Jo-Ann Boback and Dave Richardson

Luis Villanueva’s Colo Colo Gallery doubled its space in mid-2013 when it moved to the Kilburn Mills, a roughhewned yet industrially elegant exhibition facility that also hosts several other galleries, amidst a collection of working artist studios, in New Bedford’s South End. The added capacity allows Villanueva the ability to present two sizeable solo shows simultaneously.

April will feature a three-week untitled exhibition by painter Jo-Ann Boback and furniture maker David Richardson. It is an interesting pairing. Both are what are diplomatically referred to as “mid-career artists” and both have distinct admiration for some of the techniques and stylizations of Asian artisans and image-makers.

Boback, who maintains a studio in Revere, Mass., has had four solo shows at the Colo Colo and has participated in one group show there. She refers to her new work for the April exhibition, which will ultimately include about 18 pieces, as the “Presence and Absence” series. “Everyday, people are influenced by the presence or absence of someone or something,” she noted. “That is the ebb and flow of life, as we know it.”

Working in a purely abstract vein, she feels that her art can be reflective of emotion or devoid of it. Abstraction by its very nature can strain easy compre-hension, but she may reach a bit too far when she speaks of taking herself out of the equation, as that kind of intellectually-driven sense of total abandonment to other mysterious forces, however romantic or aesthetic, is difficult — if not impossible — to achieve.

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