APRIL 15 AND 16, 2019 --- Notre Dame de Paris, the famous world heritage site, began burning early Monday evening, local time (noon EST), minutes after it closed to the public. As of late afternoon, EST, fire had poured into the empty space left when the iconic spire toppled into the nave of the cathedral, threatening the wooden frame, flying buttresses and famous rose windows. The Île de la Cité had been evacuated, but acrid black smoke, possibly due to the burning of the 250 tons of lead topping the spire, was visible and pouring soot and smoke on people standing safely across either side of the Seine watching the catastrophe unfold. The Cathedral’s construction was ordered by Maurice de Sully, the Bishop of Paris, in 1160, during the reign of Louis VII with construction beginning in 1163, completed in 1345. The flying buttresses invented to hold the eaves of the Cathedral together … [Read more...] about Notre Dame Burning
Creativity to Enlightenment: Material Culture at Elga Wimmer Gallery
“Material Culture,” curated by Roya Khadjavi, on view from April 4 until April 18, 2019 at Elga Wimmer Gallery PCC in New York City’s Chelsea District features five Iranian-born artists now working in the United States: Aida Izadpanah; Dana Nehdaran; Maryam Khosrovani; Mayam Palizgir and Massy Nasser Ghandi. Providing a window into the history of Persian art forms, they appropriate the language of Persian miniatures and Chinese landscape painting and spatial orientation. They contemporize traditions of Persian art in new and creative ways while retaining and respecting age-old Persian forms. My walk around the gallery began with Massy Nasser Ghandi’s dark landscape paintings on porcelain, “An Interpretation of the Horizon.” Variegated colors, browns and blacks in images of land visible at night and white waves full of air holes laying on a blue-grey sea composed realistic but … [Read more...] about Creativity to Enlightenment: Material Culture at Elga Wimmer Gallery
TAKING FORM: FIBERS & FABRIC AT GALATEA FINE ART
In collaboration with The Eliot School of Fine & Applied Arts, Galatea Fine Art is currently presenting the works of internationally established artists who teach at the school. Jodi Colella, Merill Comeau and Kristina Goransson show their pieces in the “Taking Form: Fibers & Fabric” exhibition. All of the work on display employs fabric, fibers and textiles in an inimitable manner. Each artist brings an entirely different aspect to the intimate space through their variant works, while showing their dedication to craftsmanship. From creating and dying wool fabric from scratch; quilting with various textiles; and sculpting with taxidermy, toys and fabric, the dedication and passion for uncommon material is clear throughout the exhibition. The Eliot School of Fine & Applied Arts, located in Boston, Massachusetts, partners with Galatea twice a year, once in the Fall and once … [Read more...] about TAKING FORM: FIBERS & FABRIC AT GALATEA FINE ART
CORNERED: ELLEN GROBMAN AT HAMPDEN GALLERY, UMASS AMHERST
Amherst, MA - For Amherst, Massachusetts-based painter Ellen Grobman, painting sounds like an exhausting and exhilarating process in which she starts with an idea, aims to pull it in a new direction and then sees what’s left when she tries to leave as little of the original thought as possible by the time she’s finish. Her website describes her work as being powered by, “This drive to bring something into being, disrupt it, and then flirt with its destruction — the boundary of something existing and then not.” Depending on the piece, there are touches of 19th century furniture wallpaper patterns, abstract expressionism, fauvism, symbolism and whatever connections each swash of paint ignites in her mind. These explorations continue in her current exhibition, “There, Not There,” on view through March 31 at Hampden Gallery in the Southwest Residential Area at the University of … [Read more...] about CORNERED: ELLEN GROBMAN AT HAMPDEN GALLERY, UMASS AMHERST
BOSTON LYRIC OPERA’S ‘THE RAPE OF LUCRETIA’
Excellence can seem such a simple achievement. Merely assemble practiced, solid parts such as singer/actors, music and libretto (on a timeless theme) and put them on a stage-in-the-round so all their virtues wrap the audience in easy accessibility — not to mention three electronic boards with the dialogue raised high so it’s readable from every angle — and continue, for the duration, to stay out of the way, for goodness sake, until the play is done! Actually, there is some meddling with this simple formula which is so professional that one barely notices, but feels, the enhancements it delivers, while watching Benjamin Britten’s new Boston Lyric Opera production of “The Rape of Lucretia.” Three toughs who also happen to be aristocrats occupy a steep flight of stairs at stage rear of the opening scene. Between battles with a Greek army threatening Rome, they are contemplating what … [Read more...] about BOSTON LYRIC OPERA’S ‘THE RAPE OF LUCRETIA’
MONET’S WATERLOO BRIDGE: VISION AND PROCESS AT WORCESTER ART MUSEUM
Having a single work by a master on display in your museum can be a major attraction in its own right. Have nine of them — especially from a single series — and you’ve got a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity and event. That’s the case with “Monet’s Waterloo Bridge: Vision and Process,” which features nine paintings created from 1899 through 1901 by French Impressionist Claude Monet at the Savoy Hotel in London and completed back at his studio in Giverny that are on display through April 28 at the Worcester Art Museum. Local residents who have long had the honor of having a 1903 work from the series on permanent display at WAM have been basking in the limelight of having themselves surrounded by a strong representation of the series, much in the way Monet saw them when he created them in two rooms at the Savoy. The unique coupling is possible through loans from the Milwaukee Art … [Read more...] about MONET’S WATERLOO BRIDGE: VISION AND PROCESS AT WORCESTER ART MUSEUM