Welcome to our first issue of 2015. Between the holiday season and later exhibition opening dates at the start of the new year for many venues, putting together our January/February issue has traditionally been a challenge. This time around, we decided to take advantage of that challenge and allow our writers to expand their coverage and write about subjects that we otherwise might not have had the space to feature in these pages, wanting to provide coverage that’ll make you want to hop in your car or get on a bus or train to see a show at a museum, gallery or performing arts venue.

Hopefully, some of the articles in this issue will assist those of you who’ve looked for new ideas on how to bring your art to a larger audience.

As more artists look toward the Internet as a main means of promoting their work, there is a lot of conflicting information on who actually owns the images once they’re posted on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and other social media sites. Laura Shabott takes a look at the policies of some of these sites and how you can best protect your work.

With a growing number of cities and communities seeking to rebrand their images through public art, there are a greater number of opportunities for artists to get their work in front of the public eye — and to get paid for those
efforts. I spoke with Susan Champeny, whose “Snow Saucer Lady Bug” now sits at the intersection of L and 2nd Streets in Washington, D.C., and The Myth Makers — Andy Moerlein and Donna Dodson — who shared the process that led to their “Avian Avatars” migrating to the Garment District Plazas on Broadway in New York City, where they’ll spend the first three months of the year.

Dodson, who is also an Artscope contributor, furthered the discussion with a profile of Vermont sculptor Leslie Fry, whose “Colossal AcornHead” bronze sculpture graces the campus of Tufts University in advance of her upcoming shows in Brooklyn and NYC’s Lower East Side.

Installation artists are amongst the world’s greatest dreamers; as 2014 was coming to a close, Artscope’s Elizabeth Michelman, who is a sculptor and who curated the 2013 HarborArts exhibition, participated in a show at the Elizabeth Foundation for the Arts, whose “call for art” announcement sought the “most audacious, outrageous or impossible” proposals for an exhibition. Since few of the artists had the means to bring their ideas to fruition — or even to the model stage — many of the gallery walls only held printed proposals. Since all great ideas, big or small, start in this format, and since New York City hosts corporations with the ability to financially back making them real, this story felt like it captured what goes on inside the meeting of many municipal groups working on a project that breaks the mold and expectations for their locations. As Elizabeth noted in an email to me, “We are all curators, now.”

Back in the 1990s, Providence reinvented itself through the financial support and widespread promotion of its arts community, and in doing so created a model that cities and towns throughout the country have been following ever since. I asked Suzanne Volmer to look back on what remains from that initial period of activity and look forward toward the galleries, shows and artists you should look into at the start of the new year.

Mind you, there are also plenty of great reviews and previews in the following pages: J. Fatima Martins took on the Herculean task of covering a series of Armenian art exhibitions taking place concurrently at the Armenian Museum of America and The Cambridge School of Weston, Mass., while pointing out the exemplary curator’s class at Wheaton College that put together its “Tracing the Thread” and “Goya and Beethoven: Finding a Voice Out of Silence” exhibitions; Taryn Plumb spotlights two artists featured in the Heartwood College of Art’s MFA Degree Program Exhibition, while Don Wilkinson explains why both the Biennial Members and Crafting a Collection exhibitions are worthy of a trip to the Fuller Craft Museum.

Kristin Nord was all over Connecticut to review and preview shows at the Florence Griswold Museum (Peter Halley), Wesleyan University (“A Body in Fukushima”) and Hartford (Universal Arts + Connecticut People Learning Art Creative Entrepreneurs exhibition).

The issue’s cover art, Kate Taylor’s acrylic-on-panel with resin “Tall Cosmos” painting, is featured in the Copley Society of Art’s New Members’ Show 2015, previewed by Marcia Santore.

This issue’s centerfold contest winner, with a winter-related painting theme, is Bruce Davidson’s “Silos.” Thanks to our jurors: Rachel Moore, assistant director of the Helen Day Art Center, Sharon Corwin, Carolyn Muzzy director and chief curator at the Colby College Museum of Art and Bill Everett, director of The Guild of Boston Artists.

For our next contest, we’re looking for your original 3-D paper work; full details can be found in our Classifieds section.

As we were going to press, we were pleased to learn that Artscope has been accepted for inclusion at the Magazine sector of the collective booth at this year’s Art Basel, taking place from June 18-21 in Basel, Switzerland. With one of our major focuses in recent years being the expansion of our publication’s reach by making it available
worldwide through Apple Newsstand, and complementing it with social media coverage on a variety of platforms which allow us to expose New England’s visual and performing artists, galleries and institutions to a global audience — and hopefully generating attention, shows and sales in the process — we hope this will contribute toward that goal.

Brian Goslow, managing editor ([email protected])