Suzanne M. Packer showed her first artwork at the San Francisco Museum of Art when she was five years old. Some of her earliest memories are of spending her Saturdays sitting at the dining table painting watercolors and drawing with her dad, A.S. Packer, noted illustrator for Parade magazine, as her mother, teacher and school principal, encouraged her. She grew up in a suburb near Manhattan and was taken to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the MOMA and the Frick Collection. She says art runs in the family. One grandchild is a working artist. Her “very supportive” husband, Dick McGarr, is a painter. They live in a uniquely artistic house designed by Nina Wolff, with wide pine panel floors, stressed-wood doors and exposed beams. Married with children and freelancing as a graphics designer — for which she had trained at Rhode Island School of Design (RISD) in the 1960s — she opened … [Read more...] about ARTIST, TEACHER, MUSE: PACKER PAINTS, BONDS CAPE COD’S HEARTBEAT
May/June 2019
AN INTRIGUING MELANGE: SHEILA GALLAGHER’S SOUL-PULLING PAINTINGS
Art that investigates human mourning and grief drives our most basic creative instincts. Buried in our DNA, the tears shed over death can even be seen evolutionarily in mammals and birds. Humans build tumuli, erect memorial statues, plant trees, make death masks, wear black and even throw themselves on funeral pyres. Sheila Gallagher’s art invents new materials and icons to help us grieve over death due to starvation, disease, warfare gassing and guns. Not surprisingly, her choice of media tends toward black, gray and white. There is little in her work to reassure us or bring happy memories to mind. Past atrocities recorded in her art may spur us to work to avoid historically destructive activities, but her art is not resistance, not therapy and not overtly political. The recently discovered deaths by starvation and neglect of up to 796 children at the Bon Secours Mother and Baby Home … [Read more...] about AN INTRIGUING MELANGE: SHEILA GALLAGHER’S SOUL-PULLING PAINTINGS
A COLLECTOR’S PASSION: TRIBAL ARTIFACTS AND TEXTILES AT GROTON
The passion of a collector was evident the day Elizabeth Van Gelder and I met at the de Menil Gallery where 250 objects from her extensive collection are on display at the Groton School. Van Gelder’s collection of tribal artifacts and textiles, her “gathering of beauty,” began in 1989 with her travels while on sabbatical from her position as art teacher there. “I started collecting because I’m an artist and I’m a traveler,” she explained. “What excites me is going to a place where no one looks like me or speaks my language. That’s what I find the most interesting. It’s about different. It’s different from what I am and who I am and what I know. And so, every trip I take is, for me, a time to really learn something new. “When I started collecting, I focused on material culture. I realized that was one of the most intimate ways to know about a people or a culture. It tells you what … [Read more...] about A COLLECTOR’S PASSION: TRIBAL ARTIFACTS AND TEXTILES AT GROTON
A WELCOME REOPENING: GREATLY MISSED, THE DANFORTH IS BACK
For the reopening at its new renovated location in the historic Jonathan Maynard Building, now part of Framingham State University, the Danforth Art Museum’s curator Jessica Roscio has organized a major permanent installation of the work and studio of Meta Vaux Warrick Fuller (1877–1968), a groundbreaking African-American sculptor, and three other temporary exhibitions: “Landed: Selections from the Permanent Collection;” “Armchair Travel;” and “Lois Tarlow: Material Vocabulary.” The reopening also features a selection of four recent acquisitions by Barbara Swan (1922–2003), including a portrait of Emily Dickinson, “The Frog Prince,” published in Anne Sexton’s “Transformations,” 1971, and “Mushrooms and Babies,” from Maxine Kumin’s “Up Country,” 1972. Together, the exhibitions highlight the museum’s mission as a collecting and educational institution, and a place to celebrate and … [Read more...] about A WELCOME REOPENING: GREATLY MISSED, THE DANFORTH IS BACK
SHORELINES AND SEASCAPES: OGUNQUIT’S EARLY TASTE OF SUMMER
Want the perfect summer New England day trip? This is it! An enchanted drive up the coast, interspersed with serendipitous food spots along the way — ultimately culminating at Ogunquit Museum of American Art, a little jewel of an art gallery. Or, if you don’t want to end your day there, walk on up to Perkins Cove to dine — check out Barnacle Billy’s or M.C. Perkins Cove for food, Todd Bonita’s Gallery for more f ine art, Swamp John’s for fine crafts and jewelry, or a myriad of other shops. Or even better — plan ahead and take in a summer performance at Ogunquit Playhouse. Undoubtedly you won’t be disappointed. If you’re coming from the North Shore or Boston area, take Route 1A and Route 1 along the ocean, where you’ll meander through fascinating little, out-of-the-way villages and Portsmouth, Kittery and York, all hosting great places to eat along the way, including Bob’s Clam Hut, … [Read more...] about SHORELINES AND SEASCAPES: OGUNQUIT’S EARLY TASTE OF SUMMER
SVAC’S RECYCLED BEAUTY: UNUSUAL FASHION THREADS SHOWCASED IN VERMONT
When I was in high school in New York City in the ‘70s, it was de rigueur for girls to clothe themselves from local thrift shops. It was not unusual to see your friends in Lanvin or Schiaparelli working a Bunsen burner in bio class. That was before Upper East Side ladies donated to the Met, and before the Costume Institute was established and before there was a sizable tax benefit to giving away your vintage Valentino. As a societal force, sustainability was just getting a bit of traction and it was a small circle of worrywarts who pondered, “what’s going to happen to all this stuff in 59 years?” The Southern Vermont Arts Center (SVAC) has mounted a thought-provoking exhibition entitled, “Unusual Threads: Stitching Together the Future of Fashion,” that centers on the haute couture fashion industry’s need to reinvent itself season after season with the dual purpose of producing a … [Read more...] about SVAC’S RECYCLED BEAUTY: UNUSUAL FASHION THREADS SHOWCASED IN VERMONT