THE STORY OF LESLIE FRY’S COLOSSAL ACORNHEAD Leslie Fry had a vision for her work and set out to find the means to realize it. A temporary installation she created at Wave Hill in the Bronx had given her a taste for wanting to cast her five-footlong plaster “AcornHead” in bronze, so Fry took matters into her own hands. She created a GoFundMe campaign through United States Artists in 2010 and successfully raised over $15,000 to cast her plaster “AcornHead” in bronze. Since Tufts University had been one of the biggest donors to her campaign, it got the first loan of the piece in 2011. Amy Schlegel, director of galleries and collections at Tufts, had been a long-time fan and supporter of Fry’s work, and placed the first edition of Fry’s “Colossal Acorn-Head” on its Medford/Somerville campus during the 2011-2012 academic year as part of a new public art initiative. At the same … [Read more...] about Artist Profile: Two Heads are Better than One
January/February 2015
Public Art: PLACEMAKING
NEW ENGLAND PUBLIC ARTISTS LAY THE GROUNDWORK FOR OTHER REGIONAL ARTISTS TO FOLLOW As the garage door to Susan Champeny’s workshop studio opened, it revealed the test version of her “Snow Saucer Lady Bug” sculpture now on display in Washington, D.C., along with a portion of her “Laundry Bottle Totems” and two Hornbeck Boats Adirondack-style canoes used to install her “ReinCARnation” hubcap lily pads in a pond along Atlanta’s BeltLine Rail Trail in 2012 and neighboring Elm Park in Worcester, Mass. in 2013. There’s also her secondhand drill press, sharpening stone, three tool boxes filled with yard sale and estate sale finds, 10 cases of fasteners, “weird objects I don’t know what to do with” and the “table saw of death,” so named because her father used to flinch when he saw her use it to cut non-traditional materials. “It’s kind of a mess because I’m finishing several projects … [Read more...] about Public Art: PLACEMAKING
Fine Arts Work Center Fellows
ALEXANDRIA SMITH AND BRIDGET MULLEN Provincetown’s Fine Arts Work Center’s Fellowship Program provides a unique opportunity for 10 artists and 10 writers to serve seven-month residencies during the developmental stages of their careers. Over 1,100 applications come in annually with the hope of being selected for the cherished experience that runs from October 1 through May 1. Over 800 fellowships have been served since FAWC’s inception in 1968. There will be a FAWC Fellows at PAAM exhibition from January 23 through February 22 at the Provincetown Art Association and Museum, 460 Commercial Street, Provincetown. Artscope’s Laura Shabott spoke with Alexandria Smith and Bridget Mullen, two second-year FAWC Fellows, about their experiences with the program, two months into their current residencies. ALEXANDRIA SMITH IN YOUR FIRST-YEAR RESIDENCY, DID YOU FIND OTHER PEOPLE COMING … [Read more...] about Fine Arts Work Center Fellows
Masters in the Studio
BONNIE FAULKNER AND CAROLANN TEBBETTS As a girl, Bonnie Faulkner recalls endlessly drawing circles — “circles and circles and circles,” as she emphasized — and, inspired by the way light played with colored glass, she hit upon the novel idea that she could “paint” with that fragile material. Eventually, she literally fused those two ideas into colorful, intricate glass renditions of the mandala, a circular symbol that represents both the cosmos and the self. “It’s analogous to life,” the Heartwood College of Art MFA candidate explained recently between sips of tea in her Yarmouth studio overlooking an expanse of ocean mudflats. “If the inside is worked out, things emanate out from there.” The lifelong Maine resident will further explore the spiritual and psychological symbol in an exhibit, “Masters in the Studio,” opening January 30 at Heartwood’s gallery at the North Dam … [Read more...] about Masters in the Studio
Peter Halley: Big Paintings
SIZE MATTERS For nearly three decades, Peter Halley has deployed his geometric icons — “solid cells,” “gridded prisons” and “linear conduits,” using modern geometry as raw source material. He dissects the human condition: exploring our isolation and capacity for interconnection, looking at the ways in which technology affects how we communicate and probing the ways in which our living and working environments shape us. His paintings are executed in industrial and boldly artificial DayGlo paints in metallic and pearlescent colors. Roll-a-Tex, a paint additive used to create textured walls, roughens his surfaces. “Peter Halley: Big Paintings,” at the Florence Griswold from February 6 through May 31, will draw on work from major public and private collections for a retrospective that will move from early work in this now-international career to include a new painting created for the … [Read more...] about Peter Halley: Big Paintings
Mystical, Meditative, Mirthful
COSO’S NEW MEMBERS ARE FOR REAL If you are seeking some good examples of contemporary realism, look no further than the Copley Society of Art’s New Members’ Show 2015, introducing 18 new Co|So member artists who hail from as near as Brookline and Cambridge, Mass. to as far away as County Kildare, Ireland. They join the Society’s roster of over 400 living members. This exhibition focuses on realism from a variety of approaches including painting, drawing and photography, with only one artist working in abstraction. While traditional genres such as still life, landscape, seascape and rural/townscape are perhaps overly represented, there are some stand-out works that will make this exhibition well worth a visit. New York painter Nicole Alger’s oil paintings, “Talking Woman” and especially “Talking Stick,” successfully combine photographic realism with expressive painterly … [Read more...] about Mystical, Meditative, Mirthful