CONTEMPORARY KOREAN ARTISTS MAKE A CONNECTION by Elizabeth Michelman Carol Rabe, curator at Pine Manor’s Hess Gallery, has brought together five Korean-born women artists working around Boston in different media: graphic art, photography, painting, fabric art and ceramic sculpture. Each has from five to eight works in this exhibition. Most of them have studied in the United States as well as in Korea. Several are mothers. One wonders what conflict these cultural transplants might feel between the authority of their discipline and their wish for freedom. Do they feel bound to cultural traditions? Do they parrot the new? Courting the soft word, they appear to draw on Buddhist philosophy, ancestor worship and Christian belief as well as art forms of both East and West. Their search for awareness and courage stirs moods and raises questions in our encounter with worlds like … [Read more...] about Culture Club
March/April 2014
Pedal To The Metal
THE ATTLEBORO ARTS MUSEUM ELEVATES THE KID-SIZED CAR TO ART STATUS by Craig Fitzgerald There’s fine art, and then there’s the art of mechanical things. Sir William Lyons’ Jaguar E-Type and Hans Muth’s Suzuki Katana have had their day at the MoMA and the Guggenheim, and now it’s time for kid-friendly automobiles, planes and tractors to have their turn in the spotlight. The Attleboro Arts Museum’s Ottmar Gallery will present “Compact and Collectible An Exhibition of Vintage Pedal Cars” from April 9 to May 10. The exhibition focuses on the golden age of pedal cars the period immediately following the close of the Second World War to the early 1970s. Prior to the war, pedal cars were expensive, intricately constructed mini-automobiles, with steel bodies welded to ladder frames, just like their grown-up cousins. Like the cars they emulated, the pedal cars of the early … [Read more...] about Pedal To The Metal
You Are Here
An Enigmatic Body of Work by Elizabeth Michelman In addition to its well-publicized recent acquisitions a stupendous Veronese Venus and the medieval arsenal of the Higgins Armory Museum the Worcester Art Museum (WAM) has also long cultivated a commitment to collecting portraiture. To bring this preoccupation up to date, Curator of Contemporary Art Susan Stoops has marshaled a decade-and-a-half of minimalist and conceptual works in the current exhibition, most of them recently collected by WAM, to challenge our preconceptions of personhood. “You Are Here” offers 12 spare and reserved sculptural and photo- graphic-based works and one painting as tools for reconsidering how we perceive bodily limits and distinguish identity. The artists’ methods include abstraction and metaphorical and concrete thinking, but rarely pure depiction. Instead they point to substitutions … [Read more...] about You Are Here
Global Encounters In Early America
Holy Cross Honors Our Country's Rich History by Brian Goslow For its latest exhibition, the College of the Holy Cross’ Cantor Gallery utilizes the collections of four major New England depositories of history — the cross-town American Antiquarian Society (AAS) and Worcester Historical Museum, Old Sturbridge Village and the Rhode Island Historical Society — plus private lenders. The show’s curator is Professor of Art History Patricia Johnston, Rev. J. Gerard Mears, S.J., Chair in Fine Arts at Holy Cross, who utilized students from a curatorial seminar held last fall in which participants spent one afternoon a week working with staff from the aforementioned institutions, setting out to find “what did early Americans know about the rest of the world, and how did interactions with other cultures make an impact on American arts?” They focused primarily on the emergence of … [Read more...] about Global Encounters In Early America
Renewal New Direction
Mother Brook Arts Flirts With A New Direction by Meredith Cutler Planted squarely on one of the oft-neglected borders between suburban and urban Boston, the former mill village of East Dedham has long remained an untapped opportunity for thoughtful redevelopment. Along the banks of the Mother Brook Canal, the oldest hand-dug mill pond in the United States (circa 1639), and former home to Dedham Pottery, the factory that produced the collectible, crackle-glazed ceramics from 1896-1943, the neighborhood had the bones for an artistic rebirth. In 2011, a group of civic-minded residents and local selectmen saw the soon to be decommissioned Avery School as the perfect opportunity. REDUCE, REUSE, RECYCLE “Why do we automatically think the building needs to be torn down because the use changes?” was the question posed by Town of Dedham Selectman Paul Reynolds, who helped spearhead … [Read more...] about Renewal New Direction
March/April 2014 8th anniversary issue
Excerpts Welcome |Renewal New Direction | Global Encounters In Early America | You Are Here | Pedal To The Metal | Culture Club | Catenaria | A Shared Vision |Uncovered Memories | Surveillance Society | Tanja Softic | Seeing Double | We The People Chawky Frenn at Nesto | Outskirts | Cameraless Images | More Than Just A Library | Sophisticated Perspectives | Memories | Arlene Shechet |Keeping Up With The Actor's Shakespeare Project | Getting Schooled | | Artlifting |New London: Diverse, Up-And-Coming Seaside Enclave | Capsule Previews … [Read more...] about March/April 2014 8th anniversary issue