The 2023 Art Basel Miami Beach emerged as a powerful antidote against our times’ prevailing agony and frustrations in a world grappling with the unsettling shadow of war and facing various challenges, standing as a beacon of artistic excellence. Hosting a dazzling array of 277 galleries, its 21st edition enriched the region’s cultural fabric and served as a powerful economic driver, infusing a much-needed vitality into the local businesses. Beyond the walls of the main event at the Miami Beach Convention Center, Art Basel extends its influence through the South Beach area, enticing art enthusiasts to explore over 10 satellite art fairs. The recently unveiled seventh edition of The Art Basel and UBS Global Art Market Report, provided by Art Basel in collaboration with global lead partner UBS, provides intriguing insights into the global art collecting market dynamics. The report sheds … [Read more...] about RESILIENCE AND REFLECTION: NAVIGATING THE ARTISTIC LANDSCAPE OF ART BASEL MIAMI BEACH 2023
Artscope Issues
PAINTING JOY THROUGH PAIN: BETHANY NOËL “CONTROLS” MIGRAINES THROUGH HER ART
“There are three types of days. Days where I can do everything, days where I’m fine but can’t do it all, and days where I’m interrupted, and we have to start again.” Clad in paint-spattered coveralls, artist Bethany Noël shows me around her 500-square-foot Holliston Mills studio in Holliston, Massachusetts. We’re “supervised” by her four-legged studio mate and trail companion, Sargent, a large and soulful-eyed German Shepherd mix. “He’s named after the painter,” she confirmed. Under filtered winter light, a series of squiggly black-and-white plein air ink sketches rest in loose rows on a table running half the length of the studio’s windowed wall. She pulls a palm-sized one off the table and shows me. “This is the source sketch for ‘Joy,’” she said. The finished painting, currently on view at the Open Door Arts Gallery at the Worcester Art Museum, in Worcester, Massachusetts, is a … [Read more...] about PAINTING JOY THROUGH PAIN: BETHANY NOËL “CONTROLS” MIGRAINES THROUGH HER ART
A SCULPTURAL WINTER WONDERLAND: NESA CHANNELS MILL HISTORY AT VALLEYCAST GALLERY
For the third consecutive year, New England Sculptors Association (NESA) members have juried works placed throughout the outside area surrounding the Alternatives’ Whitin Mill Complex in Whitinsville, Massachusetts (where they’ve been since late fall) and, starting January 12, they’ll be joined by sculptures by NESA members inside the Spaulding R. Aldrich Heritage Gallery. ValleyCAST, the arts and culture arm of Open Sky Community Services, runs the exhibit. Formerly Alternatives Unlimited, Inc., Open Sky provides services for individuals with behavioral health challenges and intellectual or developmental disabilities. ValleyCAST and Open Sky provide outreach and events that enrich and empower an inclusive community. In 2015, Dennis H. Rice, who co-founded Alternatives Unlimited, Inc., launched the idea of having sculpture on its Community Plaza, which was named in his honor upon his … [Read more...] about A SCULPTURAL WINTER WONDERLAND: NESA CHANNELS MILL HISTORY AT VALLEYCAST GALLERY
WE ARE STILL HERE: NEW ART CENTER’S INTERCESSION CHRONICLES BLACK COMMUNITIES
“INTERCESSION,” a meditation on personal and community agency, started as a response to the current war in Gaza. The exhibition asks, “How do we navigate when we begin to question who and what we understand? Is there a way to speak, when both speaking and being silent are equally volatile positions?” The photographic work of Alonso Nichols, Philip C. Keith, Sam Williams and Lauren Miller at the New Art Center’s Corridor at Trio Gallery in Newton, Massachusetts, explores these questions through three types of artistic practice: chronicling, projecting personhood and memory of space. As a genre of art, documentation, or the act of chronicling life within Black communities is overdetermined by the erasure and indignity caused by the history of enslavement. The inspirational oratory of abolitionists such as Sojourner Truth and Frederick Douglass, documented in revolutionary newspapers, … [Read more...] about WE ARE STILL HERE: NEW ART CENTER’S INTERCESSION CHRONICLES BLACK COMMUNITIES
BREAKING SILENCE AT SVAC: LAFOND AND DEL BUONO CONFRONT VIOLENCE AGAINST WOMEN
For Nayana LaFond the issue of violence against women is personal. Not only is she a survivor of domestic violence, she’s also a citizen of the Métis Nation of Ontario with roots in the Red River Settlement and a descendant of the Anishinaabe and other Indigenous groups. As a cancer survivor as well, art is vital to her healing process, she said. “Art is medicine for me. In indigenous cultures, it’s medicine. I see the work I do as sacred.” LaFond’s art life began in childhood when she began using crayons creatively, a talent her kindergarten teacher encouraged. Later she skipped seventh grade to take art classes at a community college in Massachusetts where she refined her skills at drawing, painting and working with stained glass and clay. After finishing high school, she returned to Greenfield Community College where studying art became deeply meaningful to her. She transferred to … [Read more...] about BREAKING SILENCE AT SVAC: LAFOND AND DEL BUONO CONFRONT VIOLENCE AGAINST WOMEN
A PLATFORM TO SPEAK THEIR TRUTHS: THE MYTH OF NORMAL: MASSART AT 150
“The Myth of Normal: A Celebration of Authentic Expression,” currently on view at MassArt Art Museum, was inspired by guest curator Mari Spirito’s reading of “The Myth of Normal: Trauma, Illness, and Healing in a Toxic Culture,” a 2022 book by Gabor Maté (written with Daniel Maté). The show, which reopens after the Massachusetts College of Art and Design’s winter break on January 18, is a platform for artists to speak their truths. The exhibition is a globally inclusive distillation of contemporary zeitgeist. It offers a sensory antidote to what the exhibition notes mention as, “beliefs and behaviors that are generally con- sidered normal even though they are in fact making us emotionally and physically sick [think of] human beings contorting themselves in order to survive day to day life.” The curatorial choices of Spirito (MassArt Class of ‘92), reflect an understanding that ours is … [Read more...] about A PLATFORM TO SPEAK THEIR TRUTHS: THE MYTH OF NORMAL: MASSART AT 150