I like to joke that I found freedom in Maine. And in a way, it’s true. Recently, I traveled up the coast to the small town of Freedom for a much-needed weekend away. While there, I was delighted to find not just the peaceful, bucolic scenery I had been craving but also a region bursting with local flavor — from lobster shacks, farm-to-table restaurants and an Amish charcuterie to open studios, galleries and off the beaten path museums. Though summer is nearly over, the foliage will soon be blazing, and there is plenty of time to visit Midcoast Maine before winter. Local Color Gallery and Local Foods // Belfast, ME Belfast, at the mouth of the Passagassawakeag River, has a bustling arts scene for such a small city. Many artists live and work in the region, displaying their work in Belfast’s many galleries, and the city hosts a monthly Fourth Friday Art Walk. Finch Gallery, Belfast … [Read more...] about MIDCOAST MAINE: LOCAL COLOR AND FOODS AWAIT FALL ADVENTURERS
Exhibits
LIFE’S DECISIVE MOMENTS: MALEK CELEBRATES PEOPLE AT WORK
Photographer Tad Malek knows a bit about patience. With a background in color landscape photography, Malek has spent full days immersed in natural surroundings, waiting for the perfect still. Malek’s current exhibition, “People at Work and Other Environmental Portraits,” on view at Springfield Museums, marks a departure from the restraint of waiting for that consummate shot into the realm of portraiture in the moment, with all its alluring fallibility and epiphanic fulfillment. Choosing almost exclusively black-and-white images for “People at Work and Other Environmental Portraits,” Malek has deliberately shifted media to capture the rich textures and nuanced variations within each piece. Sharp exposure delineates the finest detail, whether it be the lines along the walkway of the “Brooklyn Bridge Lady in the Shade,” 2008; the sculpted musculature of a male bather in “Rio de Janeiro … [Read more...] about LIFE’S DECISIVE MOMENTS: MALEK CELEBRATES PEOPLE AT WORK
RE-PIECING THE SHELL: DARWIN “BROKEN, BUT NOT BAD” AT REGIS
What does an artist do after a devastating divorce and death of her mother? With the invention of psychoanalytical theory by Sigmund Freud, Carl Jung, Alfred Adler and others, the path was open for artists to make emotional self-examination a physical reality in painting, sculpture and the arts. Susan Darwin’s inventive oil paintings, that open the fall exhibition schedule at Regis College’s Carney Gallery, flow directly from the emotional highs and lows that she has faced in life. Her paintings belong to the genre of biographical artwork that has been in fashion for most of the modern era. Darwin’s “100 Broken Shells” explicitly deal with her unhappy divorce and the depression that resulted. While in a sad state, walking along Shaws Cove beach in Fairhaven, Massachusetts, she looked down at broken shells and an inspiring thought came to her: “They are broken, but not bad!” Picking up … [Read more...] about RE-PIECING THE SHELL: DARWIN “BROKEN, BUT NOT BAD” AT REGIS
SHOOTING THROUGH THE FOG: MARY LANG WANTS YOU TO STAY FOCUSED
While Mary Lang’s latest exhibition at SoWa’s Kingston Gallery, “Here, nowhere else,” could have featured a strong collection of images from her travels to Anza-Borrego Desert State Park in California and the isles and highlands of Scotland, she decided to also include more localized works that seem to hold personal importance to the Auburndale, Massachusetts-based photographer. The show serves as a valuable exercise at a time we’re asking ourselves, more and more in the Instagram age, what makes a great photo — and a great photographer. “I struggled with whether I could build a show out of such disparate images, and vaguely considered showing the travel ones — Anza-Borrego and Scotland — in the main gallery and putting the backyards in the center gallery, but in the end, I rejected that,” Lang said. “I wanted to show that there is a through thread which links all of our experiences, … [Read more...] about SHOOTING THROUGH THE FOG: MARY LANG WANTS YOU TO STAY FOCUSED
ESKIN AT GALATEA: FINDING ABSTRACT LANDING SPACE
Barbara Eskin professes to chart disasters without a leg to stand on — multiple disasters, pieces flying everywhere. Before you think about her person — “What a pessimist!” and about her art: “What a downer!” — listen to some history. Eskin was born in Germany during the waning years of the Second World War. She was taken out of Germany by her parents when still a toddler, and then before she came to America, 20-some years ago, she was a resident of multiple European countries where she picked up a taste for languages and literature. A teacher by vocation and a canny European by upbringing, she has strong opinions which rarely veer towards the dogmatic, and, if they do, find little landing place. I’m looking at “In Pieces (4)” — a dynamo of vectors strong enough to bend its frame — yet all within a boundary of 24 x 30 inches. Perhaps boundaries are as good a concept as any to … [Read more...] about ESKIN AT GALATEA: FINDING ABSTRACT LANDING SPACE
DISAPPEARING IN PLEIN AIR: HUNTER GOES BETWEEN MEMORY AND PHOTOGRAPHY
Ask folks who know Vermont artist Charlie Hunter’s work to describe it and you might hear words like “ethereal and mysterious,” “straightforward and real” and “highly evocative.” Ask them to describe the man, and they are likely to say “funny,” “smart,” “sensitive” and “thoughtful.” They would all be right. Hunter, who lives in the small town of Bellows Falls, once a mill town, on the banks of the Connecticut River dividing Vermont and New Hampshire, works in a sprawling studio housed in an old paper mill. A visit there reveals how labor intensive his work is and reveals his creative and philosophical approach to his work. “I’m fascinated with how each viewer brings their life, memories and associations to a painting or work of art,” Hunter said. “I try to create a resonance that conspires to exist between memory and photography. By mimicking old photographic techniques, I can … [Read more...] about DISAPPEARING IN PLEIN AIR: HUNTER GOES BETWEEN MEMORY AND PHOTOGRAPHY