OFFERING A KEEN EYE AND UNIQUE VISION by Linda Chestney Perhaps best known for his marine scenes, be they oil or watercolor, Winslow Homer was also adept with other forms of artistic expression. The current show at the Ogunquit Museum of American Art highlights one of those other talents — wood engravings. Embedded on the front lines and behind the scenes as a journalist covering the Civil War for Harper’s Weekly, Homer drew sketches that were subsequently translated by staff engravers. The illustrations he created precluded photography in print publications. During the Civil War period (1861-1865), photographs weren’t easily reproducible and were technologically inferior to engravings. So, with a typical print run of 200,000 copies, Harper’s chose wood engravings. Organized by thematic groupings, this exhibition showcases Homer’s images of battle, camp life, and women’s … [Read more...] about Winslow Homer’s Civil War
Issue Articles
Gloucester Days
SLOAN IS RESTRAINED YET INSIGHTFUL by James Foritano Perusing the photographs of roisterous croquet tournaments and ebullient lobster bakes on the beach in the catalog for the Cape Ann Museum’s exhibit of paintings from John Sloan’s five summers spent with colleagues from the hot streets and brash sidewalks of New York City, one gathers that it was a delightful interlude. And yet, could one of the founders of that early 20th century New York school of painting — dubbed by outraged critics “Ashcan” one who delighted to picture Greenwich Village housewives drying their long hair (in their slips!) on rooftops ever find himself in an idyll without a nugget of provocation? Not likely. And yet, there was, as there pointedly wasn’t in Italy, France and Germany, some restraint in the painting community, some respect for an as yet undistorted figurative tradition. And yet reality … [Read more...] about Gloucester Days
Shared Sensibilities
THE POWER OF MUSIC ROLLS ON by Taryn Plumb Black ink dances up and down, left and right, intertwining in loops, ridges, curlicues, arcs, waves and pirouettes. Dark solitary streaks bob frenetically or lackadaisically and flatten out. Clusters of lines bunch tight together and then release in varied contours. Interspersed between them, following their own systematic patterns, are punched-out holes, rectangular voids of space: short... short... short... pause... long... long... pause. Snippets of verse also accompany at random, beginning, ending and drifting off in mid-thought. “...had our share, we’ve known the meaning of sorrow, blossoms of...” “...reason, Jeannine, I dream of lilac time, your eyes the beam...” Billowing out more than 20 feet, the roughly foot-wide scroll, “Dream in Lilac Time” by Lewiston artist Gail Skudera, is a physical manifestation of lyric and … [Read more...] about Shared Sensibilities
Black Chronicles II
A CRITICAL LOOK AT BLACK PHOTOGRAPHIC HISTORY by James Foritano When the Ethelbert Cooper Gallery of African & African American Art opened last fall in Harvard Square, just behind Peet’s Coffee, I was overjoyed, since there’s now somewhere in the square one can enter and leave with rich takings without being followed out the door by some officious busybody pestering you about “private property.” Of course, here you have to bring something in, leave it behind and come back again to re-examine the changes that have occurred since you left it there. But you’re up to that, I know, or we wouldn’t be talking. To accommodate a mid-August deadline, gallery director Vera Grant provided a preview of the exhibition three weeks prior to its official opening on September 2. Fortuitously, nothing on the walls had any identifying text so the exhibition, “Black Chronicles II,” curated by … [Read more...] about Black Chronicles II
Examining South Africa at Beard and Weil
A THOUGHT-PROVOKING DIALOGUE IN THREE EXHIBITS by Suzanne Volmer For its first presentation of the fall 2015 semester, Wheaton College is hosting a three-part exhibition that provides a timely look at South African contemporary art viewpoints in relation to an American artist’s statement. The Beard Gallery is featuring “Unsettled: One Hundred Years War of Resistance,” photography by South African artist Cedric Nunn, alongside “Johannesburg in Print,” a selection of prints made at David Krut Workshop (DKW), a fine art printmaking facility located in Johannesburg, South Africa. A site-specific installation, Providence based artist James Montford’s “The Planetarium of Black Indian Constellations,” is located in Wheaton’s Weil Gallery, which nests inside of the larger Beard Gallery. Curator Michele L’Heureux developed her concept for the shows after hearing about Women’s & … [Read more...] about Examining South Africa at Beard and Weil
Center for Contemporary Printmaking
CELEBRATING A 20-YEAR COLLABORATION by Kristin Nord Since 1995, The Center for Contemporary Printmaking (CCP) has cultivated a vibrant network of artists who use its equipment and services. This fall, visitors to the non-profit center in Norwalk, Conn. will be treated to what promises to be a spectacular 20th anniversary celebratory retrospective. The exhibition, partially underwritten by the International Fine Print Dealers Association, will showcase high quality prints from leading artists of the 20th century. From the painterly woodcuts of Helen Frankenthaler to the eight-color screen prints of poppies by Donald Sultan, the show will display a wide range of work by artists who are masters of various techniques. There will be prints by Michael Mazur, Robert Andrew Parker and Robert Cottingham, and gems culled from the CCP archives, including works by Rufino Tamayo, Robert … [Read more...] about Center for Contemporary Printmaking