Summer already?
I was in the final stages of preparations before we started on the production of this July/August 2023 issue of Artscope Magazine when I received an email from Jessica Roscio, the director and curator at The Danforth at Framingham State University, alerting me that its 2023 Annual Juried Show had been fully hung earlier than expected and that I could see it that afternoon. I had already started to write about the show from its well-compiled digital catalog and had found myself questioning my ability to give everyone a fair shake from that standpoint alone.
I’ve learned — and I suspect those selected to jury exhibitions from digital submissions have as well — that regardless of how good of a job that artists have done photographing and documenting their work and entries, there is always going to be a few that steal your heart or underwhelm you on the digital screen that turn out to be less overwhelming (especially when they turn out smaller) or reveal intricate details that turn an interesting work into a memorable one, in person.
A train and bus ride to Framingham Common later, I found this to truly be the case with this year’s show, and I hope that you’ll enjoy reading about the artists – several that we’re covering for the first time and whose work captured my attention, interest and curiosity – and get out to see the exhibition yourself.
Perhaps more than any other kind of exhibition, one can’t give a complete explanation of the experience of an outside sculpture show without walking the property on which it sits, and the land around it, to see how the work plays in a nature-enhanced setting. Marjorie Kaye attended the official opening of the “SculptureNow” exhibition at The Mount: Edith Wharton’s Home in Lenox, Massachusetts, during which many of the sculptors were in attendance to talk about their work, allowing her to share added insight into their creation with you.
Closer to her new home in the region, Kaye also visited the Berkshire Art Museum in North Adams, Massachusetts, to see the National Association of Women Artists Massachusetts Chapter’s “Female” exhibition. Having presented the organization and many of the artists in her role of director at Galatea Fine Art in Boston, she brought a helpful familiarity with them and their work to her survey of the show, while judging it on its own merits, and in doing so, hopefully will contribute to the artists gaining greater attention outside the Greater Boston area, where many of them are based.
Lee Roscoe, after a series of events in New York and Massachusetts tied to her short film, “Reprieve,” and her book, “Wampanoag Art for the Ages – Traditional and Transitional,” put together a travelogue of her favorite off the beaten path Cape Cod locations, a combination of galleries, museums, cafes, restaurants and ice cream stands. She goes on to review the “Repeat Offenders: TRIIIBE Returns” exhibition, documenting the ongoing adventures of the Casilio sisters, currently on view at the South Shore Arts Center.
Beth Neville had asked to cover the “Watercolors Unboxed” exhibition that’s on view this summer at the Worcester Art Museum at the start of the year; the show is another spectacular sharing of the museum’s intense collection that’s rarely been seen till recently.
J.M. Belmont usually works behind the scenes here at Artscope, pulling together our listings and copyediting each issue (amongst many things). For this issue, he visited the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum for the opening of its “Presence of Plants in Contemporary Art” exhibition that’s on view through September 17.
While she had included the Shelburne Museum in last issue’s Northern Vermont Wanderlust feature, Marta Pauer-Tursi felt it was important to cover the just-opened “Built from the Earth: Pueblo Pottery from the Anthony and Teressa Perry Collection” exhibition that serves to introduce its Native American Initiative that is slated to include a new building with surrounding landscape to serve as a national resource for the study and care of Indigenous art.
Pauer-Tursi also previews the internationally-shown “The Red Dress,” which is having its first United States showing at the Southern Vermont Arts Center through September 24. There are some fashion-based exhibitions that tell a story far beyond the runway and this is certainly one of them.
Linda Sutherland probably didn’t need much convincing to visit York, Maine, at the start of the summer, but she loved the opportunity to see and review the combination of poetry and art showcased in the “No Small Thing” exhibition that’s on view through the end of July at the George Marshall Store Gallery.
Claudia Fiks attended a talk by Paul S. Briggs at the Lucy Lacoste Gallery in Concord, Massachusetts in preparation for a profile of the sculptor’s work and career; she also explores how the Boston-based MASARY Studios are contributing to the rapidly expanding world of digital art, both as an art form and part of the entertainment industry.
We always love seeing regionally made art showcased in new locations that have the promise of putting it in front of fresh audiences who might never step into a gallery. Connecticut correspondent Evan Bieder visited the M&T Bank Magnificent Room at the Sono Collection Mall to see the Norwalk Art Space’s “The Meaning of Us” exhibition featuring teachers from the organization’s Resident Artists Program.
Many artists, writers and long-time residents are being forced out of big cities by rising rents and costs; Ami Bennitt, co-founder of the #ARTSTAYSHERE Coalition, documents how her organization puts together its arts advocacy campaigns that strive to keep artists – both visual and performing – along with cultural and non-profit organizations, in the spaces they’re already working, while trying to cultivate relationships and find developers to create new facilities.
The Attleboro Arts Museum’s national juried exhibition “Used” provided the image for this issue’s cover; Attleboro director Mim Brooks Fawcett told Artscope’s Susan Volmer, who reviews the show here, that “Reverie,” an oil painting by Matthew Casanovas, of West Nyack, New York, is emblematic not only of the feeling of the show, but that after the past three years, we all feel used with unfinished business to attend to — and find ourselves at the next step.
Indeed, we do, and we hope that includes seeing and meeting you at one or more of the shows featured in this issue.
Brian Goslow, managing editor
bgoslow@artscopemagazine.com