Scott Tulay In Brattleboro by Greg Morell I happen to love color the more bold and brash, the better. I also have a proclivity toward figurative depiction and symbol. So how is it that I have been so taken by the monochromatic work of Scott Tulay, a sorcerer of black, white and gray? I first came across his work many years ago. My first Tulay encounter was with his depictions of the skeletal remnants of ancient New England barns teetering on the brink of oblivion; charred by fire, age and neglect, these relics were balanced on the edge of total collapse. The landscape of the Western Massachusetts valley towns of Sunderland, Hatfield and Hadley is dotted with outworn tobacco barns, and Tulay’s own grandfather was a Hadley tobacco farmer. He fondly remembers his Polish grandmother rolling her own cigars and puffing up clouds of the pungent smoke. These barns resonated with … [Read more...] about Drawing On, In, Out
Issue Articles
Nora Valdez: Relocations
Ancient Tradition Meets Modern Vision by Elizabeth Michelman Nora Valdez’s stone sculpture follows ancient traditions, but the insights found in her surrealistic visions are very much of our time. Born in Argentina, Valdez emigrated in her twenties to learn Italian in her mother’s homeland and then went to Spain on a fellowship to learn carving. After a few years assisting in carving public monuments there, she moved to the United States and settled down to raise a family. Since then, she has lived abroad for many months at a time in Europe, China and South America, teaching and carving large-scale works. Most summers, she runs stone-carving workshops on the grounds of a marble quarry at the Carving Studio and Sculpture Center in West Rutland, Vermont while executing her own forms. With modern power tools and her direct feel for the stone, she can sculpt a … [Read more...] about Nora Valdez: Relocations
Wood At Montserrat
Only The Strong Survive by James Foritano With so many icons crowding into our national, if not global, consciousness, you have to wonder if wood, just wood, holds any longer those numinous qualities we hand out so profligately to tin-pot celebrities. The Druids worshiped wood in the form of living trees. And how many documents of iconic importance were penned under the regal branches of oaks and chestnut? Think of Boston’s own Liberty Tree, now just a bas-relief plaque on the edge of Chinatown, or Longfellow’s spreading chestnut boughs — crowded out by sprawl — under which the doughty village blacksmith labored with glistening brow and ropy muscles. And yet, there are still some souls who roll up their sleeves and peel back layers of prejudice assigning wood, so unjustly, to the lumberyard of our consciousness. And where, you might ask, I hope with some curiosity, is this … [Read more...] about Wood At Montserrat
Olitski and McCullough In NH
Answering The Call Of The Wild by Arlene Distler The paintings and prints in the Jules Olitski “Lakes, Mountains, Seas” exhibition currently on view at Keene State College’s Thorne- Sagendorph Gallery show an artist who was still in full command of his creative powers in the last decade of his life. He died in 2007 at age 84. The show consists of paintings the artist made on site during or that were inspired by his summers on Bear Island in Lake Winnipesaukee in New Hampshire. He had a house on the lake since the 1970s. Olitski had a special relationship with the Thorne-Sagendorph, which the gallery honors with this show, part of a celebration of its 50th anniversary. “Sea of Paradise” (60” x 84”) is perhaps the “WOW!” painting in the show. It is front and center as one enters the first room of the exhibit. Yellows and oranges thrust up like molten lava, meeting purple, … [Read more...] about Olitski and McCullough In NH
Putting Out Feelers
BCA’S 24TH Drawing Show by Elizabeth Michelman Flat, Flatter, Flattest. “Feelers,” the Boston Center for the Arts’ 24th Drawing Show at the Mills Gallery, is a biennial juried selection of 60 works from 56 artists hailing from as close as the Boston area to as far away as Iceland. Visiting curator Susan Metrican, director of the arts at Brandeis University, sought to capture a “certain something” about contemporary drawing practice through associations to Edwin A. Abbott’s romance “Flatland,” a dystopia of a two-dimensional world. The flat inhabitants of this plane can only know others by reaching outside their own perimeters to “feel” them. Feeling, however interpreted, may be an essential component of all forms of art. But Metrican’s exploration of the term seeks to pinpoint how some “drawings” heighten our awareness of what qualifies as “flat.” Risking a … [Read more...] about Putting Out Feelers
Hassan Hajjaj’s Rock Stars
Rockin’ The Casbah And Beyond by J. Fatima Martins With great rhythm and swanky style, photographer-filmmaker-designer Hassan Hajjaj brings his inclusive visual language to the Worcester Art Museum (WAM) this November. His bombastic site-specific exhibition, “My Rock Stars,” is a music video installation presented in dialogue with photographic portraits of featured musicians and performers. Full disclosure: While I did listen to examples of Gnawa (a beautiful traditional North African musical style rooted in the history of slavery and featured in the installation) in order to deconstruct Hajjaj’s art for this review, I couldn’t stop thinking about “Rock the Casbah” by The Clash (1982), which to me seemed to fit the subversiveness of the exhibition: “But the Bedouin they brought out the electric camel drum, The local guitar picker got his guitar-picking thumb, As soon … [Read more...] about Hassan Hajjaj’s Rock Stars