As I walked to work last Election Day, I passed a crew power-washing a mural off the side of a building. Concentrated blasts of water hit the wall, dislodging chips of paint that swirled in rivulets towards the gutter. I frantically snapped pictures with my phone of the disappearing images from Daniel Galvez’s “Crossroads” mural, which had adorned the side of Central Square Library in Cambridge for over three decades. In creating it, Galvez had enlisted the help of local photographers to document the daily activities of neighborhood residents. He used these photographs as a design reference, and community volunteers to help paint. As a student, Galvez studied the work of Diego Rivera, José Clemente Orozco and David Siqueiros, the three most influential Mexican muralists of the 20th century. He became enchanted with the scale of their work, as well with how murals were used to convey … [Read more...] about CAMBRIDGE’S CHANGING MURALS: CONSTRUCTING COMMUNITY THROUGH PUBLIC ART
A WELCOME REOPENING: GREATLY MISSED, THE DANFORTH IS BACK
For the reopening at its new renovated location in the historic Jonathan Maynard Building, now part of Framingham State University, the Danforth Art Museum’s curator Jessica Roscio has organized a major permanent installation of the work and studio of Meta Vaux Warrick Fuller (1877–1968), a groundbreaking African-American sculptor, and three other temporary exhibitions: “Landed: Selections from the Permanent Collection;” “Armchair Travel;” and “Lois Tarlow: Material Vocabulary.” The reopening also features a selection of four recent acquisitions by Barbara Swan (1922–2003), including a portrait of Emily Dickinson, “The Frog Prince,” published in Anne Sexton’s “Transformations,” 1971, and “Mushrooms and Babies,” from Maxine Kumin’s “Up Country,” 1972. Together, the exhibitions highlight the museum’s mission as a collecting and educational institution, and a place to celebrate and … [Read more...] about A WELCOME REOPENING: GREATLY MISSED, THE DANFORTH IS BACK
A COLLECTOR’S PASSION: TRIBAL ARTIFACTS AND TEXTILES AT GROTON
The passion of a collector was evident the day Elizabeth Van Gelder and I met at the de Menil Gallery where 250 objects from her extensive collection are on display at the Groton School. Van Gelder’s collection of tribal artifacts and textiles, her “gathering of beauty,” began in 1989 with her travels while on sabbatical from her position as art teacher there. “I started collecting because I’m an artist and I’m a traveler,” she explained. “What excites me is going to a place where no one looks like me or speaks my language. That’s what I find the most interesting. It’s about different. It’s different from what I am and who I am and what I know. And so, every trip I take is, for me, a time to really learn something new. “When I started collecting, I focused on material culture. I realized that was one of the most intimate ways to know about a people or a culture. It tells you what … [Read more...] about A COLLECTOR’S PASSION: TRIBAL ARTIFACTS AND TEXTILES AT GROTON
AN INTRIGUING MELANGE: SHEILA GALLAGHER’S SOUL-PULLING PAINTINGS
Art that investigates human mourning and grief drives our most basic creative instincts. Buried in our DNA, the tears shed over death can even be seen evolutionarily in mammals and birds. Humans build tumuli, erect memorial statues, plant trees, make death masks, wear black and even throw themselves on funeral pyres. Sheila Gallagher’s art invents new materials and icons to help us grieve over death due to starvation, disease, warfare gassing and guns. Not surprisingly, her choice of media tends toward black, gray and white. There is little in her work to reassure us or bring happy memories to mind. Past atrocities recorded in her art may spur us to work to avoid historically destructive activities, but her art is not resistance, not therapy and not overtly political. The recently discovered deaths by starvation and neglect of up to 796 children at the Bon Secours Mother and Baby Home … [Read more...] about AN INTRIGUING MELANGE: SHEILA GALLAGHER’S SOUL-PULLING PAINTINGS
ARTIST, TEACHER, MUSE: PACKER PAINTS, BONDS CAPE COD’S HEARTBEAT
Suzanne M. Packer showed her first artwork at the San Francisco Museum of Art when she was five years old. Some of her earliest memories are of spending her Saturdays sitting at the dining table painting watercolors and drawing with her dad, A.S. Packer, noted illustrator for Parade magazine, as her mother, teacher and school principal, encouraged her. She grew up in a suburb near Manhattan and was taken to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the MOMA and the Frick Collection. She says art runs in the family. One grandchild is a working artist. Her “very supportive” husband, Dick McGarr, is a painter. They live in a uniquely artistic house designed by Nina Wolff, with wide pine panel floors, stressed-wood doors and exposed beams. Married with children and freelancing as a graphics designer — for which she had trained at Rhode Island School of Design (RISD) in the 1960s — she opened … [Read more...] about ARTIST, TEACHER, MUSE: PACKER PAINTS, BONDS CAPE COD’S HEARTBEAT
ELECTRIFIED BUT RUSTIC: TWENTY-ONE IN TRURO’S CAHOON RETREAT
They have different backgrounds, influences, subject matter and mediums, but they are united in supportiveness and mutual respect as the “Twenty-One in Truro.” The group started in 1999 when two women thought the Corn Hill cottages in Truro, Cape Cod, would make a great artists’ retreat. Within about a week, 21 women, all the place had room for, had signed on. The venue for their annual week-long retreat at the end of September into October changed years back, from the dunes overlooking the bay, to the south-facing side of Truro’s Pamet River at the five Sladeville Cabins (which themselves have an artistic history going back to the 1920s). “It’s electrified but rustic,” said Kate Nelson. “We have to prepare for 20- to 80-degree weather, bring boots for mud, bring food and artist’s materials, but it’s great; you get to leave your husband and kids, and be yourself.” In their … [Read more...] about ELECTRIFIED BUT RUSTIC: TWENTY-ONE IN TRURO’S CAHOON RETREAT