Everyone lives their lives with vivid memories of “how I spent the Covid years!” Sarah Meyers Brent ground out the Covid chaos by combing her home and the town dumps for debris to create romantic, entangling wall sculptures. Brent is an artist with an unerring sense for compositional line, texture and color, evidenced by her solo exhibition, “Out Growth,” at The Art Complex Museum in Duxbury, Massachusetts. Brent’s “masterpiece” is one of her smaller works, “Portrait of a WomanandMotherDuringaPandemic.”Clearlyasculpturalself- portrait, the work invokes the swirling, “topsy-turvy” conflicted life of an artist and mother. To make this work she collected materials including a toy dinosaur, jewelry, plastic floral leaves and breast- like globules. But the star of the chaotic swirl is a dismembered Barbie doll, who twirls, crotch-up, above the fray. The diverse objects are united by an … [Read more...] about ROMANTIC ABSTRACT EXPRESSIONISM
Artscope Issues
WELCOMED IN SOMERVILLE
Somerville Museum is hosting the exhibition titled “Sanctuary City,” organized and curated by Julia Csekö, the recipient of the museum’s Community Curator Grant. The exhibition is a group show that includes emerging and well-established local artists. Invited by Csekö, artists were requested to present contemporary artwork that resonates with the theme by exposing sensitive considerations, challenging the idea, the significance, elicited by individual interpretations of the term sanctuary and the concept of a sanctuary city. In 1987, Somerville’s City Council adopted a resolution establishing Somerville as a sanctuary city. It seems appropriate for the museum to serve as a platform for artists to express their understandings and communicate personal experiences associated with the theme. The concept becamehighly polarizing and has been questioned nationally. Csekö is a … [Read more...] about WELCOMED IN SOMERVILLE
ART FOR OUR EARTH
Printmaker Bethia Brehmer’s Wisconsin youth has stayed with her through her changes of venues from Sheboygan to Madison, to Amherst, Massachusetts and Cape Cod, where she’s lived for decades. Her vegetarian, pacifist parents took her on walks through the woods instilling in her a desire for peace, harmony and nature. She’s a world traveler who lived in Ghana, and has visited India, China, Bali and Europe. Her passion is to connect people to nature through art (she loves that “ART is in eARTh”). But her work is not just about the natural world. It also encompasses a mandala-like symbology, as well as quoting from other artists and cultures, to create a unique runic consciousness, (imbued with a wee tinge ofAubrey Beardsley). And it is not all peace and love; sometimes the political speaks, as in a piece she did of America as Shiva, or when she imprints clocks with messages about running … [Read more...] about ART FOR OUR EARTH
A SKEPTICAL CELEBRATION
Currently in its seventh exhibition at the Atlantic Wharf Gallery in downtown Boston, the group show Shared Habitat Earth is a vibrant and eclectic collection of works all connected to the central theme of combating climate change. The words “Shared Habitat Earth” came to local artist Barbara Eskin while walking through the woods, and the meaning behind them was revealed through conversations with her creative community. The intent of the show is to interweave art and activism, using the works as a way to inspire viewers into action, all the while keeping them grounded in their empathy and humanity. In the show’s description: Shared Habitat Earth (SHE) suggests cross species respect, intercultural solidarity and a shared sense of responsibility, and, in the face of enormous threats to our habitat, it calls for action. The 40 artists in the exhibition use their creativity to fight against … [Read more...] about A SKEPTICAL CELEBRATION
RENDERING DISORDER
Diana Zipeto, the Lowell-based artist who has built her career on the practice of rendering images, was shocked to discover that an MRI is more of a map than a photo. This fact is one that she gleaned through a combination of life experience and creative inquiry: after looking at MRIs capturing the progression of her father’s recently diagnosed Alzheimer’s, she found herself compelled to understand and render the images herself. Zipeto’s solo show, “Resonance,” on view at Galatea Fine Arts from December 2 through January 8, takes inspiration from these MRI images to present a portrait of one person’s struggle with disease and a loved one’s struggle to make sense of what it means. Though the upcoming exhibit will also feature mixed media pieces, including a LEGO model of an MRI procedure and small plastic model brains, Zipeto’s acrylic paintings comprise the main body of the show. … [Read more...] about RENDERING DISORDER
REINTRODUCING MARY ANN UNGER
Upon entering the expansive, light-filled space on the second floor of the Williams College Museum of Art, one can’t help but notice the elegance of the placement of the two- and three-dimensional works by Mary Ann Unger. Each area of the gallery is immensely focused, and the exhibition reads as a chronological map of the artist’s experience. There are a significant number of drawings that not only support the sculpture, but clearly depict the artist’s process. The exhibition makes a point of acknowledging the transformation from 2D surface into the sculptural, and all the stops in between. Co-curated by Allison Kaufman, the director of the Mary Ann Unger estate and curator Horace Ballard, this is the first solo exhibition in more than 20 years for the artist. The curatorial team was joined by Unger’s daughter, Eve Biddle, among other contributors, whose work is presented alongside … [Read more...] about REINTRODUCING MARY ANN UNGER