Since its inception in March 2006, Artscope Magazine has been based on Hancock Street in Quincy, Massachusetts, AKA, “The City of Presidents.” Earlier this year, we relocated to the fourth floor of South Shore Health Building alongside QUBIC Labs at 1495 Hancock, after the closing of Solomon’s Collection & Fine Rugs, our longtime home base, a half-mile away. When I last visited the area, pre-COVID, much of the area in front of Quincy City Hall was boarded off for redevelopment of the area. Now, it holds a welcoming and beautiful city park, the Hancock Adams Common, hosting statues of John Adams and John Hancock, and the entrance to picturesque Hancock Cemetery, bordered by United First Parish Church and Old City Hall. Thomas P. Koch has been Quincy’s mayor since 2008. “When I first took office, it wasn’t a pleasant experience walking downtown,” he said. “We had to create a new … [Read more...] about GREETINGS FROM QUINCY!: THE ARTS HELP BRING RESIDENTS BACK DOWNTOWN
Artscope Issues
Welcome September/October 2022: From Brian Goslow
Dear Artscope reader, 100 issues. We’ve reached this landmark issue thanks to you, our longtime loyal readers, many that still like to hold a physical copy of a magazine in their hands and who have subscribed to get their copies delivered by mail or electronically delivered onto their iPads or reading tablets. We can’t thank the artists we’ve covered through our 16 and a half years enough — who’ve been our biggest supporters, telling their fellow artists and friends about Artscope, spreading the word on our behalf to new audiences and sometimes, when necessary, helping us rise above the politics that can take place in the region’s art industry. We hope you’ll continue to mention Artscope to any gallery, museum or arts-related store or organization that you visit and suggest they partner up with us to attract more collectors for your work and attendees to your — and their — … [Read more...] about Welcome September/October 2022: From Brian Goslow
CAPSULE PREVIEWS: JULY/AUGUST 2022
“Who We Are: Celebrating Diversity” remains on view through July 31 at the Loading Dock Gallery at Western Avenue Studios, 122 Western Ave., Lowell, Massachusetts. The exhibition “is a showcase of art from those who are traditionally overlooked in New England and Greater Lowell including BIPOC, LGBT+ and non-binary communities” as selected by juror Gwendolyn Lanier, an artist at Lowell’s Brush Art Gallery and Studios and a teaching artist at the Essex Art Center in Lawrence, Massachusetts, whose artwork has been exhibited at Woman Made Gallery in Chicago, the Pittsburgh Center for the Arts and the Painted Bride in Philadelphia. Gallery hours are Wednesday through Saturday from noon-5:30 p.m. and on Sunday from noon-4 p.m. The show’s opening reception takes place on July 2 from 3-5 p.m. Joe Caruso’s “Movers and Shakers” will be on view from July 9 through August 20 at HallSpace, 950 … [Read more...] about CAPSULE PREVIEWS: JULY/AUGUST 2022
MAKING THEIR WORLDS OURS: BASEL WAS A REMINDER OF WHY WE BUY, LOOK AT, ART
Art Basel is clearly back, with attendees unmasked (but fully vaccinated) unable to socially distance with huge crowds taking up physical space at the fair, restaurants and tables at gallery booths talking about sales and waiting their turn to buy. With galleries from Germany, specifically Berlin, taking up much of the allotted gallery spaces, and the number of galleries from Asia and the United States way down, art was often comical, nature- oriented and lower-priced than before Covid, but selling briskly. Exaggeration ruled as some galleries claimed sales of more pieces than they displayed, but fabrication is part of artmaking and selling. Big work was selling to private individuals, not only museums and large collections open to the public. Installations followed the children’s poem of some being very, very good and some awful. There was an emphasis on scientific explanations of … [Read more...] about MAKING THEIR WORLDS OURS: BASEL WAS A REMINDER OF WHY WE BUY, LOOK AT, ART
A MAN OF MANY PLACES: SITKA’S HOME ART GALLERY MOVES UP ON NEWBURY STREET
Sitka approaches us from the back of Sitka Home Art Gallery, his Boston shop that recently relocated to 160 Newbury Street between Dartmouth and Exeter Streets. He’s a bluff, smiling, virile presence who shakes my hand, heartily announcing: “I’m a monster!” I look for reassurance towards Sitka’s wife and business manager, Helaine Gulergun, who hovers nearby smiling reassuringly and, then, to my own wife, Madeleine, who is always reassuring. Reassured, somewhat, I take the seat that Sitka is bringing and accept the glass of water he offers. Trusting, but interrogating my new sense of security, I run though my understanding of the different senses of the word monster: something unnaturally marvelous — a prodigy — of great size and ferocity. The last definition is somewhat unsettling, but on the other hand, my company is still smiling and, to boot, I’ve just scored a parking space … [Read more...] about A MAN OF MANY PLACES: SITKA’S HOME ART GALLERY MOVES UP ON NEWBURY STREET
“WE ARE HUMAN BEINGS”: POWERFUL ART FROM GUANTÁNAMO BAY AT CATAMOUNT
Featuring nearly 100 evocative works, “Art from Guantánamo Bay” features the artwork of six men detained at the United States military prison camp in Cuba for as long as 20 years without being charged or convicted of a crime, all of whom have been cleared for release — although two currently remain in detention. The exhibition has a unique local connection because of the work several lawyers did on behalf of detainees. Artist- detainee Abdul Zahir was a client of St. Johnsbury attorneys Robert Gensburg and David Sleigh, who volunteered for over 10 years with the Guantánamo Bay Bar Association, a nationwide group of lawyers assembled by the Center for Constitutional Rights, a nonprofit civil liberties law firm providing legal representation for detainees. Gensburg represented Zahir and helped him earn his freedom as a case of “mistaken identity” after 14 years of captivity; Zahir … [Read more...] about “WE ARE HUMAN BEINGS”: POWERFUL ART FROM GUANTÁNAMO BAY AT CATAMOUNT