t’s probably not a coincidence that Vaughn Sills’ exhibition opened the day after the area’s first frost warning, the warm tones of “This Precious Life” bringing needed heat to those in attendance at its opening reception in the Art Center Gallery at Anna Maria College in the Central Massachusetts town of Paxton. The exhibition, billed as “a select retrospective view of the last 40 years of a photographic life,” is broken into four portions: “Knowing Our Distance” (images exploring the past and present in Sills’ life), “Beyond Words” (utilizing objects and plants found outside her grandparents’ Prince Edward Island cottage), “True Poems Flee” (photographs taken of structures and atmospheric events in P.E.I.) and “Inside Outside” (still-life floral settings infront of photographs from P.E.I., an act she calls, “the juxtaposition of the human-inhabited environment with the wild, untamed … [Read more...] about BEAUTY AND MORTALITY
Artscope Issues
HIPPOS AND ICEBERGS
To get to Lawrence Academy from Cambridge, you must fly over the super-highways of Route 2 (West) and 495 (North), then bear, with some patience, the horse and carriage — and sometimes tractor from a local farm — pace of Route 119 (North, again) to cover around 50 miles in just under an hour — with a few glances at our colorful New England foliage, before arriving in truly picturesque Groton, Massachusetts. Curator Laurie McGovern hailed us from the top of the Richardson-Meese Performing Arts Center steps and graciously guided us into the Conant Gallery, showing us around the exhibition of two, in my opinion, super-star artists. The first work to draw my attention was photographer Peter Roos’ “Mirror Water #3.” I looked at it for several minutes until I felt somewhat like I saw, or even was seeing at that very moment, what Peter saw in the diminishing grandeur of an iceberg in … [Read more...] about HIPPOS AND ICEBERGS
AN INTENSITY OF COLOR
If, as an adult, you have read Lewis Carroll’s “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland,” you will remember that Alice is confronted with paradoxes, contradictions in logic, disorientation of time and generally puzzlement at her place in that bewildering environment. The book you may have read in middle school as a fantastical tale takes on deeper, more introspective layers of meaning in the seasoned reading and may have prepared you for the current exhibits at Burlington’s BCA Gallery. The central figure in Valerie Hird’s show “The Garden of Absolute Truths” is Alice, in the form of an avatar. This avatar appears as a hand drawn paper cutout in a video, in works on paper and in a series of book sculptures — three-dimensional collaged boxes. This more contemporary Alice explores and examines her knowledge, assumptions and orientation toward such global issues as migration, social … [Read more...] about AN INTENSITY OF COLOR
ROMANTIC ABSTRACT EXPRESSIONISM
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
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