Rachel Portesi was nine years old when she took her first Polaroid of a Sunday morning cartoon on the television screen. At 16, she began taking photographs of people and places with a Pentax K1000. Nearly three decades later, she continues refining photography in her Vermont studio as a uniquely personal art form while adding new techniques such as wet plate collodion tintypes, film and 3D imagery to her multimedia art forms. Portesi’s work in various media is featured in the exhibition, “Rachel Portesi: Looking Glass,” on view from January 15 through March 1 at The von Auersperg Gallery at Deerfield Academy, in Deerfield, Massachusetts. Among her most notable, and now recognized work, are her hair portraits that use the early photographic method of collodion tintype, which she discovered after Polaroid film was no longer available. “It’s finicky, slow and time-consuming,” … [Read more...] about THROUGH THE LOOKING GLASS
Artscope Issues
A CONTEMPORARY TAKE
Only 45 minutes beyond Portland, in Lewiston, Maine, a winter trekker will revel in two exhibitions at the Bates College Art Museum unique to its own holdings, on view through March 18. On the main floor, in conversation with Bates’s renowned Marsden Hartley Memorial Collection, Museum Director Dan Mills has brought together eight contemporary artists whose works illuminate the wide-ranging sensibility of this Modernist giant who styled himself the “Painter of Maine.” The lower gallery showcases the cream of a collection of contemporary photographic prints recently donated to Bates College by the well-known Maine photographer and philanthropist, Barbara Morris Goodbody. “And So Did Pleasure...” follows as an inspired second act to last year’s major Hartley exhibition at Bates. Each artist has selected one of Hartley’s drawings from the collection that speaks to their work and offers … [Read more...] about A CONTEMPORARY TAKE
WELCOME January/February 2023: FROM BRIAN GOSLOW
Welcome to our first issue of 2023! Our devoted Artscope Magazine staff have worked overtime throughout the holiday season to ensure we provided you with a strong selection of exhibitions for viewing over the next two months and artists to put on your must-investigate and must-see lists over the year ahead. We start with the Bates College Museum of Art that has two great exhibitions — “And So Did Pleasure Take the Hand of Sorrow and They Wandered Through the Land of Joy,” in which eight contemporary artists take the lead of Marsden Hartley and “Expressions of Compassion: Selections from the Barbara Morris Goodbody Photography Collection,” a show filling half the museum with photographs that, Elizabeth Michelman writes, was worth the trip up north to Lewiston, Maine from the Boston area. Rachel Portesi’s “Hair Portraits” have been making their way around New England — most recently at … [Read more...] about WELCOME January/February 2023: FROM BRIAN GOSLOW
CAPSULE PREVIEWS: November/December 2022
“Artists for Ukraine: Transforming Ammo Boxes into Icons,” a powerful installation of three Ukrainian icons painted on the boards of ammunition boxes by Oleksandr Klymenko and Sofia Atlantova, a husband-wife artistic team from Kyiv, Ukraine, will be on view from November 3 through February 13, 2023, at the Museum of Russian Icons, 203 Union St., Clinton, Massachusetts. They’re part of the ongoing “Buy an Icon — Save a Life” project originally created in response to Russia’s 2014 invasion of Ukraine after Klymenko found empty wooden ammunition boxes from combat zones and noted their resemblance to icon boards (doski). By repurposing the panels, the project strives, in the artist’s words, to “transform death (symbolized by ammo boxes) into life (traditionally symbolized by icons in Ukrainian culture). The goal, this victory of life over death, happens not only on the figurative and … [Read more...] about CAPSULE PREVIEWS: November/December 2022
A MAGNIFICENT GLOBAL ART EXPERIENCE
“Live life with no excuses. Travel with no regret.” — Oscar Wilde The art of travel is traveling with art! Are we there yet? While traveling, experiencing the world through the eyes of artists has always provided me with a safe method to understand the context and experience events that instantly connect me closer to the local culture. Inspired by the hiatus provided by the virus spread, with gratitude to science, the traveling industry is bouncing back. This past summer was the perfect setting to bid the international art world hello, again! As I satisfied my cravings for exploration of the global art world in person, my adventures included Ireland, Scotland and London. I ventured through some less-traveled and some heavily traveled roads, and the arts were always my guiding star. In Ireland, among my local discoveries were the hand weavers from the River Avoca. The little town of … [Read more...] about A MAGNIFICENT GLOBAL ART EXPERIENCE
AN INNER SENSE OF WHOLENESS
Olivia Bernard’s exhibition of sculpture and two-dimensional work spreads out under the sloping roof of The Stoneleigh- Burnham School’s Geissler Gallery. Hanging sheets of white scrim bound the space on one side, separating her work from that of another well-known installation artist, Karen Dolmanisth. Bernard’s self-curated selections, which span her output of the last 26 years, combine earlier with later works to propose more of a gist than a direct path connecting the lot. Each sculpture demands enough space that, when one is in its presence, the next one hovering nearby does not impinge on one’s sense of being alone with another being. Each piece holds its own, capturing the viewer’s attention and indeed anxiety. As with Giacometti’s figures, one finds that on more intimate approach the works feel larger and more charged. The abstract work is grounded in cumulative experiences … [Read more...] about AN INNER SENSE OF WHOLENESS