“Stories to Tell,” a one-person show of “assemblage paintings that combine portraits and other figurative compositions with various salvage and found objects” by Barbara Johansen-Newman will be on view from November 1 through 26 at the Gallery at Gorse Mill, 31 Thorpe Road, Needham, Massachusetts. The folkish-feel of Johansen Newman’s current work brings her career full cycle; she started out “enamored with the art form of puppetry,” creating both puppets and the scenery they’d perform in front of, took up the fiber arts, creating puppets, soft sculptures and dolls, then became an illustrator for children’s books. Gorse Mill, a renovated former textile factory, is home to studios for potters, ceramicists, glass blowers, painters, sculptors, mosaic artists, silk painters and fiber artists, jewelers, photographers, authors, illustrators, stained-glass artists, graphic designers, mixed-media artists and a storyteller.
For a half-century, Bromer Booksellers has been a go-to source for rare and beautiful books, specializing in special editions and miniature books, in Boston’s Back Bay. To celebrate its 50th anniversary, it’s opening Bromer Gallery, 607 Boylston St., second floor, Boston, “which will feature original art and editioned prints, executed by artists whose work is centered upon the idea of the book as art.” Their first exhibition, which opens November 1 and runs through December 31, “Goldman and Lee: Shadow and Color,” features color woodcuts by Jim Lee and watercolors and prints from Jane E. Goldman’s “Audubon Suite,” her ongoing series of sun-dappled still life compositions that pay homage to 19th-century naturalist and artist John James Audubon.
Continuing his search to unlock and celebrate the magic of Mother Nature’s slow but steady creative process, Andy Moerlein’s latest collection of work, “Longing for Mountains,” sees the sculptor exploring “the aesthetics of stone art and artifice.” Inspired by the ancient Asian tradition of displaying unique stones in the home and garden, Moerlein notes that while Chinese Scholars’ Rocks and Japanese Zen gardens “are vital references” to his abstract wood, ceramic and “handmade stone” sculptures; they are “expressive abstractions” of natural objects. There’s more environmental-inspired creativity in “Larry Pollans: Flora and Fauna,” which shares the SoWa exhibition space with Moerlein. “The rhythm of the building of these sculptures feels like the pulse of the growing flowers,” Pollans explained, two weeks prior to the opening. “Hands, clay and fire make this possible. The show is filled with flowers, birds and a few humans all wending their way.” Both exhibitions can be seen from November 7 through December 9 at the Boston Sculptors Gallery, 486 Harrison Ave., Boston.
Rhode Island photographers David DeMelim, Eileen McCarney-Muldoon, David Pinkham and Cindy Wilson, who initially traveled to Cuba together in 2013, are featured in “Four Americans in Cuba,” which opens November 8 and continues through December 7 at the Bannister Gallery at Rhode Island College, 600 Mount Pleasant Ave., Providence.
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