Excerpts Welcome |Three Easy Pieces: Simon Fujiwara | IMPRESSIONS OF NEW ENGLAND XIV - PORTRAYING THE HUMAN SPIRIT | Viewpoints: 20 Years of Adderly | Castellology | 70 Years of Printmaking | On Her Own Terms | Cover Story: Two Painters |To Borrow, Cut, Copy, and Steal | Unnaturally Beautiful | Manna | Boston Printmakers and Claudia Flynn | Coyote Connections | Medley | The Centennial Exhibition | Suffer a Sea-Change | Art in the Cemetery | Mitchell-Giddings, Brattleboro | Walking the Walk | Balwin Lee: Black & White | Capsule Previews   … [Read more...] about November/December 2014

Al Miner, assistant curator of contemporary art at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, reviewed almost 800 images before selecting the 75 pieces on view in the South Shore Art Center’s “Works on Paper” exhibition. Oviedo, Florida’s Kevin Haran (for “UFO 3,” which Miner wrote shows that “No computer graphics program can replace the strength and elegance of great draftsmanship”); Bedford, New Hampshire’s Patricia Schappler (whose “Mary,” a charming portrait of a young woman, “beautifully and sensitively captures her simultaneous innocence and budding sexuality”); and Pembroke’s Becky Haletky’s “Art Deco Gone Wild” (that “celebrates the well-deserved conservation” of an early 20th century movie palace), all took home top honors in the show that continues through December 21 at SSAC, 119 Ripley Road, Cohasset, Mass. “Modern Spin: CONtemporary TEXTiles in an Historic Mill” honors the Fall … [Read more...] about Capsule Previews

PHOTOGRAPHS FROM THE AMERICAN SOUTH For six years in the 1980s, Baldwin Lee, an Asian-American man from New York, accompanied by “an antique-looking wooden camera and tripod,” explored the impoverished areas of the Deep South with the goal of taking portraits of everyday life, following the inspiration of Walker Evans. When he’d arrive in a town, he’d go to the local police station, tell them his intentions, they’d show him a map and “redline” the areas he should avoid — almost always those concentrated with African-Americans — and then he’d head straight to those areas he was warned about, trusting the sincerity of his intentions to protect him when he asked residents if he could take their picture. “I am impressed by the sheer guts it took him to enter into each situation, to stand face-to-face with people of such poverty, and showcase the beauty of their humanity and spirit in … [Read more...] about Balwin Lee: Black & White

REVITALIZING PAWTUCKET'S ART SCENE In Pawtucket, “Chalk Wall,” a text-based installation by New Orleans artist Candy Chang, curves around a building’s retaining wall on the city’s Main Street. The sweep of the installation’s blackboard surface begins with the words, “In my lifetime… I want to…” Chalk is available for passersby to complete this sentence. The artist’s concept includes instructions pertaining to presentation and often an understanding as to predetermined duration. On the “Chalk Wall,” people can write whatever comes to mind, including personal insight or a testimony of some kind. The possibilities are endless. This temporary outdoor installation is meant to draw people from interior spaces into an interactive public dialogue. In whatever city it appears — and it has appeared in cities across the globe, including Wellfleet this past summer, thanks to the farm … [Read more...] about Walking the Walk

SHOWCASING VERMONT'S ART TOWN While singled out by Style Magazine as one of the nation’s top art towns, and Smithsonian Magazine as one of the best small towns to live in for the quality and number of its arts organizations and venues, Brattleboro has never had a gallery like Mitchell-Giddings Fine Arts. That is, a large commercial gallery with plenty of wall and floor space to show the kind of large-scale work favored by so many artists today. Owners Petria Mitchell and Jim Giddings have been important mainstays of the Brattleboro art scene for years. Both painters, they were members of the Windham Art Gallery, a much loved co-operative. Giddings and Mitchell both have been intrinsic to the running of the Brattleboro Museum and Art Center — Giddings working on installations and lighting and Mitchell chairing exhibitions and doing some curating along the way, something she will … [Read more...] about Mitchell-Giddings, Brattleboro

A LOWELL LANDMARK COMES ALIVE Art in the cemetery? “That’s odd.” “Why make art in a cemetery?” “That sounds gloomy.” These are typical responses to the above question but, as it turns out, there is a bit of art history in Lowell Cemetery. Listed on the National Register of Historic Places, it opened in 1841 and was designed as one of the first garden-style cemeteries. The successful manufacturers of historic Lowell commissioned well-known sculptors to create monuments worthy of an art museum, and in fact, the grounds look like an outdoor sculpture garden. Feeling its beauty needed to be brought alive, artist Miriam Perkins wrote a grant application to the Lowell Cultural Council and organized a plein air event at the cemetery that took place in May of this year during the spring cemetery tours. The end result of those sessions is the exhibit “Art in the Cemetery,” which was … [Read more...] about Art in the Cemetery