Happy Spring, Artscope reader!
Welcome to our 110th issue, one in which we hope to inspire you to get out and explore the galleries, museums and artist studios of New England — and beyond.
We received an email from sculptor Donna Dodson just as she was about to board a plane to Chicago with husband, Andy Dodson, to discuss a future “Myth Makers” project of theirs at the Klehm Arboretum in nearby Rockford, Illinois – and would we like a review of the EXPO CHICAGO international contemporary and modern art exhibition?
As we had just been notified that we’ve once again been selected to exhibit our latest issue in the Magazine Sector at Art Basel Switzerland, which takes place June 13 through 16, we were excited about this opportunity to get an advance look at work making waves nationally and internationally.
We’ll be represented in Basel by Claudia Fiks, who’ll be reporting on the 2024 fair online and in our July/August issue; while in Europe, she’ll also be stopping off at the Venice Biennale.
Our cover features the work of Alexandra Sheldon, whose “Piece by Piece” exhibition can be seen this May at the Bromfield Gallery in Boston’s SoWa District. Sonia Richter — a writer, copywriter and self-proclaimed “creative being” hailing from Providence who’s passionate about uplifting underrepresented voices in the Boston art scene — visited Sheldon at her studio near Central Square in Cambridge, which allowed her to see first-hand, “a sense of controlled chaos reminiscent of an elementary school art room” that foster unbridled creativity, and the beautiful work seen in this issue.
Just as our previous issue was being distributed, “A Begrudgingly Affectionate Portrait of the American Mall,” a New Yorker article on photographer Stephen DiRado, of whom I spoke about with writer Margaret Talbot for the story, was published online. Around the same time, I was interviewed by Chronicle senior producer Clint Conleyfor a WCVB Channel 5 feature on Massachusetts town nicknames and how my hometown of Worcester became known as “Wormtown.” Throw in a last time visit to my former high school before its demolition (coinciding with the 50th anniversary of my graduation), the sudden loss of a favorite restaurant that doubled as a workspace, a request for a small piece on Worcester’s National League baseball team of 1880-82 (of which I’m the “official” historian), it was a crazy March.
Truthfully, I couldn’t have been happier getting back to my current life as Artscope’s Managing Editor and going to the Worcester Art Museum for curator Nancy Kathryn Burns and assistant curator Olivia J. Stone’s tour of its then soon-to-open “New Terrain: 21st-Century Landscape Photography” exhibition. Their passion for the work and stories on how each piece was acquired made for two of my favorite hours ever. I hope I’ve managed to convey that in my review of the show, that remains on view through July 7.
It’s every artist’s dream to escape to a place they can freely explore themselves and their art without interruption. Longtime Artscope contributors Elizabeth Michelman and Suzanne Volmer spent a good part of a month as artists-in-residence at ChaNorth International in upstate New York and journalized their experiences that included experimenting and working on their own pieces, networking with other ChaShaMa program artists and writers, and traveling to nearby exhibitions. I hope their exceptional insight inspires you to dream, too.
Michelman also looks at the current work of Fran Bull, who continues, “working at the limits of her material and her gifts, pushing beyond private chaos and despair to claim her freedom” in exploring new artistic styles and whose “SPACE: an odyssey” series will be on view at Mitchell • Giddings Fine Arts of Brattleboro, in her home state of Vermont.
Artists continue to convey the urgency needed to protect our environment and our way of life as a whole. Lee Roscoe looks at author Ken Grossinger and his latest book, “Art Works, How Organizers and Artists are Creating a Better World Together,” which combines the stories of efforts in the visual and performing arts, in both a historical context and, hopefully, as examples of how positive change can be enacted.
Two Western Massachusetts artists already working in that vein, Patricia Fietta and George LeMaitre, are “Pondering Environmental Anxieties” in a May exhibition at Future Lab(s) Gallery in North Adams that is previewed by Marjorie Kaye, who writes, the duo “explore the conceptual aesthetics of the very act of the earth’s ultimate survival in the face of climate change denial and offer inescapable knowledge and information.”
Claudia Fiks focuses on Raquel Fornasaro and Michelle Lougee, whose work is on display in “TAPPED IN: Moving Hearts and Minds Through Art and Science” on view inside and out at the Umbrella Arts Centerin Concord, Massachusetts, where 10 pairs of artists and scientists offer their perspectives on “climate change, CO2 mitigation and actionable measures.”
Sometimes, we forget the human element in our collective lives. Fiks previews the Gloucester-based Manship Artist Residency’s multi-sensory installation “The Net Works,” that looks into the fishing community and its “layers of history woven within its landscapes, oceans and collective memories,” that of course, plays a key role in who we are as New Englanders.
If you’ve never planned a weekend trip around an open studio weekend, Ami Bennitt explains how the experience of seeing the spaces artists make their work – and have the opportunity to buy that work from them directly – is soulfully rewarding. While her feature focuses on Massachusetts, search out similar experiences throughout the region.
Lexington, Massachusetts, has its open studios weekend on May 18 and 19; if you attend, make sure to stop by LexArts, profiled by Cassandra Goldwater. If you find yourself in Concord, New Hampshire, stop in at New Hampshire Furniture Masters where its current “New Members Showcase” features the extraordinary work of Dan Faia, Mike Korsak, and Philip Morley, which Linda Sutherland raves about in these pages.
Or set your GPS for Midstate Connecticut, where the New Britain Museum of American Art is hosting several exhibitions worthy of your travel time, including Justin Favela’s Latinx-spirited “Do You See What I See?” paintings and “Handled With Care: Shaker Master Crafts and The Art of Barbara Prey,” that are masterful in every way, as conveyed through the words of Madeleine Lord.
Lord also traveled to the Fuller Craft Museum, where she channeled the memory of a large jar of buttons she had found at a flea market, then spilled over a Des Plaines, Illinois bar surface, that revealed several mother-of-pearls, taken as a signal from her just-passed Mom whom she had just buried. She used that experience in exploring, piece by piece, its “Beau McCall: Buttons On!” exhibition that will give you a new appreciation for a realm of craft seemingly lost in the age of mass production, showing us, “how small things can tell big stories.”
There are many more art adventures covered in this issue and I hope that you’ll read and consider exploring each one, even if that only entails beginning to follow the venue or artist on Instagram.
Thanks for your continued readership, support and enthusiasm for Artscope Magazine.
Brian Goslow, managing editor
bgoslow@artscopemagazine.com