“Pretty Meaningless Things,” a solo exhibition by Providence- based multimedia artist Mark Cetilia, will be presented from September 15 through October 15 at Chazan Gallery at Wheeler. Recently, I had a series of conversations with the artist about artwork for the show and his career. He had finished the 3D graphic modeling for visuals to be included in the exhibition and was in the midst of completing the analog/digital sound compositions he planned to incorporate into the show. Cetilia said that he expects to create a relationship between the external sound recordings and each video. His plan is that the gallery will be darkened with the only light being that of his large-scale video projection. He expects that the overall feel will be immersive. Cetilia’s 3D computer generated imagery (or CGI forms) were created using Rhino and Cycling 74’s Max software, which he designed and coded … [Read more...] about BETWEEN THE SPEAKERS: CETILIA BRINGING SOUND AND VISION TO CHAZAN GALLERY

When Linda Hoffman moved in 2001 to an old farmhouse on a 25-acre parcel of land in Harvard, Massachusetts, Old Frog Pond Farm was born. While some people’s creative musings never go further than lucid dreams, Hoffman’s vision for her new home was built on a solid philosophical foundation — the interweaving of agriculture, art and community. When people come together for a common purpose, a vibrant community of kindred spirits is often the result. Hoffman, artist, writer and orchardist (and co-author of this article) and her multi-talented husband, Blase Provitola, have created a diverse, ever- growing community of artists, art lovers, writers, poets, storytellers, musicians, naturalists and spiritual seekers. Arriving at Old Frog Pond Farm is entering the terrain of the magical. The farm is a place of pastoral serenity with rows of organic vegetables and fruit trees, and wooded … [Read more...] about TERRAIN OF THE MAGICAL: WONDROUS CREATURES BRING MYSTERIES TO OLD FROG POND FARM

Artists are defining new ways to cope and reorganize emotional traumas while strengthening the relationship between health and creative expressions. Can we assume that when it comes to art forms and artists, specific psychological and physical stresses can navigate through artists’ creative process which will work as an antidote for these states and as a gift to viewers? But if artists don’t have to commit to portraying realistic images or responses, can we say that, in this case, the creative process is a very sensible response? “I cannot get rid of my illnesses, for there is a lot in my art that exists only because of them,” said Edvard Munch, famous for the painting, “The Scream.” There has been significant interest in research on the power and capabilities of the arts as a healing method. Famous visual artists, including Frida Kahlo, Yayoi Kusama and Andy Warhol, have been … [Read more...] about ART AND MEDICINE: MECLINA & FORD’S HEALING ART AT THE BEACON

Games of luck and chance hold their own natural order, outside the rules of measured existence, and into the realm of magical construct. Who better to visually celebrate the random structure of games of chance than Salvador Dalí? During the 1960s, Dalí (Spanish, 1904-1989) worked with the French printing firm Draeger Frères to produce a set of limited-edition playing cards, and created lithographs of the designs shortly after. Eight examples from Dalí’s “Playing Card Suite” are featured in “Card Tricks: Salvador Dalí and the Art of Playing Cards” currently on view at D’Amour Museum of Fine Arts, Springfield Museums. Bearing the artist’s trademark asymmetrical illusions, the images are at once lighthearted and arrestingly bold in content and style. From childhood, Dalí’s persona was complex and often self-contradictory. Having lost an infant brother nine months before his own … [Read more...] about A RARE OPPORTUNITY: DALÍ’S SURREALISTIC STACKED DECK IN SPRINGFIELD

“In his mysterious paintings,” writes Leonard Michaels about Edward Hopper, “he makes felt what isn’t there, the nothing, the nothing that isn’t there.” The same ought to be said about Mitchell Johnson’s oeuvre. Not only because Johnson is an artistic descendant of Hopper, both brilliant colorists, and not only because both have made the landscape around Truro come alive in oil, but also because in some ways the statement is even truer in Johnson’s work, especially lately. True partly in the sense of what isn’t there — unseen narratives and events that bring a life to any given moment, any given moment of seeing — but also who isn’t there. Fewer human figures populate Johnson’s spare but vibrant art than do Hopper’s — and in his next exhibition, “Nothing and Change: Selected Paintings 1990-2022,” which is on view from September 7 through 18 at the Truro Center for the Arts, you can … [Read more...] about THE HUSH OF HELD BREATH: JOHNSON’S QUIET PAINTINGS RETURN TO CASTLE HILL