As we were going to press with this issue, a few days prior to Christmas, all of the exhibitions that are reviewed and previewed were scheduled to run as planned. If you plan on seeing any of these shows, as part of your preparations, please check with each venue’s website prior to leaving and consider contacting them on the day of your trip to confirm they’re open or if there are any specific arrangements you need to make (especially pre-ticketing). Keeping in mind that these artists, curators, gallery owners and museums have spent months, and in some cases, years planning these exhibitions, in a worst-case scenario of shows being postponed or cancelled, please check out their websites to learn more about their work and offerings. I received a strong education in how intense the juror process can be last fall after Bromfield Gallery manager Gary Duehr invited me to jury its SOLO 2020 … [Read more...] about WELCOME January/February 2022: FROM BRIAN GOSLOW
January/February 2022
CAPSULE PREVIEWS FOR ARTSCOPE 96
“Straits of Magellan,” an exhibition featuring paintings of the southern tip of South America by Lola Chaisson, takes place from January 5 through February 12 at 6 Bridges Gallery, 77 Main Street, Maynard, Massachusetts. The show will feature sketches, photos and memories in which Chaisson captures the spirit of a voyage taken shortly before the pandemic. "Rather than focus on being 'stuck at home,' I picked up my brushes and looked back to the open vistas where mountains stretched up to the clouds and down to the sea, in my mind, switching the view of my living room back to the views along the passage from Punta Arenas to Ushuaia via Cape Horn." An opening reception is scheduled for January 8 from 1-3 p.m.; the exhibition will also be viewable online at 6bridges.gallery. In curating “Passing the Edge,” Leonie Bradbury has put together a show that “celebrates artists’ mark making as a … [Read more...] about CAPSULE PREVIEWS FOR ARTSCOPE 96
A MELTING FLOW OF COLOR: NFTS, EARLY SALES, KEPT MIAMI ART WEEK 2021 UPBEAT
The sky was blue all week, with nary a raindrop falling to mar the art world experience of Miami Art Week or keep visitors from the many outside installations on the beach. This Art Basel Miami Beach and Miami Art Week was different than those of years past. The crowds were thinner but determined to obtain work and bring it home. Most galleries sold out their work within the first two VIP days, as buyers did not know when the next opportunity to obtain artwork at a fair would be. The art was generally upbeat, with the crowds ignoring the coming storm or Covid strain, with artists rivaling each other to produce the most beautiful scenes or portraits or abstract forms. The question posed by all was how do we create beauty that rivals the gorgeous colors and land and waterscape outside the doors of the Miami Beach Convention Center or the tents on the beach? The answer seemed to … [Read more...] about A MELTING FLOW OF COLOR: NFTS, EARLY SALES, KEPT MIAMI ART WEEK 2021 UPBEAT
LIGHT & LAYERS: SUSAN WAHLRAB’S “GARDEN IN THE FOREST” OFFERS RESPITE
Mark and Angie Setevdemio, founders of Creative Connections Gift Shop & Gallery in Ashburnham, Massachusetts, have known Vermont artist Susan Wahlrab since she was their art professor at Framingham State College 30 years ago. Fast forward, and they are now hosting her exhibition, “Garden in the Forest,” in their second-floor gallery space. “We’ve been admirers of Susan’s work since we were in college,” Mark said. “We were taken with her printmaking at the time, and later her dramatic use of light and overlapping swirls of color in layered concentric circles that use an unusual visual technique of varnished watercolor on archival clay board.” It’s a labor-intensive method that Wahlrab developed over time, requiring a good deal of patience, as layer upon layer dries before each subsequent layer is added. The result is engaging color and form on works that range in size … [Read more...] about LIGHT & LAYERS: SUSAN WAHLRAB’S “GARDEN IN THE FOREST” OFFERS RESPITE
HIGHLY PERMEABLE BEINGS: ROZENMAN, GERSTEIN & ROTHSCHILD ALIGN AT BRICKBOTTOM
I’m in the atelier of Alexandra Rozenman in her Joy Street Studio in Somerville just beyond Union Square, its majestic length filled with the mostly quiet energy of artists of all persuasions working industriously in their brick studios. Joy Street ends at the appropriately named Brickbottom Building where on January 27, Rozenman will be featured in their lobby gallery space, along with two other artist/ colleagues, in a month-long exhibit entitled “Space ←→ Color ←→ Movement: Lyrical Realism into Poetic Abstraction” with each word of the title joined to the other with a two-headed arrow to illustrate how in the process of painting, in deft hands, all these elements are joined in tension and harmony. (To read more, pick up a copy of our latest issue! Find a pick-up location near you or Subscribe Here.) … [Read more...] about HIGHLY PERMEABLE BEINGS: ROZENMAN, GERSTEIN & ROTHSCHILD ALIGN AT BRICKBOTTOM
“WE ARE STILL HERE”: VISIONARY, LIVING, IMPORTANT: INDIGENOUS AMERICAN ART
It is not just for the expression of an aesthetic and experience of lifeways, history and ceremony thousands of years old, nor because it connects us to, reminds us of the values of living in balance with each other and earth, but because it is a form of revolutionary resistance against the oppression of white supremacy, colonialism and fascism that Indigenous art is so important. As any native person from Wampanoag to Kwakiutl will tell you, “We are still here.” And they have been fighting the misapprehension that they are extinct, fighting to have their real history included in curricula, fighting to let it be known what genocides were done to them, culturally, linguistically and physically, by war, religion, forced education, economies, disease — and to let the rest of non-native America know that they have, in spite of all, persisted, and in some cases thrived, despite injustice, … [Read more...] about “WE ARE STILL HERE”: VISIONARY, LIVING, IMPORTANT: INDIGENOUS AMERICAN ART