Carl Austin Hyatt is calling us “Westerners” to a paradigm shift. Some might call it a dramatic point of departure for our culture. Others would call it an “it’s about time” movement. Whatever you choose to call it, Hyatt lives by it, feels it in his bones, believes in it. What is “it?” The connection to nature — that nature is alive, conscious, playful. But it’s more than that. Hyatt says nature speaks to him. Rocks speak to him. Even salt. Hyatt recalled that when he was still in his teens, he began having “mystical” experiences in nature. These experiences came with a sense of deep conviction about certain realities/presences, Hyatt said. This was also the beginning of seeing the blind spots, indeed errors, he says, of our dominant technological, modern Western culture. A longtime admirer of Thoreau, he longed for connection to place. He eventually found that on the seacoast of New … [Read more...] about LANDSCAPES, PERU AND SALT PILES: NATURE’S MYSTICAL FEATURES POWER HYATT PHOTOGRAPHS

Joseph Grigely’s exhibition, “In What Way Wham? (White Noise and Other Works, 1996-2023),” on view at MASS MoCA through March, is a visual conversation about deafness. The titular pieces, “White Noise (monochrome),” 2000, and “White Noise (polychrome),” 2023, are a pair of cylindrical rooms the insides of which are plastered with handwritten notes on white and colorful paper, respectively. The conversations are fragmented, some in neat lettering and some quickly scrawled. The papers vary from stained napkins to notebook paper and the backs of paperwork. Visitors who hadn’t chosen to read the welcoming blurb tried to make sense of the fragments of writing, trying to eke out a narrative or overarching message from the scattered phrases but mostly remaining confused. The words in “White Noise” are not a logic puzzle to be solved or a book to be read chapter by chapter. They are, as the … [Read more...] about SEARCHING FOR NEW BUZZWORDS AT MASS MOCA: JOSEPH GRIGELY SEEKS A GREATER THEME OF COMMUNICATION

Tinja Ruusuvuori is an international artist currently in her Second Year Fellowship at the Fine Arts Work Center (FAWC), Provincetown, a renowned residency with seven months of uninterrupted time, housing, studio and a stipend. Her first year as a Fellow, 2022-2023, had the joys and complexities of being in a new place. Returning this past October for another seven months, she found herself in a different scenario. “I had friends, knew the town, people recognized me on the main street and said, ‘Welcome home!’” Born in Tampere, Finland’s third-largest city, Ruusuvuori grew up on a small island with 40 residents, part of an archipelago boasting 40,000 islands and skerries. Living in Provincetown, which is surrounded on three sides by water, is familiar to her with the presence of the sea. As a filmmaker (her work has been shown at the Visions du Réel, Toronto Hot Docs, and Camden … [Read more...] about RADIO OF UNCERTAINTY: TINJA RUUSUVUORI SOUND ECHOES AT PROVINCETOWN’S FAWC

After living in San Francisco for 30 years, in a post-pandemic dimensional shift, Alison Pebworth took to the road exploring artist residency after artist residency (including the MacDowell Colony in Peterborough, New Hampshire), before she landed in the Berkshires. After staying with her nephew for a short while, she settled into a small cabin in the woods, experiencing the complete opposite to the residencies: solitude and meditation. Here she undertook a personal journey, pointing inward, turning out deeply contemplative drawings. Eventually came the first tilt of the pendulum that led Pebworth down a rabbit hole of synchronicity, where events unfolded towards her residency at MASS MoCA in a most unusual and serendipitous way: she was invited to a dinner where MASS MoCA Director Kristy Edmunds happened to be one of the guests. She and Pebworth began to talk, and Edmunds was drawn to … [Read more...] about A MUCH LESS TORTUOUS PATH: PEBWORTH INSTALLS NEW ENVIRONMENTS IN NORTH ADAMS

I first saw the photography of Chelsea Bradway at the Franklin Square Salon at the Hanover Theatre in Worcester, Massachusetts. The September 2021 reception for her “Be a Lady They Said” exhibition, presented by ArtsWorcester, had the double benefit of being an opening and the first time many people felt safe coming together again in a public gathering. My notes from that afternoon said that Bradway was a self- proclaimed whimsical photographer who aims to construct a collective voice through her photographic subjects, aiming to dismantle preconceptions of femininity and power with her own words stating, “When silence is broken around the modern struggle between women’s personal and professional identities, both subject and observer can reclaim some of themselves from fear, and stand up for what they believe in.” Some of her female subjects in the show were professionals – including … [Read more...] about ALL THINGS SPARKLEY: CHELSEA BRADWAY’S PHOTOGRAPHS SPEAK LOUDLY