Carmen Cicero has made art since he was a child and at 99 is still doing so. The Berta Walker Gallery is currently featuring some of his prolific watercolors in “Tales of Intrigue,” an exhibition running through July 20, which accompanies his book: “Carmen Cicero, Watercolors and Drawings, Tales of Danger, Intrigue and Humor.” (The book, by David Ebony, and “The Art of Carmen Cicero,” will be available at the Provincetown gallery.) Walker recently talked of rediscovering Cicero, promoting him at the Graham Modern Gallery in New York City where he received three important reviews that launched him on his current trajectory as an artist collected by virtually every important museum in the country including the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), the Whitney and the Guggenheim. (Simultaneously to showcasing Carmen’s work, Walker is featuring Deb Mell and Danielle Mailer who create their own … [Read more...] about CORNERED
Artscope Issues
Welcome July/August 2025
Welcome to our summer 2025 issue, In reviewing the images of artworks our writers submitted to accompany their stories, I realized that this issue would be, unintentionally, abstract and laid back, cool and mostly non-confrontational, something I think most, if not all of us, need at this time. We’re all looking for inspiration; look no further than our opening “Cornered” feature spotlighting 99-year-old Carmen Cicero, who talked with Lee Roscoe about his lengthy career and his current shows at the Berta Walker Gallery in Provincetown and the Cape Cod Museum of Art. Roscoe also spoke with Joe Diggs, recently named the Arts Foundation of Cape Cod’s Artist of the Year, interviewing him about his abstract paintings of the magical landscapes and hidden places in nearby Cape Cod towns and his own backyard in Osterville, where his family has resided for several decades I’m always on the … [Read more...] about Welcome July/August 2025
CAPSULE PREVIEWS
“Hear, Here,” an exhibition of new works by Ann Steuernagel derived from listening to and working with the natural environment will be on view from May 2 through June 27 at the Gallery at WREN, 2011 Main St., Bethlehem, New Hampshire. “This captivating exhibition highlights Ann’s unique artistic approach, blending alternative photographic processes, sound, and video to evoke the intricate rhythms and gestures of the natural world.” The 13th Biennial “State of Clay,” a juried show and art sale for original, innovative ceramic work by current and former residents of Massachusetts or those with close ties to Massachusetts, runs from May 3 through June 1 in the Molly Harding Nye Gallery at LexArt, 130 Waltham St., Lexington, Massachusetts. The aim of the show is to broaden public awareness of contemporary ceramic art and to provide a venue for Massachusetts’ clay artists. This year’s … [Read more...] about CAPSULE PREVIEWS
BRINGING ART TO HOLLYWOOD
Award winning movie director and writer Henry Chaisson was scouring New England in 2024 to find art for his next film, “Recluse,” which he filmed in Massachusetts last November. He was born in Newton, Massachusetts and is known for “Servant” (2019), “Antlers” (2021) and the script of “Diary of a Murderer.” His latest, “Recluse,” was filmed at the Hawthorn Hill Estate in Lancaster, Massachusetts. This 1914 mansion served as the Maharishi Ayurveda Health Center that was once famously visited by Beatle George Harrison and was later used for scenes in the movie “Little Women.” “Recluse” is neither a meditation retreat nor about a close and loving family. Chaison described the film as, “a fusion of gothic ghost tale and revenge thriller, a modern fable about family secrets.” He hopes to present it at the 2025 Toronto Film Festival and release it after that. Chaisson sought art throughout … [Read more...] about BRINGING ART TO HOLLYWOOD
AVERSION THERAPY THEATER
I was talking to Artscope Magazine’s editor, Brian Goslow, about my play “IMPOSSIBLE?” a story of what happens to friends in a small New England town when a tyrannical president takes over the nation, and he asked me to write a piece about it. I call it a guerilla theater recorded Zoom performance. Because of my lack of any production budget, this is an inexpensive way to get a play up and out there. I gathered actors, gave them visual backgrounds to use to set scenes, my editor put the scenes together and there’s even a bit of music and sound effects. The point that I wanted to make with the film was to wake people, our people, people on the left who are asleep, not aware of how we are in a rising autocracy. Because for every Adam Schiff or Jamie Raskin or Bernie Sanders or AOC (Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez), or even the hundreds of thousands who have rallied for Hands Off — there are … [Read more...] about AVERSION THERAPY THEATER
ART AND TRAVEL
All my life, I have disagreed with Henry David Thoreau who thought it wasn’t “worthwhile to [travel] around the world to count the cats in Zanzibar.” The joy of travel has been in my blood since I was a child when our family summer vacation was a trip to visit our Canadian family. Our favorite stops included the gorges in Ithaca, the Thousand Islands, and Niagara Falls, especially when they were lit up with rainbow colors at night. Each of these places were natural works of art, although at the time I didn’t think of it that way. They were simply beautiful. When I was older, I realized that Mark Twain, who said that travel was “fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness,” was right. He also suggested that it “would be well if an excursion could be got up every year and the system regularly inaugurated.” I agreed wholeheartedly, so, in my early 20s, I took my first solo trip to … [Read more...] about ART AND TRAVEL