Pure and Simple At Coso by Linda Chestney “Art is not what you see, but what you make others see.” — Edgar Degas And what you make others feel, according to Robin Frisella, a pastel artist based in southern New Hampshire who loves nothing better than to make people cry. Well, to have her work connect so profoundly with viewers that they react with intense emotion. That reaction is based primarily on nostalgia. Something almost magical exists in her work that engages the viewer to the point where they are often moved to tears. It might be a white enameled pan like your grandmother had. Or a pitcher that Aunt Eloise kept in her root cellar. “I just love simple things. And old things that are reminders of the past a simpler time. It makes me happy. And people connect with it,” said Frisella, who’s pretty much self-taught. No formal training, but lots of classes under … [Read more...] about Robin Frisella
November/December 2015
Gabrielle Rossmer
Finding Truth In The Shadows by Elizabeth Michelman “Rigid Mobility,” a solo sculpture exhibition by Gabrielle Rossmer at HallSpace, consists largely of open space, broken up by seven polychromed pillars strategically dispersed throughout the gallery. Almost entirely composed of pedestal, they grow upward from a flared foot to culminate at eye-level in stacks of geometric forms pregnant with biomorphic softness. The gallery walls are sparsely punctuated by a handful of shelves holding diminutive representations of body parts. The focal objects surmounting the pillars appear themselves to be similar to abstract pedestals — bulky towers of angular and rounded forms: bulbous toruses, chunky slabs, oversized hex-nuts, chamfered cubes and chopped-off pyramids. Some of them, composed of repetitions of flattened pyramids alternately pointing upward and downward, quote the endless … [Read more...] about Gabrielle Rossmer
Richard Heller
Expression Emerges Through Process by Marguerite Serkin Richard Heller’s background in literature led him to the visual arts as a way to express ideas and sentiments words cannot reach. “I read Brian Greene’s ‘The Elegant Universe’ and became interested in the multi-dimensional aspects of quantum physics,” Heller said recently from his home in southern Vermont. “It was amusing to see how they tried to communicate that through illustrations on a two-dimensional page. Obtuse and abstract ideas can be visually represented to suggest things that language can’t fully explain.” Currently on view at Brattleboro’s Gallery in the Woods, Heller’s paintings encompass a compelling mix of energy and calm, asymmetry and order. “Untitled Circle in 4 Directions” (2014) utilizes the centripetal form of a circle to draw the viewer inward, juxtaposed with lines extending outward in a … [Read more...] about Richard Heller
Cut.Paper.Fold
The Mundane Goes Exotic by James Foritano We all know by now – having been told over and over again — that Americans didn’t invent paper. Well, what’s done is done and so we do what we’re good at, i.e., imagining the future. And that’s fortuitous since paper, as we all know, is in a fix right now – witness the heralded “paperless office” and realize with a shudder that if America’s business is truly business, where’s paper? Restless explorers that we are (even more so the artists among us), we are busy imagining where paper can possibly be now that it’s not on hand for every routine communication. When paper from the Philippines lands in Michelle Samour’s Acton studio in what I take, with some explanation, to be beautifully textured sheets of exotic abaca fiber, she throws it into a back studio machine that macerates it to bits, then laboriously puts it back together as she … [Read more...] about Cut.Paper.Fold
Bunny Harvey At Wellesley
Exploring The Seen and Unseen by Meredith Cutler Bunny Harvey can locate the very place and moment in time that cemented her knowledge that she was, and would always be, an artist. Trailing her fashionable mother through the streets of mid-town Manhattan, the smell of oil paint wafting from the Art Students League of New York drew her in like a siren’s song. Always a creative child with a love of drawing, “that sensory experience was really the beginning of my art,” Harvey recounted. Through this fall semester at Wellesley College, visitors to the institution’s Davis Museum can view an ambitious retrospective of work by Harvey, Elizabeth Christy Kopf Professor of Art from 1976-2015. This exhibition was one of the first assignments for curator Meredith Fluke, who marks the completion of her first year at Wellesley as Harvey celebrates her last. As the two began to peel … [Read more...] about Bunny Harvey At Wellesley
Newly Renovated
Museums Shine In Connecticut by J. Fatima Martins The New Britain Museum of American Art (NBMAA, 1903) and the Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art (1842) recently reopened after major building renovations and expansions, followed by reinstallation of their collections and exhibitions. Both institutions look spectacular. In this review I reveal my favorite works of art at each, a surprise even to myself. So, keep reading. The Wadsworth is the oldest continually operating public art museum in the United States, while the NBMAA is the first museum in the country dedicated to the development of American art. Coincidental similarities between the two include large-scale murals by Connecticut native Sol LeWitt as prominent decorative features in the entrance lobby areas: “Whirls and Twirls (2004)” at the Wadsworth and “Scribbles (2005)” at NBMAA. Both institutions also feature … [Read more...] about Newly Renovated