When you enter the “Weaving an Address” exhibition at the Umbrella Arts Center in Concord, Massachusetts, your gaze is directed to the central wall of the Allie Kussin Gallery. It’s there that Perla Mabel’s “Morir Soñando” hangs like the nave rosette window in France’s Chartres Cathedral. Mabel created this multi-media piece during Covid to find herself, and to “speak her truth without fear.” She told me that her art is her love language. A sunflower ornament, owned by her mother, tops her work like a perpetual sun. The black, purple and gold fabrics that she pieced together echo the materials in home altars that she grew up with. Mabel painted several self-portraits emerging and dreaming in this cave-like spiritual space. Curator Marla McLeod invited Mabel to display her work in the exhibit with only a month to prepare; the other artists were given a year’s notice. Happily, the power … [Read more...] about POWER AND RADIANT REVERENCE

Jo Sandman is a painter and multidisciplinary artist, now aged 93, who has exhibited nationally and internationally during her long career. Sandman attended the legendary Black Mountain College in North Carolina in 1951, where she studied with Robert Motherwell and Aaron Siskind, among others. At Maine’s Portland Museum of Art, Sandman’s 1998 suite of images, which make up “Skin Deep,” reveal these important early influences. At Black Mountain, Sandman experimented with painting, collage and interdisciplinary media of all kinds, including music and dance. Teachers there at the time included faculty member and poet Charles Olson, who had traveled in Central America and brought back information on then-untranslated Mayan glyphs, a system of writing in which representational images combine with abstract symbols to form words or syllables. The concept of glyphs took hold at Black Mountain. … [Read more...] about JO SANDMAN: YEAR OF THE SNAKE

On January 10, 1975, the newly established Nesto Gallery at Milton Academy opened its inaugural exhibition, showcasing 35 works by 1969 Milton Academy graduate William Nesto. That exhibit would set the stage for decades of artwork, life-long friendships and impactful teacher-student relationships. Now, just over 50 years later, a multi-generational team of 10 current and former Nesto Gallery directors have assembled “Celebrating 50 Years of the Nesto Gallery,” a show that pulls 10 artists from the gallery’s half-century of solo exhibitions to present a thoughtful and robust cross section of visual art. It’s hard to talk about the Nesto Gallery without first acknowledging the space’s namesake, the Nesto family, specifically Anne Nesto, who provided a grant to help establish the gallery in memory of her husband, and William’s father, R. William Nesto. According to a statement by curator … [Read more...] about MANIFEST DESTINY