While it was unintentional, I realized that many of the stories in this edition of Artscope Magazine features artists whose work addresses important social and global issues, and that includes shows covered in our Capsule Previews section. Julia Csekö’s “Social Fabric” a solo exhibition at theSalem Old Town Hall focuses on area immigrants and their personal histories; Shared Habitat Earth continues to keep environment issues in the public eye with their “One Future: Life in the Age of Climate Change: Aspirations, Loss, Challenges — and Hope” exhibition at the Mosesian Center for the Arts; Maia Chao and Fred Schmidt-Arenales use their “Waste Scenes” to call attention to the seemingly unstoppable growth of non recyclable objects at the Mills Gallery at the Boston Center for the Arts; and Mary Topogna reminds us that “Black Lives Matter” still through her mosaic portraits at Vermont’s Studio Place Arts.
I’ve wanted to write about Jill Watts for over a decade; her work as a social worker, art educator, welfare rights advocate and artist shows up in her visionary performances, video, collage, and sculpture work. It’s currently on display at the Harold Stevens Gallery at community radio stationWCUW, just a few blocks from her home studio.
Lee Roscoe visited the Cape Cod Museum of Art on the opening day of its “Mariniana, The Interrupted Wave: “Techspressionist” moving image works exhibition created by Karen LaFleur and Renata Janiszewska, who she interviewed via Zoom later that afternoon. “This cutting-edge digital exhibition rides its own exciting wave of the avant- garde, using Myth and Science to explore the world of Ocean,” Roscoe writes, adding, “This is dear to my heart, as my own “Water Spirits Colloquy” combines myth and science in a short expressionist film/play.”
Roscoe also profiles Jay Critchley, who she calls, “a national treasure.” If you’ve visited Provincetown at any time over the past two decades, you’ve undoubtedly come across his work, either in the form of a one-of-a-kind outside installation – he once covered a shuttered motel in sand — gallery or museums shows, both inside and out, or the annual Swim for Life and Paddler Flotilla, events originally created to raise funds for and awareness of residents with AIDS, the September event is a major fundraiser for area community organizations of which he is a major organizer. This month, he trave to the Montserrat College of Art gallery to install “Jay Critchley: Democracy of the Land, Inc., FLAGrancy,” where it remains on view through March 5.
In-between reviewing and writing about “Abelardo Morell In the Company of Monet and Constable” at the Clark Art Institute and “Jeffrey Gibson: Powerful Because We’re Different” at MassMoCA, Marjorie Kaye travelled to the opening reception for December shows at Galatea Fine Arts and Hillsdale, New York, where gouache on shaped plywood “Time Zone I” sculpture was on display in the LABspace Holiday Show. After you’ve read her reviews, check out her art in three Massachusetts-based shows this January at Menino Arts Center, Hyde Park; the Parish Center for the Arts, Westford; and Galatea in Boston’s SoWa District.
Elayne Clift reviews two fabulous shows at Springfield Museums: “Tiffany’s Gardens in Glass” and “Gilded Echoes: The Tiffany Influence inJosh Simpson’s Glasswork.” I had the pleasure of interviewing Simpson several years ago after he had returned from Kazakhstan, where he visited his wife, Cady Coleman, a NASA astronaut who was preparing for a launch to the International Space Station later that year. I quickly learned that the views she sends him from space and his own plane flights gave him many of the ideas he transforms into beautiful glassworks. I was excited to learn that Elayne had met both at Simpson’s studio in Shelburne Falls, Massachusetts. You can read more of Clift’s writing in the review section of the New York Journal of Books.
Madeleine Lord visited the Attleboro Arts Museum’s masterfully curated annual members show that includes artwork by artists from Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut, New Hampshire and five other states. Linda Sutherland introduces us to the “untypical, fresh and innovative” 100 Market Gallery in Portsmouth, New Hampshire through its “From the Gardens of France to the Shores of Maine” exhibition while Carolyn Wirth previews Rachel Korn’s “gestural Zen” paintings that will be part of Three Stones Gallery’s “Onward” exhibition in Concord, Massachusetts this January and February.
Beth Neville felt “Waste Not, Want Not Crafts in the Anthropocene,” about to open at the Fuller Craft Museum, was an important exhibition that’s “a must- see for those interested in recycling our wealth’s debris into something beautiful” and arranged, with the help of the museum, to see it before both our press date and its official opening, where it complements the equally spectacular “Hand in Hand: Works from the Fleur S. Bresler Collection” show.
If you subscribe to our bi-weekly Artscope email blasts! you regularly read the work of Sawyer Smook-Pollitt, who composes the newsletter that supplements our magazine coverage. He returns to our magazine pages with a review of “Arctic Voices” at the New Bedford Art Museum looking at artworks made over the past two centuries that serve to show changes in the environment and landscape there.
Having immersed herself in pop culture and historical New England while working for the Animal Rescue League of Boston, Isabel Barbi also returns with a review of “AEROSOL: Boston’s Graffiti DNA, its Origin and Evolution” at SoWa Boston’s ShowUp Gallery, which continues its mission to present groundbreaking work started by its predecessor, the Beacon Gallery. Her story is complimented by J.M. Belmont’s coverage of the “Jean-Michel Basquiat and Ouattara Watts: A Distant Conversation” show at the Currier Museum of Art in Manchester, New Hampshire.
Chenoa Baker, who first wrote for us a few years back while working as an associate curator at Beacon Gallery and has introduced our readers to several next generation artists, has relocated to Philadelphia, where she is teaching Writing for Art and Design at Moore College of Art. Recently named one of WBUR’s Makers of the Year honoring creatives of color, Baker shares a now-outsider’s inside view of how Boston can become an even greater city through her “Dispatch to the New World: 2025 Provocations.”
I suspect we’ll be doing a lot of reminding each other where we come from in the months ahead and Claudia Fiks explains how her Brazilian roots shaped her life’s artistic visions and direction in her review of Art Basel Miami Beach 2024, an event that she writes, “celebrated not only artistic innovation but also the connections and conversations that art inspires — a testament to its enduring power to captivate, provoke, and unite.”
Through these stories, we hope we’re continuing to support artists, galleries, museums and art centers and organizations in attaining their goals of contributing to a peaceful, united world that celebrates all its people and stories in forming a culture of “One Love.” We thank you all for your continuing support, whether it’s through advertising or listing your events and exhibitions with us, taking out a subscription, either by mail or digitally, sharing a copy with a friend or one of our Instagram or Facebook posts with your followers. We’re all in this together.