Then again, "If art is a crime, may God have mercy on us all." That declaration currently sits across the street from "Shadowman," a violet silhouette, perhaps of a jungle medicine man, painted over a lively green, yellow and red background. It’s the kind of gem photographer David Forest Thompson searches for amongst the overgrown collection of stickers, posters, stencils, paint and marker etchings in the alleyways behind Newbury Street’s golden mile. Each has some historical connection to the Situationalist, Dada, New York graffiti and Japanese anime movements.

"Rocket Ship" resembles a 1950’s style Flash Gordon rocket ship that at five years plus may be the area’s longest existing graffiti. "Pink Paw" is simply that, a pink paw stenciled five bricks high that has already brought cracked smiles to all who’ve seen it, even if they despise the art form.

Sheri Warshauer: Cribs

Catherine LaFerriere

Kidder Smith Gallery
131 Newbury Street

Boston

May 4 through May 26

Don’t miss the opportunity to peek inside the houses of the rich and glamorous with professional voyeur Sheri Warshauer. This exhibition captures shrines to consumerism with wryness and humor. As pictures of posh interiors and backyard swimming pools are polished with thick shine and razor sharp edges, the work becomes less about depicting reality and more about defining the symbols of American status and materialism.

Warshauer’s witty take on private spaces is staged in stylish locales. "Rustic Living" features chic, modern furniture, and a striking million-dollar mountain view. Perhaps the only rustic quality is the absence of a 72-inch flat screen - the epitome of "roughing it" for Warshauer’s moneyed urbanites. That sarcasm is replayed in "Embracing the Elements" in which angular cuts in cement give way to a swimming pool. The professional landscaping reveals bits of flora but the painting reeks of chlorine and chemically treated vegetation.

Thomas Stocker: Thresholds

George Gerard

Copley Society of Art
158 Newbury Street

Boston

May 19 through June 16

A threshold is a chance for something new, brought about by actions designed to cause an effect. In "Thresholds," Thomas Stocker’s spring/summer exhibition at the Copley Society of Art in Boston (Co/So), one can see a departure for Stocker, bringing an energy of excitement that is carried into a depth of concept.

Traditionally, Stocker has focused on the carpet, occasionally using this medium in conjunction with a classical or pop sensibility. His paintings are beautiful and have been well received. He has been represented in galleries across the northeast as well as in collections including Hale & Dorr and Fidelity Investments. While "Thresholds" differs for Stocker in many ways, his work remains beautiful.

What makes this work different is his choice of subject matter, allowing him to approach a personal threshold. In discussing the intellectual process from which his creativity is derived, one can see that Stocker has embraced a new direction in the application of a technique (usually applied to the more direct subject of tapestries) as a medium to place physical visual thresholds across a wide range of topics. The topics themselves then add a further complexity. They too are a chance for Stocker to explore, eliciting through story or concept a desired effect: the fulfillment of his goals.

Exhibition-in-a-Box: The 2007 Portfolio Project

Rena Lindstrom

artSTRAND
Schoolhouse Buildingt

494 Commercial Street

Provincetown

May 25 through June 6

On a snowy day two years ago, a group of Provincetown artists gathered around a dining room table in Truro and brainstormed what an autonomous, artist-owned art space could become. They all had the highest respect for each other’s work, but they wanted ultimately to create something that would be more than just the sum of its parts. artSTRAND opened on Memorial Day weekend of 2005.

They are a group of 11: six men, five women. Six are year-rounders; the other five spend the majority of their summers here. Some have connections to the very beginnings of Provincetown as an art colony. Others are fixtures in the art community, sitting on boards and committees of the Fine Arts Work Center, Provincetown Art Association " Museum, Truro Center for the Arts at Castle Hill and the Provincetown Community Compact. Over half are art instructors. Most have been showing at DNA Gallery or other prominent local galleries for the past five to 20 years. The majority are also represented nationally, from San Francisco to New York City. In short, they are a cultural cross section of a Provincetown generation.

Quilters’ Connection 30th Annual Quilt Show

Roanna Forman

Arsenal Center for the Arts
321 Arsenal Street

Watertown, Massachusetts

June 1 through June 3

Edward Bok, an early 20th-century editor of "Ladies Home Journal," couldn’t have been a stronger supporter of American women’s decorative arts, among them quilting, because, as he once wrote, it upheld that most critical of dictums: "to keep woman at home, especially as there are enough writers who are trying to take her out of it."

Well, they are coming out in droves these days – to quilt and to view quilts - and Mr. Bok will be spared the spectacle, when the Quilters’ Connection displays over 200 of its members’ quilts at its 30th anniversary annual show and sale the first weekend in June. (It should be noted that men figure among QC’s membership, and certainly its devotees).

Philip-Lorca diCorcia

George Gerard

The Institute of Contemporary Art/Boston
100 Northern Avenue

June 1 through September 3

With the same feeling of excitement that the introduction of budding new talent brings, the Institute of Contemporary Art/Boston (ICA) also shows admiration for established contemporary artists who have influenced others in their field and continue to produce exceptional work. This summer, the ICA will host the photographs of Philip-Lorca diCorcia in a comprehensive exhibition of 125 pieces ranging from diCorcia’s strongest series to a new project titled "A Storybook Life."

diCorcia received his undergraduate training at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston and continued his education earning a Master of Fine Arts degree from Yale University. Six short years later, he was featured in his first solo show, marking the beginning of a successful career. He has been featured in numerous museums, including the Museum of Modern Art, New York, as well as galleries across the world.

Through The Lens: Zalmai Ahad

Brian Goslow

You may not be familiar with his name, but if you’ve read any 21st century news reports on Afghanistan, Zalmai Ahad’s photographs have moved you from the covers of the "New York Times Magazine," "Newsweek," "Time" and the "UNHCR Refugees Magazine."

"Return, Afghanistan," on view through May 19 at the Lamont Art Gallery at Phillips Exeter Academy in Exeter, New Hampshire, features many of those photos. The exhibit, produced and coordinated by the Aperature Foundation and supported by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), premiered in Geneva, Switzerland in 2004 before stops in Kabul, Dubai, Los Angeles and Washington, D.C. "People have been streaming in to see it," said Lamont Gallery Director Karen Burgess Smith. "They often come back several times."

Ahad left Afghanistan after the Soviet Invasion at the age of 15 in 1980. He relocated to Switzerland, where he’s now a citizen, and studied at the School of Photography of Lausanne and the Professional Photography Training Center of Yverdon. His freelance career, which began in 1989, has brought him to Cuba for the 40th anniversary of its Revolution, Central Africa to document the plight of its native pygmies after most of their farmland was deforested and Sri Lanka after the 2005 tsunami disaster.

Seeing the photographs of "Return, Afghanistan" without the description of war and terror that accompanied many of them in print casts the people captured in them in a different life. As a work of art, a 2003 photograph of Afghan President Hamid Karzai being led out of a Kabul building by three sharpshooters makes the men come across as individuals simply doing their job. In the pages of "Newsweek," it was a frightening portrait of the country’s ongoing ominous and imminent feeling of violence. "That image has been drawing a lot of questions," Smith said. "They wonder why the men would allow him to take it."

FEATURED ARTIST, W. Gary Smith

Brian Goslow

Even in junior high, W. Gary Smith was destined to become a landscape architect. "I came from two different interests," he said, calling from the Blue Ridge Mountains in western North Carolina, where he was working on the master plan and design for the Southern Highlands Reserve. "One was horticulture and one was art. I was in the greenhouse club and spent all my spare time in the art room."

Smith has turned those interests into a career that allows him to work at places like Enchanted Woods at the Winterthur Garden & Library in Delaware, Peirce’s Woods at Longwood Garden in Kennett Square, Pennsylvania and on the master plan of the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center in Austin, Texas. "I usually have three or four things going on at once," he said.

Since last fall, he’s worked with the staff and volunteers of the New England Wildflower Society on Framingham’s Garden in the Woods’ 75th anniversary show, "ART GOES WILD: Innovation with Native Plants," which opens on May 19 and continues through October 31. While many of Smith’s projects call for the best materials from around the world, in this instance, "Everything’s done right there at the garden using native plants by the staff and volunteers."

Urban Landscapes … emancipation and nostalgia…

Matt Griffin

David Winton Bell Gallery

Brown University

List Art Center

64 College Street

Providence

Through May 27

"Urban Landscapes" is a chilling view from three artists from uniquely different parts of the world. It brings insight into what some parts of the planet have become: A wasteland of riches and rubble; an industrial melting pot of perishables versus people.

The work of London born Catherine Yass, a graduate of the Slade School of Art who earned her master’s degree from Goldsmith College in 1990, has been exhibited at galleries in Sydney, Tel Aviv, and Dublin and the Tate Gallery and Tate Modern Gallery in London. In her movie "Lock," which consists of two simultaneous film projections playing on opposite sides of the Bell Gallery, she features scenes of Three Gorges Dam in China, the largest hydroelectric power station in the world. Though the power station is meant to provide much needed help for the country’s booming economy, the dam also caused the demolition of numerous villages and the displacement of almost two million people. In "Lock," the dam’s columns rise within a sheet of calm water, giving the work an eerie feeling of solitude.

Western Mass

Greg Morell

Williams College Museum of Art

15 Lawrence Hill Drive

Williamstown, Massachusetts

Located directly across the street from the grand campus church right off Route 2 in the center of Williamstown, the Williams College Museum of Art features a collection richly endowed with notable pieces from the ancient to the recent. It’s the perfect summer destination where travelers from afar can enjoy a late afternoon visit at the Museum and stroll over to the Williamstown Theater Festival afterwards.

The Museum lawn is a series of high undulations, a parody of the Berkshire Hills. Perched among those fabricated hills is the frontispiece of the museum - a multi-site collection of enormous silver marble eyes that light up at night. Stylistically, they resemble the form of the alien robotic GORK from the sci-fi thriller "The Day the Earth Stood Still."

Once entered, museum formality is thrown to the wind as the visitor is greeted by a whimsical but brilliantly conceived central staircase and lobby that is a wonder of impossible angles, mathematically Suessical.

Vermont Open Studio Weekend

Paula Melton

Various locations throughout Vermont

May 26 and 27

Spring has arrived – even in Vermont – and this Memorial Day weekend, more than 300 artisans will open their doors to the public for the annual statewide open studio weekend on May 26 and 27. Here is a sampling of three studios you can visit in southern Vermont; a complete list and map is available at vermontcrafts.com.

DANCE - The Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival turns 75

Greg Morell

The Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival is a delightful enigma that defies preconceived notions of what is possible in today’s world of dance and art.

It is a retreat, a creative conclave, a springboard for new work, a fabulous performance complex featuring three distinctly different theaters, a place to picnic and commune with the rolling pastoral hills of the Berkshires and, above all, a place to be enthralled by dance.

P.H. Miller: The Guild Master

Sarah E. Fagan

P.H. Miller Studio

495 Main Street South

Woodbury, Connecticut

Frames. It would be safe to say most of us take these containers for granted. Once upon a time they were as prized as the art that went in the - 9th century painters took time to choose or even make frames to complement their pieces. Somewhere along the line these casings became commercialized - sold in bulk to fit standard-sized canvases rather than individual works of art. After a visit with Peter H. Miller, the master craftsman and namesake of P.H. Miller studio and workshop, little in modern art history seems more tragic.

Nestled amongst the antique shops and inns of Woodbury, P.H. Miller Studio specializes in the creation of handmade wooden frames and frame restoration - both with exquisite care. The first floor greets visitors with a gallery of works by local artists and displays of Miller’s frames. The basement houses the woodworking workshop while the second floor’s specialty is gilding, antiquing and restoration. While frame makers or gilders may be found scattered throughout the northeast, it is very rare for a studio to design, join, carve, paint and gild its own frames. Miller does it all.

When paintings stopped taking the fresco form and started to travel in the 13th century, frames were created for protection. The original European frame was the Italian cassetta, literally "little box."

COMMUNITY - The photographic Workshops of Rockport, Maine

Greg Morell

It is often the case that the birth of arts organizations is the result of the passion and inspiration of a single individual with a dream. Fueling that dream is a single-minded drive to see that dream became a reality despite risk, hazard or peril.

The dreamer pursues this vision with determined ambition despite obstacles. The self same project idea could easily be rejected by a committee, tabled by a board, advised against by professionals or relegated to financially unfeasible by a responsible actuary. Despite all, the creative visionary ventures armed with entrepreneurial acumen, indomitable spirit, and strong conviction.

CROSSING CULTURAL BARRIERS: Egyptian-American artist Ahmed Abdalla

Roanna Forman

Ahmed Abdalla’s studio could actually be anywhere – his native Egypt, the Netherlands, site of his early graduate studies, or Fort Point Channel in Boston, not so far from the Museum School where he finished training. And yet it’s all those places – a carved wooden camel kneels elegantly on the coffee table; a slow Dutch calm blankets the space; and, once outside, you walk quickly back to the architectural hodgepodge of downtown Boston.

CELLULOID SLANT - Polis Is This: Charles Olson and the Persistence of Place

Chet Williamson

Cape Ann Historical Museum

27 Pleasant Street

Gloucester, Massachusetts

May 26 and 27

In the director’s statement accompanying the release of his astonishing new film, filmmaker Henry Ferrini says, "All my life I’ve heard about Charles Olson. As a child around the holiday dinner table I’d listen to tales of a giant, who walked the midnight streets of Gloucester, Massachusetts. In school, poets and writers asked if I was related to the Ferrini in ‘The Maximus Poems.’"

His uncle is the poet Vincent Ferrini, who makes an appearance in the film along with other writers like Amiri Baraka, Robert Creeley and Anne Waldman. Actor John Malkovich also joins the exceptional cast exploring Olson’s world and sense of place

CURATOR’S CORNER - Julie Bernson & Ceci Mendez, co-curators of The Visions & Voices of Children’s Book Illustrators

Ceci Mendez

New Art Center

61 Washington Park

Newtonville, Massachusetts

Through May 20

We are unabashedly inspired by the limitless worlds created by children’s book illustrators. Integral to the New Art Center’s 30th anniversary year, "The Visions & Voices of Children’s Book Illustrators" was born of a desire to create an accessible exhibition for artists and ‘non-artists’, children and adults of ALL ages, avid gallery go-ers and newcomers, and those who appreciate diverse cultures, materials, and themes in the art they seek for sustenance and inspiration.

The worldviews and stories presented in this exhibit are many and complex. The bold colors and vivid images in the bilingual "My Diary From Here to There / Mi Diario de Aqui Hasta Alla," illustrated by Maya Christina Gonzalez and written by Amada Irma Perez trace the experiences of a young girls’ hopes, fears, and dreams in her journey moving from Mexico to Los Angeles. Timothy Basil Ering’s "The Story of Frog Belly Ratbone" conjures the story of a boy who emerges from Cementland with an enchanted gift: a friend born of a secret treasure and a special collaboration. It’s a magical metaphor for forging one’s own or collective path through creativity, resourcefulness, and imagination.

artscope capsule previews: From The Art Complex's "Complex Women" exhibition in Duxbury to Bowersock Gallery's Amy Palmer and Erin McFarland's opening shows in Provincetown

Brian Goslow

Few captured mid-20th century New York City as well as Joseph Solman. A founding member of "The Ten," Manhattan’s groundbreaking group of expressionist painters that included Mark Rothko, he spent the "Swingin’ Sixties" working as a part-time bookie at the Aqueduct Race Track. While commuting to and from "the office," he sketched impressions of his fellow subway riders. These abstract but still familiar observations have been gathered by curator Lisa Leavitt for "Joseph Solman: Notes from the Underground," which continues through May 27 at the Danforth Museum of Art, 123 Union Avenue, Framingham, Mass.

The Art Complex’s "Complex Women" exhibition, which opens on May 6, is the culmination of a two-year effort to expand the museum’s collection of works by women artists. Recent acquisitions of porcelain fresh-water container by heralded Japanese ceramic artist Yuriko Matsuda, and a 19th-century tea bowl and caddy and scroll by Buddhist nun Otagaki Rengetsu will be featured alongside Shaker chairmaker Lillian Barrow’s personal and inscribed rocker and recent ceramic works by Mary Roehm, Susan Beiner and Maria Martinez, sculpture by Jean Tock and a basket by Diane Stanton. Sir Joshua Reynolds understudy Angelica Kaufman’s 1763 work, "Die Bieden Studenten Alten (Two Old Students)" and etchings by Mary Cassatt, Blanche Coleman and Ambreen Butt are also spotlighted through September 9 at the Art Complex Museum, 189 Alden Street, Duxbury, Mass., just north of Kingston/Plymouth off of Route 3.

Concord, New Hampshire is home to two galleries owned by Trish Anderson-Soule. The Anderson-Gallery at Two Capital Plaza features "Lisa Lemeland: New Work" through May 26; The Gallery at 2 Pillsbury presents "Cross-Pollination," works by nine members of the New Hampshire Institute of Art Faculty and Administrators, from May 7 through August 2. Some of the region’s finest emerging and established artists are in the show, including painter Patrick McCay, whose recent works based on England imagery and icons feature the interplay of literal and abstract concepts in his distinct approach of layering formal elements, abstract qualities and delightful humor. The region’s landscape also inspires encaustic painter Earl Schofield who renders his observations onto canvas in wax.

More than 1,000 artists, many heralding from Lowell area high schools and colleges, will join civic and community leaders and scientists in contributing to the Revolving Museum’s "ARTventures Series: A Creative Revolution in the Making" public art project. Opening night festivities on May 12 will include a Native American pow wow, a performance by the Revolutionary Snake Ensemble, a gigantic dragon sculpture and a grand finale of a four-story high experimental video being projected onto a smokestack near the Lowell National Historical Park. Other events, which continue through September 30, include a "Carnival of Creativity," a floating lantern display during the Southeast Asian Water Festival and a night on the Merrimack Riverwalk. Full details at LowellARTventures.org.

While museums traditionally bring in flowers to spruce up winter and spring exhibitions, the Tower Hill Botanical Garden, 11 French Drive, Boylston, central Mass., stages art exhibitions amidst its arboretums, greenhouses and outside gardens. "Kat O’Connor: Art in the Garden," which runs from May 15 through June 24, will feature new watercolor paintings and a large oil painting being especially created for the show. This summer, O’Connor will teach a Worcester Art Museum "Landscape Painting in Greece" class on location at the Island Center for the Arts in Skopelos, Greece. Info can be found at katopaints.com.

The Bowersock Gallery’s latest stable artist is Amy Palmer, whose work as marked by distinct characters, a mix of representational, comedic-drama and Goth in both style and statement. The haunting and sometimes oddly humorous paintings explore women’s archetypes and the choices they make. Owner Steve Bowersock said her work "pokes at your mind, makes you question and has an odd, inherent entertainment quality." They’re featured from May 25 through June 12 in "Story Time," the gallery’s first show of the season. It also features painter Erin McFarland’s beautifully executed figures, evocative creatures that draw you into their story. "Her people fascinate as they demonstrate either the marriage of beings, or the disturbing sense of alone," Bowersock said. "Working with pastel, oil, and acrylic Erin’s characters can bare their teeth, and bite down hard." They also bring you to a soft place, "somewhere to linger and be soothed." The Bowersock Gallery is at 373 Commercial Street, Provincetown.