When the original Iris and B. Gerald Cantor Gallery at the College of the Holy Cross, formerly in O’Kane Hall, was dedicated in 1983 Rev. John E. Brooks, S.J. president emeritus of Holy Cross declared: “An undergraduate liberal arts college is academically strengthened when its students and staff are exposed to works of art.” The current Cantor Gallery, on the third floor of the Prior Performing Arts Center designed by Diller Scofidio + Renfro that opened in 2022, is a glass-enclosed space with a soaring ceiling, a capacious light-filled room where exhibits are installed with encouragement to wander. It is a perfect space for the retrospective of former 25-year faculty member Michael Beatty’s “Fabrications.” Beatty taught Sculpture and 3D Design in the college’s Studio Art Department. Having recently explored the Henry Moore and Georgia O’Keeffe dual exhibit at the Museum of Fine Arts, … [Read more...] about BEATTY’S MELODIC WOODCRAFT

Clara Wainwright’s new exhibition at the Paul Dietrich Gallery at Cambridge Seven, “GLORY: A Satirical Retrospective of Fabric Collages,” is a kind of hallucinatory storyboard of a trip through Wainwright’s mind as it considers the insane chaos of the current Trumpian political gestalt. Her fabric collages are not exactly quilts, though each has three layers like a quilt, but they are smaller in size compared to traditional quilts which are large. These are basically fabric paintings, varying in size from about 18” x 20” to a bit over 46” x 23”, some ironed on to fiberglass backing. “I love to sew,” she said, working mostly by machine, sometimes hand-embroidering or painting over designs and adding sequins. Though she said that it was Matisse, Modigliani and Picasso who influenced her style originally, she's been involved with so many multicultural and multiracial communities over the … [Read more...] about WAINWRIGHT’S PATCHWORK POLITICS

Kudos to the Hood Museum of Art at Dartmouth College in Hanover, New Hampshire for mounting the first major solo museum exhibition by a notable Indigenous artist. The exhibition, “Cara Romero: Panûpünüwügai: Living Light,” tells stunning visual stories of Indigenous people in ways that convey the allure, strength and complexity of contemporary Native life. “I am deeply committed to making work that addresses Native American social issues and changes the way people perceive us in contemporary society,” the noted photographer said. Her images are both serious and playful as she explores such issues as the border wall, the hyper-sexualization of Native women in photography, the environmental destruction of Native lands and stereotypes of Indigeneity in pop culture. “As an Indigenous photographer, I embrace photography as a tool to resist Eurocentric narratives and as a means for opening … [Read more...] about THE SPIRIT OF LIGHT AT THE HOOD