Amateur pick-up games of basketball are a part of the DNA of summer. And with the recent rise in popularity of the WNBA as well as New England’s excitement about the Boston Celtics 2024 NBA Championship win, the timing is apropos to discuss Providence College Art Galleries’ initiative over the past five years to enrich basketball courts in Providence with world-class art. Jamilee Lacy, recently appointed as the director of the Frye Art Museum, Seattle, Washington, began developing this program while serving as director and chief curator at Providence College Art Galleries. The idea for art-infused basketball courts actualized in 2018. Quite soon into the process the project became My HomeCourt (MHC). Lacy alternated the duties of selecting artists for this initiative between herself and Providence College Art Galleries curator, Kate McNamara. The program was designed to function … [Read more...] about MY HOMECOURT’S SYNERGY OF PLAY: ART AND BASKETBALL TEAM UP IN PROVIDENCE

Of late, Easthampton, in Western Massachusetts, has become more arts and artist-centric, perhaps due to the handful of mill buildings housing artist workspaces and creative small businesses. Some also say it’s due to overflow from artsy Northampton, about 15 minutes north. It’s also because it’s still considered “affordable.” For four-plus decades, the mill at One Cottage Street (c. 1859) has housed over eighty affordable artist workspaces as Cottage Street Studios, filled with creatives of all sorts including bookbinders (did you know neighboring Holyoke is “Paper City?”), painters, photographers, print-makers, graphic designers, woodworking shops/school, sculptors, furniture designers/ makers, fine lighting, stained glass, custom wedding gowns, mixed media, martial arts and other disciplines, over five floors. It was the first mill to be converted for creatives in Western … [Read more...] about KEEPING COTTAGE STREET AFFORDABLE: ARTIST WORKSPACES THREATENED IN WESTERN MASS

For over two decades, I depended on scavenging and collecting steel scraps for my sculptures in an enormous metal waste facility south of Boston. Early on Saturday mornings, they allowed outsiders to dump their demolition loads for a fee. I would be there to cherry pick for a removal fee. I loved this place because the metal was beautifully chewed and crunched by dinosaur size cranes with T-Rex jaws. But a year ago, after two decades, I decided to stop this, cold turkey. This meant that I would eventually run out of material and stop welding sculptures. I will miss walking through puddles with shimmering oil rainbows and ooze, searching in mountains of shrapnel sharp detritus for treasure. Like finding rare blue sea glass on the beach, these metal shards were the genome of my welded steel sculptures. I have been loading mud-crusted, oil-soaked metal into a variety of cars … [Read more...] about YOU CAN’T TAKE IT WITH YOU: SCULPTOR MADELEINE LORD GOES COLD TURKEY

Rob Moore seemed to make it to every exhibition opening that he was invited to. By all accounts big-hearted, motivating and enthralling, Moore was a fixture in the Boston art scene from the late 1960s through to his death at 55 from AIDS-related complications on New Year’s Eve, 1992. A painter with a decisive eye and self-sure style, he worked as a teacher at MassArt for 24 years, influencing, mentoring and encouraging his students with limitless honesty and generosity. Around the 30th anniversary of Moore’s death, one of his former students, John Guthrie, began preparations for a retrospective at Boston’s Gallery VERY — which ran from May to mid-June 2024 — the first exhibition of Moore’s work since a posthumous showing at MassArt a year after his death. Beginning in earnest at the end of 2023, Guthrie reached out to friends and former students of Moore and collectors of his work … [Read more...] about PRESERVING A LEGACY: FRIENDS MAKE ROB MOORE PROJECT A REALITY