Welcome Artscope reader,
As we celebrate our 18th anniversary with this issue, we open it with stories on two artists celebrating their own milestones and serving as inspiration to us all.
Frederick “Fritz” Kubitz, who at 95 still finds himself painting, is feted in “All About Boston” at the Guild of Boston Artists. In her preview, Lee Roscoe profiles his time as one of the world’s great architects — including his designing of the iconic TWA Flight Center at JFK International Airport — and how that eye allowed him to paint Boston’s iconic architecture just a little bit differently.
Mira Cantor may have reached 80 years on Planet Earth, but she’s not slowing down. Elizabeth Michelman “Cornered” her to discuss the work in her “Dig” exhibition at SoWa Boston’s Kingston Gallery this March, while sharing an in-depth explanation of how her appreciation for geology, archaeology and dance influenced her throughout her career.
Michelman submitted her story while at a residency at ChaNorth in Pine Plains in the Upstate New York with Suzanne Volmer, who similarly filed her review of Lani Asunción’s “Duty-Free Paradise” exhibition that explores the exploitation of the people of Hawai’i and their land at the Boston Center for the Arts’ Mills Gallery.
Not only did Chenoa Baker help launch the non-profit ShowUp gallery(formerly Beacon Gallery) in Boston and began teaching at MassArt, but she wrote a powerful profile of Lebanon-born, recent Rhode Island School of Design graduate Dina Nazmi Khorchid and how her paintings, charcoal drawings and textile art explores and celebrates her Palestinian roots that you’ll find hard to forget.
Baker also reviews Nepal-born Sneha Shrestha’s “Ritual and Devotion” exhibition at the Cantor Gallery at the College of the Holy Cross. When I first saw one of her large murals here in downtown Worcester during the first Pow! Wow! Worcester in 2016, I wondered how “IMAGINE,” the name Shrestha tagged her work with, and the other artists would enter the more traditional art world to make a stable living. This show holds that answer, especially her steel and copper alloy brass sculpture that sits as the show’s centerpiece.
Introducing native work from different cultures from around the world into a new market with the added goal of using it to convey an understanding of what it feels like to be displaced is a worthy but sometimes difficult challenge. Marta Pauer-Tursi looks at how Burlington City Arts aim to achieve that through its “Here Now: Art and Migration” exhibition.
Hannah Carrigan, now working as a donors communications writer for Living Goods in Washington, D.C., was going to be home visiting family when the Peabody Essex Museum unveiled its “Our Time on Earth” exhibition and knowing her interest in all things global, and her having recently visited Kenya as part of her job, I knew that she would bring a unique perspective to the show.
Wanting to ensure we were able to include a review of its powerful “Emancipation: The Unfinished Project of Liberation” exhibition in this issue, the Williams College Museum of Art allowed Marjorie Kayeto observe its installation and get a little behind-the-scenes look and understanding of the work to share with you.
This issue also turned out to be the perfect time for Kaye to profile Freedom Baird and her ecologically conscious art and installations, currently on view at the MassArt Art Museum and soon to be on display in the “Tapped In: Moving Hearts and Minds through Art and Science” exhibition that opens April 10 at the Umbrella Center for the Arts in Concord, Massachusetts.
Much of our issue spotlights artists engaging environmental issues through their work. Christy Rupp has been exploring the topic for decades through her gripping fabric art; her “Streaming” exhibition at the Fairfield University Art Museum is reviewed molecule by molecule by Madeleine Lord.
A few months ago, Lord and I spoke of her time at Smith College, Class of 1970, where she earned a BA with a concentration in studio arts and the barriers women faced trying to break into the artworld a half-century ago. Knowing that many of the 40 female artists represented in the Newport Art Museum’s “Unfinished Business” exhibition saw their gathering at the show’s opening reception as a hard-earned victory, I knew that Lord would do a great job of presenting a timeline showing how, over the years, curator Francine Weiss had purchased their work for the museum’s permanent collection.
Also worth checking out: Elayne Clift surveys “And I’m Feeling Good: Relaxation and Resistance,” a photographic celebration of Black communities at the Hood Museum of Art at Dartmouth College and Beth Neville provides an updated look at the South Coast art community through the Duxbury Art Association’s Winter Juried Show at the Art Complex Museum. Marguerite Serkin found herself so inspired preparing to review the “Painting the Persianate World: Portable Images on Paper, Cloth and Clay” exhibition at Smith College Museum of Art that she proclaimed: “Now I want to visit Iran!”
Gene Tartaglia of the Provincetown Arts Society pulled together 12 members of the Provincetown Art Gallery Association for a unique exhibition at The Mary Heaton Vorse House; Lee Roscoe looks at a show that could serve as a blueprint for expanding the off-season market.
Three Massachusetts-based solo shows are worth your attention. Linda Sutherland spoke with Kim Bernard about her “One Woman’s Touch” exhibition at Milton Academy’s Nesto Gallery; Claudia Fiks talked with Jessica Straus about her latest map-based sculptural adventure, “Packing for Mars,” at Boston Sculptors Gallery; and I visited Brad Chapman Bleau’s work studio where he was putting together ephemera-heavy sculptures to join his large character paintings in “Step Right Up!” at Worcester State University.
Fiks also introduces us to Marlon Forrester and Stanwyck E. Cromwell, two Guyanese-born, New England-based artists showing at the Ely Center of Contemporary Art in New Haven, Connecticut. In her latest chapter of #ARTSTAYSHERE, Ami Bennitt reports on “Don’t F with Fab,” a Somerville, Massachusetts gathering to remind artists, residents and art lovers of the importance of preserving affordable space for artists.
As we begin our 19th year, I want to thank a few people that have devoted endless hours to getting this magazine to you in recent years, especially during Covid times.
J.M. Belmont handles multiple duties, pulling together our listings section and serving as our copy editor — and, in this issue, visiting the Mosaic Art Collective in Manchester, New Hampshire. Our beautifully designed magazine is thanks to senior media developer Vanessa Boucher, who takes hundreds of images from the artists and exhibitions that we cover and puts them together in a way that honors all involved. And publisher Kaveh Mojtabai doesn’t just look after the business side of Artscope — he truly loves the artists and artwork of the New England region, as many of you know through his turning up to your exhibition openings and talks over the past 18 years.
Most visible, to us, is you, the Artscope Magazine reader, who continuously has let us know how much you appreciate our efforts. It makes it all worthwhile.
Thank you.