Welcome to the 104th issue of Artscope Magazine.
Now in our 18th year, we put this issue together knowing that it would be on display and available at Art Basel’s Collective Booth in Switzerland from June 15 through 18, representing not only ourselves as a publication at the international art fair, which features over 4000 artists from over 250 galleries from around the world, but all of the artists, galleries, museums and collectors covered in it.
We first traveled to Basel in 2015. In reporting from that initial visit, Clara Rose Thornton wrote, “The tenuous process of creating art mirrors life’s path: projection, uncertainty, connection then disconnection, and navigating surprise. Thus, it makes sense to look to collections of contemporary art and individual pathways through the market as vibrant manifestations of a zeitgeist, the mime’s shadow we cannot see.”
In recent months, we’ve been sharing, on our Instagram page (@artscopemagazine), the Annual Art Basel UBS Art Market Report that informs and provides a roadmap to the investment industry and portfolio managers as well as collectors, patrons, arts industry stakeholders and provides well researched documentation to increase awareness around the economic benefits that the arts provide to communities and the public.
We’ve always counted on our contributors to serve as our eyes throughout the New England region and whenever they travel, whether in the United States or around the world. Our writers are finding talent nationally and internationally to cover significant current exhibitions and work, and their efforts speak for itself in this issue.
Sometimes, it takes multiple visits to see what an artist is trying to convey. Suzanne Volmer made several trips to the Jamestown Arts Center to see its “A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall” exhibition curated by Lara Pan and featuring artists from Australia, Brazil, England Japan, France, Mexico, Norway and Slovenia — as well as Providence and Portland, Oregon — who gave her a tour while the show was being installed and added more to Volmer’s understanding of the 11 artists and their works in a repeat visit, phone call and emails.
Volmer also spoke with Los Angeles-based ceramic sculptor Jennifer King and Iowa-based abstract painter Gyan Shrosbree in previewing their “Lashing Out” exhibition that will be on view at Boston’s LaiSun Keane Gallery from June 2 through July 16.
It’s always exciting to bring new voices to the magazine.
Chenoa A. Baker (she/her) is an empathetic curator, wordsmith and descendant of self-emancipators; we’re pleased to have her in the pages of Artscope with a preview of Szu-Chieh Yun’s current exhibition at the Boston Center for the Arts. “This is the first time she is showing her newest series which draws from Orientalism in art history, real events and blatant sexuality in religious mysticism to visually communicate the often-memed and social media-recorded, Karen phenomenon,” Baker wrote in her story pitch.
Steve Sangapore is a Boston-based oil painter and mixed media sculptor whose work has been exhibited in galleries and art fairs nationally; for several years, I’ve read his online thoughts on a wide variety of art-related matters and interviews with fellow artists. When he sent us his take on Artificial Intelligence and the recent expansion of its image-generating capabilities and the subsequent debate it had created in the art world, I asked if he could modify it for this issue, knowing AI would be a big topic at Art Basel. After reading his story, check out Sangapore’s current exhibition, “Specularis,” which he shares with Rob Sullivan, from May 4 through 28 at Fountain Street Gallery in Boston’s SoWa District.
After contributing a profile of Jennifer Jean Okumura, president and founding exhibition chair for the National Association of Women Artists’ Massachusetts Chapter (and from whom she bought her first piece of art for her collection when she had just started as an intern for Artscope) and reviewing Shanghai-born installation artistGu Wenda’s “United Nations” exhibition at Peabody Essex Museum, Hannah Carrigan is beginning her next chapter as a writer for Donor Communications at Living Goods, a nonprofit that supports community healthcare workers in several African countries.
With Memorial Day Weekend the unofficial start of the summer travel season, we’re featuring three regional wanderlusts with the hope of sending you off on (several) art adventures in the months to come.
Laura Shabott writes about this summer’s shows at the Cape Cod Museum of Art and Provincetown Art Association and Museum, where Sky Power, subject of a profile by Lee Roscoe, will be showing as well as at Berta Walker Gallery; Roscoe also reviews the Cahoon Museum of American Art’s “Fire and Ink” exhibition and talks with Andrew Kusmin about the reopening of his gallery in Plymouth. Ami Bennittprofiles painter/muralist/musician Adam O’Day, whose works can be seen at Provincetown’s Woodman/Shimko Gallery.
Marta Pauer-Tursi combines visits to local galleries and sculpture parks with an exploration of the art of fine food and chocolate, while Linda Sutherland visits the 100 Market Gallery & Rochester Museum of Fine Art in New Hampshire, along with Haley Gallery in Kittery and the Portland Museum of Art in Maine.
Also in Maine, through July 16 at the Ogunquit Museum of American Art is “Shifting Sands: Beaches, Bathers, and Modern Maine Art,” an exhibition made possible through collector Darin Leese’s sharing of his collection of paintings depicting Ogunquit and its picturesque Perkins Cove; in previewing of show, Eric J. Taubert talked to Leese about the 20 plus years he’s spent assembling the works that will be on view.
We’re happy to have Meredith Cutler back in the pages of Artscope and excited to share her feature on Providence-based printmaker, fiber and environmental artist Heather McMordie, who will be the Newport Art Museum’s artist-in-residence in June; you can also see her work at the newly opened OVERLAP Annex nearby.
We continue to watch for timely artwork responding to events nationally and worldwide. Claudia Fiks reviews the nine artist “Through These Eyes: The Many Faces of Patriotism” exhibition at PEG Center for Art & Activism in Newburyport, Massachusetts. Expanding partnerships is a strong way for artists and art organizations to expand their market and reach and I interviewed Sarah Alexander, Director of Visual Arts at the Hopkinton Center for the Arts (HCA)in Hopkinton, Massachusetts, on how they’ve successfully done just that in recent years. Their current exhibition, “Arts in Bloom,” was juried by Artscope publisher and founder, Kaveh Mojtabai, another way we get to engage with our region’s arts community.
Those artists continue to be our biggest supporters and we appreciate how the art market is gathering around Artscope to promote and engage with our readers and the public to promote their exhibitions, programs and artists.
Now dig into our May/June 2023 issue and after visiting some of the shows we covered, drop me a line, and share your own impressions of the work — and your ideas for future coverage.
Brian Goslow
bgoslow@artscopemagazine.com