Casting a net into the Northern Berkshires community and attracting a wide range of artists since opening in mid-2022, Future Lab(s) Gallery, 43 Eagle St., North Adams, Massachusetts, has collected a membership and orbiting friends who enjoy their exhibitions. The “Berkshire Invitational,” the opening of which coincides with North Adams FIRST Fridays, takes place from January 5 through 27 and features “a myriad of methods” of art by Ricky Darell Barton, Jenny Bergman, Carlos Caicedo, Richard Criddle, Brian George, Ghetta Hirsch, Jane Hudson, Karen Kane, Maria Mikuszeswski, Kelsey Shultis, Fred Kasha Simon, and Sarah Sutro.
“A Sense of Place,” featuring several printmakers that have traveled abroad for international artist-in-residence programs, including Suzanne Artemieff, Liz Chalfin (Cuba), Lindsey Clark-Ryan (Argentina), Edda Valborg Sigurðardóttir, BZ Reily (France), Annie Silverman (Denmark and Ireland) and Julie Lapping Rivera (Venice), runs from January 5 through 28 at Mezzanine Gallery, 33 Hawley St., Northampton, Massachusetts. “This exhibition celebrates a multiplicity of vision, perspective and artistic language, and the value of entering worlds unfamiliar to us.” An artist reception will take place on Friday, January 12 from 5-8 p.m. at part of “Arts Night Out Northampton.”
Jennifer Swope, David and Roberta Logie Curator of Textiles at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, juried the submissions for “Exploring the World of Fibers,” on view from January 6 through February 4 at the Molly Harding Nye Gallery at LexArt, 130 Waltham St., Lexington, Massachusetts. The show features three dozen artists from New England and throughout the Northeast that work in fiber art, traditional and contemporary weaving.
With an emphasis on the backward slide in women’s rights 50 years after Roe v. Wade was passed, the artists featured in “Burning Down The House: Women and Art in an Uncertain World” from January 11 through February 11 at Brickbottom Gallery, 1 Fitchburg St., Somerville, Massachusetts, have all lived long enough to remember what was before – all with work relating to the ongoing struggle for dignity, independence, equality, and the power to make personal, sexual and medical decisions. Using a variety of media – Kathryn Geismar (drawing and painting), Tira Khan (photography), Virginia Mahoney (fiber arts), Lorraine Sullivan (assemblage) and curator Kim Triedman (collage) – address the enormity of this particular moment in history. “Art is its own form of resistance,” said Triedman. “To the viewer it offers a window into the times we are living through. To the artist — a release valve when that world veers into injustice and inhumanity.”
Featuring visual artists Daniel Baxter, Jeffrey Blondes, Zoe Matthiessen, Samantha Schwann, and Matthew Wood — plus poet Sandy Carlson — “Sea Change | See Change,” on view from January 21 through May 19 at Mattatuck Museum, 144 West Main St., Waterbury, Connecticut, explores the world’s oceans with a focus on the Arctic. “Using a variety of media, including painting, photography, video, drawing, and sculpture, the artwork in this exhibition celebrates the beauty of our oceans and the tragedy of their degradation. By tempering a dire message with beauty and humor, this exhibition makes a clear case for protecting the ocean.”
With studios in Venice, Italy and Brooklyn, New York, Anne Mourier, founder of New York art space The Invisible Dog, “examines the Feminine as it is associated with practices, qualities, and visualities that Western societies tend to devalue and even suppress, and what the implications of that value system are more broadly.” An exhibition of her work, “While we still ask ourselves how to speak to each other,” opens January 23 and continues through March 6 at the Charles Danforth Gallery at the University of Maine at Augusta, Jewett Hall, 46 University Dr., Augusta, Maine. Her multi-media works include compositions combining lace and blown glass and live performance pieces.
While most of his exhibitions have featured his wood carved sculptures, Andy Moerlein’s “Ten Thousand Labors” exhibition on view through January 28 at the
Boston Sculptors Gallery, 486 Harrison Ave., Boston, Massachusetts, also integrates video and photo collage into his presentation, investigating “the persistent challenges the working artist faces in the context of the moment we inhabit, and reflects on the vulnerability of aging.” The raw and deeply personal images explore the powershift occurring both within society and within the older adult male body, reflecting optimism, resignation and authenticity.
If you’ve ever tried to write about abstract works, you know what an individual experience it can be. During the “Self-awareness and Love: All-inclusive Works” exhibition at Creative Connections Gift Shop and Gallery, 56 Main St., Ashburnham, Massachusetts, that opens on February 3 and continues through March, Jennifer Jean Okumura invites eight local writers and poets (including Artscope’s Elayne Clift and poet Jess Myers) to discuss and interpret her work during a “Poetic Reading Celebration” on Saturday, February 17 from 2-4 p.m. Okumura said that she was exploring, “Being human during a time lacking humanity,” while making the paintings and in the process, trying to convey “a need to say humanity is not lost.”
According to the most recent NOAA Fisheries report, as of November 30, 2023, 37 humpback whales had died on or near the New England coast over the past five years. Massachusetts artist Daniel Ranalli, in his current exhibition, “Whale Stranding,” on view through February 19 at the New Bedford Whaling Museum, 10 Johnny Cake Hill, New Bedford, Massachusetts, visually interprets historical whale strandings and “drivings” through his paintings inspired by observing a whale stranding firsthand in 1991 in Wellfleet. “Each of Daniel’s works is a unique and careful engagement with one traumatic stranding event and the individual animals involved. Our layered exhibition captures the sobering and vast reality of strandings, and the local and global approaches to recording them historically and combating them today,” said NBWM curator Naomi Slipp.
While he served as a subject for many famous artists, the vibrancy of Charles ‘Chuck’ Howard, a “highly sought after model and central social figure of Queer Modernism in New York City” and “veteran, fashion designer, and restaurateur” who passed in 2002, is best captured in photographs by George Platt Lynes, his lover for a two-year span. “Chuck: Photographs by George Platt Lynes,” a rare collection of vintage photographs, circa 1948-1951, of studio poses and candid shots continues through February 3 at Childs Gallery, 168 Newbury St., Boston, Massachusetts, revealing “the spectrum of Howard’s skills as a model and offers a unique and intimate look into his somewhat brief but impactful relationship with Lynes.”
“Diné Textiles: Nizhónígo Hadadít’eh,” on view through September 29 at RISD Museum, 20 North Main St., Providence, Rhode Island, is an extraordinary opportunity to see the storyline of centuries of Navajo (Diné) apparel design that’s not only a history lesson, but a view to the future. “Diné textiles were and continue to be sources of design inspiration, as well as objects of cultural appropriation,” noted the show’s curator, Sháńdíín Brown (Diné), a citizen of the Navajo Nation from Arizona and RISD’s first Henry Luce Curatorial Fellow for Native American Art. “Despite hardship, Diné resilience drives creativity forward. We honor and appreciate the generations of Diné weavers who, through hózhó, have designed beautiful garments for beautiful people.”