18th Annual Juried Show At Newburyport Art As you would expect of any show centered in a location as picturesque as Cape Ann, the Newburyport Art Association’s 18th Regional Juried Show — juried by Artscope publisher Kaveh Mojtabai — replicates its most beloved features while spotlighting them alongside other global wonderlands that make this more than a regionally themed show. Mojtabai said it took four nights to go through the approximately 450 entries before selecting the final 153. “I approached looking at the work through several factors, [including] visual and technical quality and subject matter from a media point of view that a public audience may initially recognize the subject — such as the oil on canvas of a boatyard marina [Roy St. Christopher Rossow’s “New Bedford Harbor Nocturne 1”] or photograph [by Lysa Burns] of an old collectible car, neglected in a makeshift … [Read more...] about Local Color And Beyond
May/June 2015
Rose Marasco
New Perspectives on Familiar Themes Through Rose Marasco’s lens, disparate worlds — from the urban jungle to the domestic sphere of women — are revealed through intimate details and quiet revelations. Working with myriad subjects and techniques, Marasco shows tremendous range, but above all, a purity of line, tone and perspective characterizes her photographs. “Rose Marasco: Index” is the artist’s first-ever retrospective, on view now at Maine’s Portland Museum of Art. PMA Chief Curator Jessica May worked with Marasco for nearly a year to select works from a career that spans more than four decades. The exhibition is appropriately titled, as it serves as both a record of Marasco’s evolution as an artist and a virtual chronicle of her life. Her early photographs explore the tension between geometric and organic forms and the reduction of three-dimensional space. Rectangular pans … [Read more...] about Rose Marasco
Displacement
Anna Shapiro, Artist and Catalyst Anna Shapiro’s installation and performance sensibilities are about form blending feminism with cultural commentary, and it has a politicized relationship to place. In her “Make Waves” blog, she describes herself as an “Artist and Catalyst.” Her artwork conveys some of the habitual and resourceful ways that people, globally and individually, deal with the harsh reality of continuance. Inviting relationship to works by Richard Long, geographic mapping is in her ethos. Her latest installation in Maine also engages remembrance as reliquary, and that concept relates to the installation dream tableaux sensibility of Louise Bourgeois. During a recent visit with Shapiro at her studio, she was in the midst of re-inventing “Parvietošana: Displacement” (which was initially shown in Sabile, Latvia in 2014) with the intention of exhibiting it again as … [Read more...] about Displacement
Lia Rothstein
Photography Is Just The Beginning Working with light projections, digital and hand drawing, encaustic waxes, oil paints and other media, Lia Rothstein is transforming her photographs into highly abstracted, texturally nuanced, intriguing works on handmade Japanese and other fine art papers. An exhibition of her latest artwork will be on view at the Aidron Duckworth Art Museum from June 13 to July 26. This exhibition includes her most recent work, which Rothstein said represents a departure, to some extent, from what she has done before. She explained that she begins with light — reflected onto a wall from a skylight or window — captured in a photograph. Projecting that light onto an image, she can then add or subtract, by hand or in the computer, to reveal or conceal, using a variety of materials. “I don’t like putting my photographs behind glass, so I started experimenting with … [Read more...] about Lia Rothstein
Shaking It Up In Connecticut
Collecting Icons From A Progressive Culture When Stephen Miller paid his first visit to the Hancock Shaker Village in Hancock, Mass., it was not the light-filled interiors, or the glorious staircase in the main dwelling house with its curvilinear hand-railing, or the three-tiered round barn designed so that one person could tend to the needs of a large herd of dairy cattle that captured his imagination. Rather, it would prove to be the story behind these elements — the seamless integration of daily life, work and belief, sprung from a radically progressive culture that fostered innovation and ingenuity — that would haunt him. The creative contributions that flowed from this essentially tiny constellation of Believers extending from New England and New York west to Ohio, Indiana and Kentucky, and south to Georgia and Florida, was staggering; Shakers shook traditional approaches … [Read more...] about Shaking It Up In Connecticut
Warhol By The Book
"The Idea Is Not To Live Forever, It Is To Create Something That Will" “A friend had written me a note saying that everybody we knew was writing a book so that made me want to keep up and do one too.” — Andy Warhol One of the most compelling aspects of the current “Warhol by the Book” exhibition at Williams College Museum of Art is the curatorial approach of showing personal items belonging to and relating to the artist, in conjunction with the artist’s own works. With unprecedented access to personal items from The Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh merged with the holdings of the Williams College Museum of Art, the curators of “Warhol By The Book” were given a rare opportunity to allow the viewer to share in Warhol’s own experience from youth into his later years. Although the exhibit centers on Warhol’s relationship to books, there are expansive representations of his drawings, … [Read more...] about Warhol By The Book