While the post-Cold War 1991 dissolution of the Soviet Union brought the promise of closer relations and great cultural exchange between the United States and “Mother Russia,” recent political tensions between the two countries suggest the divide still exists, possible deeper than before. Two shows running this holiday season at the Museum of Russian Icons have the goal of serving to show visitors that even when the Space Age and threat of Nuclear War cast us as arch enemies, our holiday traditions suggested that our similarities were much greater than our leaders may have wanted us to believe. Curator Laura Garrity-Arquitt said the museum had wanted to present a show of Soviet holiday ornaments for some time but had “the worst luck finding a collection or exhibit available nearby where it would fit in our budget.” Enter collector Frank Sciacca, who had loaned the museum many of … [Read more...] about Tinsel Time in Clinton: Russia’s Holiday Icons Show Our Similarities
November/December 2018
Donald Saaf: Fine Art Meets Folk Art
Donald Saaf knew at an early age, while drawing comic books with his siblings, that he wanted to be an artist. He began painting as a teen and later moved from Hartford to Boston, where he studied at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts. A year in Mexico on a travel scholarship, living with indigenous people in a small village with his wife — painter Julia Zanes — led to a show at the Clark Gallery in Lincoln, Massachusetts that launched his career. Now his work is widely exhibited in galleries, museums and private collections in New England and beyond as Saaf, who lives in Marlboro, Vermont, divides his time between painting, teaching, illustrating children’s books, carving stone and playing music. Saaf’s work reflects his strong interest in the intersectionality of fine art and folk art. Both forms find their way into his paintings reflecting community, people and experience. … [Read more...] about Donald Saaf: Fine Art Meets Folk Art
Gillian Laub: Pioneering Southern Rites at Lamont
It was 1971. I was 18. My dad had recently been installed as the new pastor of Wisconsin Avenue Baptist Church in Washington D.C. I’d moved from my home state of South Dakota to be with my family and attend college at the University of Maryland. I’d transferred my job as a telephone operator to a nearby Maryland suburb while establishing residency prior to starting school. I quickly accumulated new friends, many of them black as the D.C. area has, according to the most recent United States Census Bureau report, a 50 percent black population. By contrast, my home state (again according to the latest U.S. Census Bureau report) is only 1.7 percent black. My black friends would often attend church with me. And sometimes we’d hit the beach and boardwalk in Atlantic City, New Jersey. That’s when I first noticed that a casual walk down the boardwalk with my tall, attractive black friend, Tony, … [Read more...] about Gillian Laub: Pioneering Southern Rites at Lamont
Rearranged Furniture: Interior Effects at Fitchburg
You might think you know what you think about furniture: that it’s utilitarian, it’s background, that any influence it wields is only on other furniture and that only at a glacial pace. The power of 10 original and very crafty contemporary furniture designers, now at the Fitchburg Art Museum, very quickly disabuse one of these easy notions as contemporary furniture furnishes metaphors for our most intimate human concerns, fears and hopes. Liz Shepherd’s “Untitled: Blue” is one of the most naked metaphors to meet the visitor ascending the stairs to the exhibit. A very plain, blue-painted clothes chest splits in two by a stroke so sudden and powerful that each half rests on the jagged ends of its drawers — the broken drawers spilling out, higgledy-piggledy, the flaccid arms of jerseys, sweaters and other coverings for the needy human torso. My first reaction was an unsettled and … [Read more...] about Rearranged Furniture: Interior Effects at Fitchburg
Love is Louder: Open Borders at Artspace Maynard
On first view, “Waste Not,” an exhibition featuring works by Lorraine Sullivan, Anne Plaisance, Stephen Martin and Kim Triedman (the show’s curator), holds many elements of life — or past life — that I’m quite fond of, especially pieces from old storefronts and corner stores and weathered buildings that I attach to feelings of warmth. Old windows are turned into picture frames, store fixtures become statues and a partially disembodied mannequin sits in a pre-prefabrication wooden wheelchair seems to have been positioned to ensure no one visits the exhibition feeling alone (the work is Plaisance’s “No Love Lost.”). And, indeed, in late 2018, a gallery is the one place many artisans don’t feel alone. A closer look, however revealed some works that could — and perhaps should — feel disturbing. Three works by Plaisance, who came to the United States from Paris three years ago, … [Read more...] about Love is Louder: Open Borders at Artspace Maynard
Still the Coolest: Dennis Hopper’s Lost Album Brings Us All Back
That Sunday afternoon in 1970, students and regular patrons in Fort Worth Art Center Museum had turned out for a show that seemed to encapsulate the age: Bellbottomed jeans and maxi-dresses mingled with the suits, minks and diamonds, when the photographer and now-director Dennis Hopper emerged, dressed in a gray pin-striped suit, Indian shirt and black western boots, his long hair flowing. Hopper had chosen more than 400 photographs out of some 10,000 he had captured and printed between 1960 and 1967. They were mounted in a succession of fascinating groupings, each image postcard-sized. Billboards, car with fins and twinkling tail lights competed with romantic motorcycle and bullfighting tableaux; young actors and artists on the cusp of greatness were captured in their element with what appeared to be disarming ease. Hopper had been in the thick of this milieu for more than a decade, … [Read more...] about Still the Coolest: Dennis Hopper’s Lost Album Brings Us All Back