Much Of A Muchness by Elizabeth Michelman “Did you ever see such a thing as a drawing of a muchness?” the Dormouse asks Lewis Carroll’s Alice at the Mad Hatter’s tea party. It’s a maddening “muchness” Providence artist Kirstin Lamb draws and paints in her campaign against rumors of the Death of Painting. But Lamb is not mad, she is simply committed to the critical debate about what painting can be — and can no longer be. Excess is her trope and appropriation is her tool. A virtuoso in the handling and history of paint, she reveals the contingent stance of the consumer who is showered with cultural representations of the construction of desire and of feminine ambivalence. Like any conventional painter, Lamb prepares panels for painting, sets up still-life props, chooses paints, mixes colors and applies them with a brush. Recognizable content abounds in the paintings — … [Read more...] about Kirstin Lamb
March/April 2016
Emma Hogarth
Time Machine To The Present by Sarah Rushford “Compound Vision,” Emma Hogarth’s site-responsive interactive video installation, is a time machine that delivers us to the present. Currently featured in the “You Are Here” exhibition on view through March 26 at the New Art Center, 61 Washington Park, Newtonville, Mass., it operates as a portal through which the viewer passes in order to re-experience time and place. By viewing recorded and live video projections of the New Art Center’s architectural details, the viewer re-sees that irresistible blue window at the head of the gallery, the red door they just walked through and an image of themselves looking at the piece. These unfold quietly, with a charge. Here are some excerpts from a conversation with Hogarth about ideas that are central to her current interdisciplinary work. Rushford: You use the word "uncanny" in … [Read more...] about Emma Hogarth
Kate Gilbert
Keeping Up With The Active Activist by Donna Dodson In addition to being a fabulous administrator of public art as the director of the Boston-based non-profit organization Now + There, Kate Gilbert is a fabulous artist. From 2009 to 2011, her abstract work in painting took a turn toward sculpture when she started cutting the canvas to access the depth beyond the surface. Her graduate work from 2012-2013 at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston led her to explore concepts of consumerism and high fashion with one-of-a-kind wearables: wristlets, vests, dresses, hoods and jackets that allude to anxiety, fear, protection and utility. “Sculpture is the biggest umbrella of disciplines,” Gilbert said. “It incorporates objects, performance, installation, video, interactive and social practice.” Collaboration is a big part of her studio practice. She has worked with … [Read more...] about Kate Gilbert
Dancers Of The Nightway
Navajo Artists Weave Magic by J. Fatima Martins There’s a Navajo/Diné story in which Spider Woman, the ancient goddess who mapped out the universe and invented the weaving loom, rubbed spider webs on newly born baby girls to ensure they’d mature into great weavers. Although weaving is the core feature in the Navajo/Diné creation story, sacred spiritual imagery and symbolism weren’t traditionally included as design elements in Navajo/Diné rugs and blankets. These objects were primarily utilitarian and decorated with geometric patterns that may or may not implicitly refer to cultural history or identity. The permanent and explicit depiction of a divinity on these objects was taboo. The prohibition against depicting the sacred was challenged shortly after the turn of the 20th century by an artisan named Gle-nup-pah and her younger sister, Yah-nah-pah. These women caused … [Read more...] about Dancers Of The Nightway
A Feast For The Senses
Gallery Seven Whets Our Appetites by Brian Goslow Several times a year, artscope publisher Kaveh Mojtabai is asked to judge and/or curate exhibitions. For “FEAST: Images of the Edible,” on view through April 2 at Gallery Seven, he was charged to review an “eclectic” group of digital submissions on the theme of food. “I tried to pick work that would sell in a commercial gallery,” Mojtabai said, and select “work I could imagine being framed and going on someone’s wall.” Most of the work chosen was based in realism, along with a few abstract works. “There are some that push those boundaries but could easily hang on a person’s wall if they related to it personally,” he said. The end result is a warm mix of New England-themed work that would make the perfect housewarming gift or wedding present, or complement recent renovations to your kitchen or dining area — and I mean … [Read more...] about A Feast For The Senses
Looking Good On Paper
Artworks A Cut Above At Fuller Craft by Don Wilkinson Paper may be the most ubiquitous man-made material on the planet. Even in an increasingly digital world in which cash, books and handwritten letters are slowly being supplanted by debit cards, Kindle and Facebook, it endures. There is something about the tactility, about the crispness of a page turning or the sound of an envelope being crumpled, about its faint wood pulp aroma, that deeply engages us. As an art material, it is generally considered the substrate, the tabula rasa, the open possibility on which the art occurs by the deployment of pencil, crayon or other tool. But the artists in a new exhibition at the Fuller Craft Museum prove that the paper itself, when elevated by thoughtful and careful effort and craft, is worthy of consideration and contemplation. “Paper and Blade: Modern Paper Cutting” is a … [Read more...] about Looking Good On Paper