Olafur Eliasson has a long history with MIT and many local fans have been fortunate to hear him speak, attend a lecture or meet him in person over the years. In 2014, he received the Eugene McDermott Award in the Arts that included a residency at the institution. At that time, he brought his “Little Suns,” a portable solar energy light source that he developed in 2012, to campus for support, development and innovation. His recent public art project, “Northwest Passage,” brings together his environmental concerns with the work he has done with his colleagues at MIT. Eliasson’s artist talk and sculpture dedication on February 26, 2019 offered up a window into his practice and way of thinking. Trained as an architect, he thinks about the big picture. For example, “Northwest Passage” refers to the sea route to the Pacific Ocean through the Arctic Ocean, along the northern coast of North … [Read more...] about OLAFUR ELIASSON: NORTHWEST PASSAGE
REVIEW OF ‘ANSEL ADAMS: IN OUR TIME’ AT MFA BOSTON
Ansel Adams’s Manzanar photos “burn one’s eyes.” Twice in 1943, Ansel Adams ventured to the desert of east central California, to focus his lens, not on some magnificent landscape, but on the desolate Manzanar War Relocation Center to document the life of the Japanese interred there. The result was the 1944 publication of Born Free and Equal, a 112-book that presented a selection of his Manzanar photos with text by Adams. The MFA exhibition “Ansel Adams: In Our Time” thoughtfully and beautifully demonstrates Adams’ influence on the work of several 21st-century photographers. But the exhibition (which ended February 24) offers up only four small photos and a brief explanation about this little-known chapter in his life’s work. Adams’s Manzanar photos, which warrant further exploration, are strongly “of our time,” a time when once again “the other” is being demonized. On February … [Read more...] about REVIEW OF ‘ANSEL ADAMS: IN OUR TIME’ AT MFA BOSTON
MAKING CONNECTIONS WHILE ON AN ART-THEMED VACATION
VACATION TRAVEL FOR ARTISTS: WORK OR PLEASURE? Every vacation I take with my wife (and fellow Myth Maker), Donna Dodson, begins with goals: take a break together, hike landscapes, experience climates unfamiliar and see art that inspires. We prioritize exercise, abhor crowds and limit driving to four hours a day. After a year of working in our studios preparing solo shows and completing four monumental public art projects, the idea of unfamiliar art museums and walking blocks of art galleries together seemed a delightful rest. Donna had Niki de Saint Phalle’s “Queen Califia’s Magical Circle” in Escondido, California in mind. My ambition was an off-season hike into the Grand Canyon. Phoenix proved a great arts-destination airport for our adventures. We experienced a fortuitous beginning — public art greeted us at the car-rental building: Ten of Jun Kaneko’s life-size, ceramic … [Read more...] about MAKING CONNECTIONS WHILE ON AN ART-THEMED VACATION
CAPSULE PREVIEWS
“Renewal” is the theme of this year’s “Annual Juried Members Show” that opened on February 28 at the Copley Society of Art, 158 Newbury St., Boston. The exhibition, which continues the gallery’s tradition of covering a wide variety of mediums, including painting, photography, graphite and pastel, was curated by Meg White, director of Gallery NAGA. First prize was awarded to Acadia Mezzofanti’s illusionistic photograph, “Self-Portrait: Untamed;” Carolyn Latanision’s watercolor painting of a rusted steel engine, “Powered Down, Bethlehem Steel,” took second prize while Mary Hughes earned third p rize for her abstract painting, “Ice Flow I,” which evokes winter-ice surfaces. The show runs through March 28. Art League Rhode Island is presenting “Twisting Fibers — An Art for All Reasons,” an open juried national exhibition that opens on March 8 and continues through May 8 at the Blackstone … [Read more...] about CAPSULE PREVIEWS
SAMURAI WHITE: HEAVY METAL AND MUERTOS NUTCRACKERS FIND LOVE
“It’s basically my brain throwing up — because I have to get it out — I do the ‘thing’ and I feel a lot better afterwards. It’s like I have a record of it. This is what happened, and there’s the proof. It’s out of me and it’s in its container.” Samurai White has found a way to deal with the darkness. During her time at Rhode Island School of Design in the early 2000s, White studied graphic design and mix media arts, but years later, took a deep dive into her art as a coping mechanism while caring for her father as he was dying of lymphoma. Having left her own life up North to be with him in Atlanta, his fate looking evermore grim, White began building these funny little men, her “Heavy Metal Nutcrackers:” Slash, David Lee Roth, Ozzy Osbourne, just to name a few. Wooden nutcrackers sculpted, painted and adorned to the likeness of music’s most notorious heavy-metal men. “I did it as a … [Read more...] about SAMURAI WHITE: HEAVY METAL AND MUERTOS NUTCRACKERS FIND LOVE
FILLING A CREATIVE VOID: EAST PROVIDENCE’S NON-TRADITIONAL HEARTSPOT
Oh, the times they are a changing! Bob Dylan nailed it! The times are always changing. Dylan knew what it meant to change before change changed him. The audience booed him when he performed his first electric concert at the Newport Folk Festival in 1965. Why? It just wasn’t done — folk music was sacrosanct! The arts are a commodity. Art galleries are businesses. Galleries provided exhibitions and exposure to artists and viewing and purchase opportunities for viewers, collectors and the casual buyer. The art business is both like and unlike any other business. The business of art is now in a constant state of flux in lock-step with the global economies. Everything and anything that affects other businesses affects galleries. With increasing services prices, rents and the shift in the art-buyer demographic, plus a glut of emerging artists and the rising inventory of … [Read more...] about FILLING A CREATIVE VOID: EAST PROVIDENCE’S NON-TRADITIONAL HEARTSPOT