For the third consecutive year, New England Sculptors Association (NESA) members have juried works placed throughout the outside area surrounding the Alternatives’ Whitin Mill Complex in Whitinsville, Massachusetts (where they’ve been since late fall) and, starting January 12, they’ll be joined by sculptures by NESA members inside the Spaulding R. Aldrich Heritage Gallery. ValleyCAST, the arts and culture arm of Open Sky Community Services, runs the exhibit. Formerly Alternatives Unlimited, Inc., Open Sky provides services for individuals with behavioral health challenges and intellectual or developmental disabilities. ValleyCAST and Open Sky provide outreach and events that enrich and empower an inclusive community. In 2015, Dennis H. Rice, who co-founded Alternatives Unlimited, Inc., launched the idea of having sculpture on its Community Plaza, which was named in his honor upon his … [Read more...] about A SCULPTURAL WINTER WONDERLAND: NESA CHANNELS MILL HISTORY AT VALLEYCAST GALLERY

“INTERCESSION,” a meditation on personal and community agency, started as a response to the current war in Gaza. The exhibition asks, “How do we navigate when we begin to question who and what we understand? Is there a way to speak, when both speaking and being silent are equally volatile positions?” The photographic work of Alonso Nichols, Philip C. Keith, Sam Williams and Lauren Miller at the New Art Center’s Corridor at Trio Gallery in Newton, Massachusetts, explores these questions through three types of artistic practice: chronicling, projecting personhood and memory of space. As a genre of art, documentation, or the act of chronicling life within Black communities is overdetermined by the erasure and indignity caused by the history of enslavement. The inspirational oratory of abolitionists such as Sojourner Truth and Frederick Douglass, documented in revolutionary newspapers, … [Read more...] about WE ARE STILL HERE: NEW ART CENTER’S INTERCESSION CHRONICLES BLACK COMMUNITIES

For Nayana LaFond the issue of violence against women is personal. Not only is she a survivor of domestic violence, she’s also a citizen of the Métis Nation of Ontario with roots in the Red River Settlement and a descendant of the Anishinaabe and other Indigenous groups. As a cancer survivor as well, art is vital to her healing process, she said. “Art is medicine for me. In indigenous cultures, it’s medicine. I see the work I do as sacred.” LaFond’s art life began in childhood when she began using crayons creatively, a talent her kindergarten teacher encouraged. Later she skipped seventh grade to take art classes at a community college in Massachusetts where she refined her skills at drawing, painting and working with stained glass and clay. After finishing high school, she returned to Greenfield Community College where studying art became deeply meaningful to her. She transferred to … [Read more...] about BREAKING SILENCE AT SVAC: LAFOND AND DEL BUONO CONFRONT VIOLENCE AGAINST WOMEN