“I served as a medic during the Vietnam War. At the 22nd Casualty Staging Flight in Da Nang, I worked on well over 600 battle casualties. The mission was to stabilize the wounded and keep them alive for 24 hours so that they could be flown out of the country to a hospital where their limbs or lives might be saved via surgical intervention. Nowadays, when people think about surgery, they think of a doctor opening a section of the body, fixing what’s wrong, and then closing it back up. In Vietnam, surgery was different. These patients came in pre-opened.” This harrowing recollection introduced me to artist and veteran Wayne Miller at Miller White Fine Arts in South Dennis, Massachusetts. Before his artist talk at the opening reception for his current “Kintsugi Paintings: Paintings in the Narrative Tradition” exhibition, Miller himself ushered me aside, offering a personal window into the … [Read more...] about THE BEAUTY OF BROKEN THINGS

Archy LaSalle is a Boston-based photographer and educator. In an interview published by the Houston Center for Photography, he explained the origin of WHERE ARE ALL THE BLACK PEOPLE AT: IN PLAIN SIGHT, a grassroots organization that includes writers, artists and activists that was launched to address the lack of Black and brown artists in museum permanent collections. Dedicated to his work hunting images that investigate form, LaSalle is also a long-time dedicated teacher. “I was the first non-white art teacher at Cambridge Rindge and Latin High School’s 345-year history,” he said. “I was a passionate committed photographer who happened to be Black.” For this exhibit, LaSalle selected a wide range of significant works by six contemporary Black and brown photographers, seasoned and student, to take place in the Nye Gallery and in “plain sight.” Craig Bailey’s portrait “Ifé” is like a … [Read more...] about DEMANDING PRESENCE AT LEXART

What, exactly, is Magic Realism, and what does it have to do with Vermont? The Bennington Museum’s “Green Mountain Magic: Uncanny Realism in Vermont” presents answers in a thoughtful, wide-ranging and well-curated exhibition. The exhibit articulates magic realism as a movement originated by art historian Alfred H. Barr. Barr, as the first director of the Museum of Modern Art (MOMA), curated the 1943 exhibition “American Realists and Magic Realists.” He defined “magic realism” as “the work of painters who by means of an exact realistic technique try to make plausible and convincing their improbable, dreamlike or fantastic visions.” In contrast to the Surrealist movement, in which painters like Max Ernst and Leonora Carrington actively mined dreams, mysticism and fantasy for imagery, Barr’s magic realism identifies artists who create realistic representations of the everyday which are at … [Read more...] about VERMONT’S MAGIC MADE VISIBLE