“Hear, Here,” an exhibition of new works by Ann Steuernagel derived from listening to and working with the natural environment will be on view from May 2 through June 27 at the Gallery at WREN, 2011 Main St., Bethlehem, New Hampshire. “This captivating exhibition highlights Ann’s unique artistic approach, blending alternative photographic processes, sound, and video to evoke the intricate rhythms and gestures of the natural world.”
The 13th Biennial “State of Clay,” a juried show and art sale for original, innovative ceramic work by current and former residents of Massachusetts or those with close ties to Massachusetts, runs from May 3 through June 1 in the Molly Harding Nye Gallery at LexArt, 130 Waltham St., Lexington, Massachusetts. The aim of the show is to broaden public awareness of contemporary ceramic art and to provide a venue for Massachusetts’ clay artists. This year’s exhibition was juried by Martha Grover, a porcelain potter from Bethel, Maine.
Two exhibitions running from May 8 through June 29 at ArtsWorcester, 44 Portland St., Worcester, Massachusetts promise to introduce you to several new artists whose work you’ll want to follow for years to come. “The Twenty-First ArtsWorcester Biennial” will feature many of the region’s leading contemporary artists and comes with the Sally Bishop Prize for which the winner receives a solo exhibition at the Worcester Art Museum during their 2026-2027 exhibition season and a $1,000 prize. The work to be displayed in the “Origin: A Juried Exhibition” will be selected, designed and installed by high schoolstudents from the organization’s Future Arts Workers of Worcester and will include a wide variety of takes on the meaning of “origin.”
“Unique Perspectives,” a show featuring three well-known regional artists, Carole Bolsey, Gints Grinbergs, and Kelly Russo, continues through May 30 at Savage Godfrey Gallery, 693 Main St., Norwell, Massachusetts. Bolsey’s large canvas paintings regularly measure over 5-feet and can be upwards of 14-feet. Her evocative shapes of boats and barns are the subjects on display at the gallery, depicted amidst an abstracted ground, inviting the viewer to fill in the dots and transcribe their own memories and connections into the composition. Grinbergs’ large, reinvented pieces of steel sculptures have been seen throughout New England with botanicals, boats and sunbursts made of stainless steel on display here, complimented by Russo’s intuitive bright and dynamic abstract paintings.
If there ever was a timely reminder of why so many people come to the United States in search of a better life, it is the “Proleung Khmer: A Fifty-Year Journey of Remembrance and Resilience” exhibition that’s on view through June 1 at the Loading Dock Gallery, 122 Western Ave., Lowell, Massachusetts in which the UMass Lowell Department of History and Center for Asian American Studies is sharing its insight about refugee history and experiences, particularly those of Cambodian Americans, who comprise a significant percentage of the Lowell community. The show’s title translates to “Khmer Soul,” intending to represent “the blood, sweat, and tears that community members put forth after surviving the Khmer Rouge genocide. This unique and heartfelt show reflects people who desired not only to survive, but to thrive.” The year 2025 marks 50 years since the first Southeast Asian refugees began to arrive in the U.S., fleeing decades of civil conflict. The exhibit was organized by Dr. Christine Su, Visiting Faculty of Southeast Asian Studies at UMass Lowell.
First inspired by the resurfacing of fossilized detritus long ago embedded in the upthrust oceanic cliffs of coastal Ireland, painter Mira Cantor now applies grisly humor to the remnants of her earlier drawings of sea-forms in “When we were starfish,” on view through June 1 at Kingston Gallery, 450 Harrison Ave. #43, Boston, Massachusetts. The “leftovers” of Cantor’s personal history are anything but fossilized. Her anthropomorphic monstrosities riff on the many-armed starfish, essentially a walking stomach. Skeletal grins and grimaces totter on multiple appendages, gyrating and gesticulating in endless motion, their forms briefly fixed in powerful line before dissolving into inky puddles that retreat back into the grain of the paper.
In his exhibition, “Parareality,” Scott Boilard invites viewers to explore the intersection of the physical and the imagined; the show runs from June 9 through 26 at the Hunchback Gallery, 75 Webster St., Worcester, Massachusetts. Known for his blend of traditional rendering with modern color and composition, Boilard’s work evokes emotion rather than relying on literal representation. Influenced by symbolists, surrealists, classic illustrators and abstract expressionists, Boilard’s art reflects his lifelong study of the natural world, filtered through a fantastical lens. His pieces, held in many private collections, challenge the viewer to open their own imagination. The gallery shares studio space with several artists that have recently been featured in the pages of Artscope, with 75 Webster St. host to open studios every second Saturday of the month from 12-5 p.m.
“We Insist Too!” featuring visual stories by artists from the African diaspora told through painting, poetry and percussion, is on view through July 14 at Enso Gallery, 86 Centre St., Brockton, Massachusetts. The exhibition, a tribute to Jamaal Eversley’s continued efforts to bring art to new audiences, includes his own eccentric abstract art, along with that of Haitian American, spoken word poet and aspiring author Hannah Baptiste, and Boston-based multidisciplinary artist, Sophia Dubuisson, known as Phia, whose portraiture captures the essence of life through the use of facial expressions, movement, color and composition. Georgia-born, Boston-based, Ryan Horton explores his experience as a Black man in America through a number of creative methods and mediums that currently includes single line contour paintings and digital collage. Abu Mwenye (featured in the September/October 2024 issue of Artscope) is a Tanzanian American who paints with oils and acrylic to depict all aspects of African life through the use of Kanga patterns, Masai warriors, chungu, and shanga (beads).
“David Lloyd Brown: Primordial Soup” continues a series of exhibitions in the Mayor’s Office Gallery at the Boston City Hall Galleries that provides area artists with the opportunity to be seen by audiences they might not otherwise reach; the solo show remains on view through July 18. His large canvases create immersive pictorial spaces that are designed to envelop the viewer in a world of color and shapes. “I am inspired by images, symbols, and patterns that appear to be long lasting, almost timeless in many cultures. William Morris designs, the French Curve, the Boteh motif in Persian carpets, the paisley in Scotland, and in Mayan stone carvings, one sees a similar motif permeating those cultures and their artwork. Making these paintings in our current climate of environmental change has given me a sense of urgency and responsibility.”
Forty-five unique collage constructed pieces are featured in “Fragments of Memory: The Art and Legacy of Varujan Boghosian,” a rare chance to experience the late artist’ lyrical constructions, collages and assemblages created entirely from found and discarded objects presented by the Armenian Museum of America, 65 Main St., Watertown, Massachusetts. “Steeped in myth, memory, and literary symbolism, his works transform the ordinary into the poetic, inviting viewers to find beauty in forgotten things.” The show is scheduled to run through August 10.
For many, standing in front of a Monet painting is a lifetime event. But two? Claude Monet’s “Pommiers en fleurs (Apple Trees in Bloom),” 1872, and “Route près de Giverny (Road near Giverny),” 1885, are on view at the Hood Museum of Art at Dartmouth College, 6 East Wheelock St., Hanover, New Hampshire, through September 28. The two masterpieces are on loan to the Hood Museum from the Gregg Turk Foundation during the museum’s 40th anniversary year.