Whether you’ve been a longtime Artscope reader or just learned of us in the past few months, either through a shared Instagram or Facebook post or picked us up in the Magazines sector at Art Basel, welcome to our final issue of 2024.
When Artscope publisher Kaveh Mojtabai, attending a recent opening reception for a Massachusetts Chapter of the National Association of Women Artists exhibition, learned that Lisa Goren, a Boston-based watercolorist whose works focus on her travels to the polar regions and animals in “human” spaces, was going to be in France for a residency at La Porte Peinte in Burgundy that was ending just as Art Basel Paris was opening, he offered her the chance to cover the international art fair for this issue. In addition to her artmaking, she’s written for the New York Times, Washington Post and The Boston Globe, and we’re pleased to have her sharing her experience at the Grand Palais in this issue. Goren’s artwork will be on view next March at the Superfine Art Fair in San Francisco.
We’ll be returning to the Magazines sector at Art Basel Miami Beach. In preparing this issue, J.M. Belmont, recently promoted to the position of Associate Editor here at Artscope, suggested we include a review of the “Manet: A Model Family” exhibition at Boston’s Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum and that we ask Beth Neville, who’s never shied away from giving her honest opinion of an exhibition, to cover it. She does just that, as well as the “Mary Ellen Mark: A Seattle Family, 1983-2014” photography show that accompanies it.
Belmont himself reviews the “Filtered Identity: The Art of Tigran Tsitoghdzyan” exhibition of “hyper-realistic paintings” at the Armenian Museum of America in Watertown, Massachusetts, a venue that not only continues to present groundbreaking modern artists, but, as Belmont notes, a “thorough chronicle of the Armenian Genocide and its celebratory collection of Armenian art and culture.”
Erica DeMatos recently completed an internship with us at Artscope Magazine prior to graduating with a bachelor’s degree in English from Lesley University in September. Now a freelance copywriter and editor who hopes to work in museum publications, DeMatos reviews the “Christo and Jeanne-Claude: Ocean Front, 50 Years Later” exhibition on view through the end of the year at the Newport Art Museum in Rhode Island. “Having spent time with my family in Newport each year during the holidays, I was interested to see how such an ephemeral sculpture impacted the landscape I have since come to love,” she noted.
James Foritano made several repeat visits to see, re-explore and learn from the “Tomashi Jackson: Across the Universe” exhibition at the Tufts University Art Galleries, that presented, he writes, “a rich and complicated journey across a universe of civil rights history, specifically of America’s Black citizens” using collaged materials to symbolize “a momentous event usually accomplished by decades of courage, purpose and sheer endurance.”
We were putting together this issue as the 2024 Presidential Election drew closer, and by the time you read this, it will either be on the dawn of or after the first Tuesday of November. Artists have always used their work to convey their inner feelings, and we review two shows that do just that while looking at what happens to politically themed artwork after their associated time period passes.
Marjorie Kaye talked with Dawn Nelson, whose “One Day at a Time: Four Years of Chaos” exhibition that will be on view throughout November at the Eclipse Mill Gallery in North Adams, Massachusetts, consisting of highlights from over four years of daily collages and diary entries made between December 2016 and February 2021.
Claudia Fiks explores the third installment of Jamaal Eversley’s “This Is America: Art Exhibit by the People, for the People” on view through December 20 at the PEG Center for Art and Activism in Newburyport, Massachusetts. The first thing about the show that drew my attention was the inclusion of Anne Plaisance‘s “Sour Times” portrayal of the 49-star American flag with barbed wire that made the cover of our November/December 2018 issue standout like few others. Seeing it again answered my own question I had asked Kaye and Fiks to answer in their stories: “Will this work still be relevant years from now?
A longtime friend of Artscope has been sculptor Andrew DeVries. After visiting his Western Massachusetts based studio and sculpture garden over the summer, Carolyn Wirth pitched an article on his 45-year career. I hope his story compels you to investigate his artwork – if you aren’t familiar with it already. I hope too that you find inspiration in his, and his wife, Patricia’s, goal of creating and leaving his artwork for future generations and surrounding it with flowers and plants that will turn his riverside property into a “pollinator heaven.”
Madeleine Lord made two studio visits for her contributions to this issue: she dropped by Mo Kelman’s Providence studio to get a look at the work that will be on display in her “Water Ways” exhibition from November 21 through December 17 at the Chazan Gallery at the Wheeler School,; she then traveled to Cape Ann on the North Shore of Massachusetts to survey the mosaic and glass works of Cassie Doyonthat will be on view in her “Journey” show at Galatea Fine Art in Boston’s SoWa District this December. Elayne Clift received a guided tour of Jill Pottle’s “Familiar Spaces and Places” that can be seen through November 30 at the Creative Connections Gallery in Ashburnham, Massachusetts, a short drive off Route 20 in the central part of the state.
We were thrilled in early October when WBUR named Chenoa Baker as one of its 2024 Makers, noting, “the work of these 10 artists inspires awe, creates joy and transforms communities” in the state of Massachusetts. We’ve been fortunate to have her in the pages of Artscope introducing new artists to our readership. In this issue, Baker profiles Rowan Raskin, a 2024 Greater Boston Art and Business Council Walter Feldman Fellow and recent Rhode Island School of Design graduate.
Earlier in the year, we shared Elizabeth Michelman and Suzanne Volmer’s experiences at the ChaNorth International artist residency in New York’s Hudson Valley. For this issue, Volmer reviews Jo Ann Rothschild’s “Warm to the Touch” exhibition that Michelman curated for the Storefront Art Projects in Watertown, Massachusetts – a show that shows even after 50 years of painting, Rothschild work is still exciting and compelling.
And while we’re celebrating longevity, Ami Bennitt of #ARTSTAYSHERElooks at the 50-year legacy of Vernon Street Studios and the retrospective exhibition and open studios celebration that will be held this December honoring the Somerville, Massachusetts landmark and the artist haven that still has many more fresh ideas for the future.
As do we at Artscope Magazine, who wish you a safe and peaceful holiday season and look forward to discovering new artwork alongside you in the year ahead.
Brian Goslow
bgoslow@artscopemagazine.com