It is not until I return back to the layers of tree bark that frame the entrance to “Our Time on Earth” that I am bold enough to put my nose to it and inhale deeply. My suspicions are confirmed: it smells delicious, like sweet amber and something quietly sharp. I think immediately of how I want to wear it—to bottle it up — to be able to envelop myself in it any time I want. The thought is followed by a series of questions, all spurred by the very exhibit the bark marks the entrance to. Why do I want to “own” this scent? Where does that impulse come from? What if I could find satisfaction in the simple miracle of smelling it here, now? This is how I know the exhibition has done its job. I have already been changed. Organized by London’s Barbican Centre and curated by Luke Kemp alongside guest curators Caroline Till and Kate Franklin of Franklin Till, “Our Time on Earth” makes its United … [Read more...] about A SHARED FUTURE AT PEM: OUR TIME ON EARTH SHOW AIMS TO SPARK ACTION
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SOARING SOLILOQUIES OF HOME: DINA NAZMI KHORCHID’S PALESTINIAN-ROOTED ART
Pigeons, a common name for gray doves, symbolizes peace. They often roam urban epicenters and make home wherever they land. The resilience of their spirit is often overlooked because we see them often. Dina Nazmi Khorchid’s textile and installation work draws from the metaphor of the pigeon to talk about her migration story. Khorchid is like what surrealistic blues poet aja monet calls “born of distance between now and then” as the sediments of inherited trauma and migratory patterns influence Khorchid. She migrated from Lebanon to the United Arab Emirates then Lebanon, again, and then the United States. While her story is deeply personal, it connects to a broader narrative of her Palestinian culture. I wish we did not have to admire her for her strength because strength is a burden. Her vulnerability is on display through her recent pigeon series. Pigeons started appearing in her work … [Read more...] about SOARING SOLILOQUIES OF HOME: DINA NAZMI KHORCHID’S PALESTINIAN-ROOTED ART
CORNERED: MIRA CANTOR
Mira Cantor has taught color theory, drawing and painting for 40 years, 25 of them as a tenured professor in the Art and Architecture Department at Northeastern University. She has always been driven to learn as well as to teach through her art. Artscope Magazine’s Elizabeth Michelman “Cornered” Cantor in her studio a month before her March 2024 exhibition at Boston’s Kingston Gallery to discuss the paintings and drawings she’d completed during her 2023 sabbatical. Cantor has spent the last 17 summers in County Clare, western Ireland, teaching an art semester abroad in the village of Ballyvaughan. She paints the world in a studio near the historical and geological refuge of The Burren, on the lip of the Atlantic Ocean. Over the years she has hiked the beaches, caves and riven pavements throughout this upthrust primeval seabed. From the eroding cliffs of its rolling limestone terrain, … [Read more...] about CORNERED: MIRA CANTOR
PAINTING JOY THROUGH PAIN: BETHANY NOËL “CONTROLS” MIGRAINES THROUGH HER ART
“There are three types of days. Days where I can do everything, days where I’m fine but can’t do it all, and days where I’m interrupted, and we have to start again.” Clad in paint-spattered coveralls, artist Bethany Noël shows me around her 500-square-foot Holliston Mills studio in Holliston, Massachusetts. We’re “supervised” by her four-legged studio mate and trail companion, Sargent, a large and soulful-eyed German Shepherd mix. “He’s named after the painter,” she confirmed. Under filtered winter light, a series of squiggly black-and-white plein air ink sketches rest in loose rows on a table running half the length of the studio’s windowed wall. She pulls a palm-sized one off the table and shows me. “This is the source sketch for ‘Joy,’” she said. The finished painting, currently on view at the Open Door Arts Gallery at the Worcester Art Museum, in Worcester, Massachusetts, is a … [Read more...] about PAINTING JOY THROUGH PAIN: BETHANY NOËL “CONTROLS” MIGRAINES THROUGH HER ART
A PLATFORM TO SPEAK THEIR TRUTHS: THE MYTH OF NORMAL: MASSART AT 150
“The Myth of Normal: A Celebration of Authentic Expression,” currently on view at MassArt Art Museum, was inspired by guest curator Mari Spirito’s reading of “The Myth of Normal: Trauma, Illness, and Healing in a Toxic Culture,” a 2022 book by Gabor Maté (written with Daniel Maté). The show, which reopens after the Massachusetts College of Art and Design’s winter break on January 18, is a platform for artists to speak their truths. The exhibition is a globally inclusive distillation of contemporary zeitgeist. It offers a sensory antidote to what the exhibition notes mention as, “beliefs and behaviors that are generally con- sidered normal even though they are in fact making us emotionally and physically sick [think of] human beings contorting themselves in order to survive day to day life.” The curatorial choices of Spirito (MassArt Class of ‘92), reflect an understanding that ours is … [Read more...] about A PLATFORM TO SPEAK THEIR TRUTHS: THE MYTH OF NORMAL: MASSART AT 150
STOLEN MOMENTS AT RIC: AMY MONTALI’S MOVING IMAGES AT BANNISTER GALLERY
I recently visited photographer Amy Montali at her Providence, Rhode Island studio where we sat with each other discussing her art. She had purposefully arranged on a table between us a scale-model, or miniature version, of her upcoming solo exhibition, “Amy Montali: Thief,” that will be on view from November 9 through December 8 at the Bannister Gallery at Rhode Island College. Using the scale-model as a tool, Montali was in the midst of making placement decisions among the included photographs, controlling sight lines in advance. Montali described her photography approach as aligned mostly with ways in which dance and theater are made, explaining that her work shares with these art forms a sensibility for isolating gestures, developing new phrases, as the method for building content. She mentioned an affinity for “Samuel Beckett, for the mix and cross play of epic, mundane and … [Read more...] about STOLEN MOMENTS AT RIC: AMY MONTALI’S MOVING IMAGES AT BANNISTER GALLERY