Technology says that an airbrush refines a painting. Tradition says it’s a paintbrush. Smart artists know that art is delivered by the eyes, which ignite the senses. Open your eyes at the Ogunquit Museum of American Art, offering both natural and artist-created art. At times, you can’t see the boundaries of the two. Place and imagination are blended to the point of overload The entrance to this museum, set above the Atlantic Ocean on ledges of outcropping land, takes your breath away as you experience the panoramic view of crashing waves and distant vistas of Downeast Maine through its back-window wall. Just spectacular. And in fact, this is the space — the sculpture gallery — where the current exhibition, “Lois Dodd: Drawings and Paintings,” is showcased. A much-loved and highly celebrated artist of 91 years, Dodd was a pioneer artist beginning back in the 1950s. She congregated … [Read more...] about SEEING IS BELIEVING: DODD AT OGUNQUIT
Issue Articles
A BOLD ARTISTIC VOICE: SHABOTT AT FOUR ELEVEN
Laura Shabott is not only an artist who has undergone what she calls “circuitous” life processes to find herself back at painting, drawing and figurative art, she is also, undoubtedly, an intuitive mark maker, a conduit for a glimmering network of centuries of artistic tradition in Provincetown and a person who greets each day boldly using her artistic voice. She creates directly from life, transmuting with a fearless hand all that she’s absorbed, cutting visual planes with lucid intent. Bearing the art colony’s lineage in lightening strokes, her gestural paintings and drawings in gouache, charcoal and oil refresh what one may or may not know of the rich, abstract expressionist tradition on the Cape Cod peninsula. Shabott is constantly referencing a greater legacy: Hans Hofmann, Helen Frankenthaler, Robert Motherwell. These artists, who worked and lived where she works and lives, are … [Read more...] about A BOLD ARTISTIC VOICE: SHABOTT AT FOUR ELEVEN
KINESTHETIC COMPOSITION: ARCH DEFIES GRAVITY
In her late summer, early fall exhibition at the Hess Gallery at Pine Manor College, Adria Arch explores the next stage of her painting evolution. It’s what she describes as hybrid painting, referencing a January 2018 article by Jason Stopa in the online publication “Hyperallergic,” where he stated: “This very approach might have something to do with the influence of performance invading the space of painting, in which mark-making is liberated from the traditional formal unity that previous paintings occupy … the funky, shaped, theatrical, baroque canvases of Elizabeth Murray and Frank Stella in the 1980s … grappled with the architectural space of the gallery and the conventions of a rectangular support, merging both geometric and expressive tendencies into a multi-planar site.” This is hybrid painting defined, but Arch amplifies the particulars to suit her art, adding aspects of … [Read more...] about KINESTHETIC COMPOSITION: ARCH DEFIES GRAVITY
POEMS, PLASTER & PAPER: MORE THAN WORDS AT SIMMONS
On the walls of the Trustman Gallery, shadows from plastic wire, fiber and thread constructions hover over the soft grey texts of blown-up poems, plaster and paper reliefs and white-and-black print-collages. “Linger and Shift” is a collaboration between Boston sculptor Julia Shepley and Scottish-born poet Audrey Henderson. Their separate, yet deeply intermeshed works grew out of monthly conversations begun over a year ago. The longtime friends were spurred to parallel play by a Boston Sculptors Gallery exhibition featuring verbal-visual collaboration. It intensified their psychic bond to discover that, as children undergoing family vicissitudes and illness, they both developed artistic sensitivities in an enforced solitude. “Being alone in rooms without adult intervention, life goes on, and you’re left to survey the passage of time,” Henderson mused. “You don’t know about time, so you … [Read more...] about POEMS, PLASTER & PAPER: MORE THAN WORDS AT SIMMONS
Cornered: Heather Ferrell
As August was coming to a close, Heather Ferrell, curator and director of exhibitions at Burlington City Arts, took time from her busy schedule to discuss her vision and process for integrating the thriving downtown Burlington City Arts Center into the greater regional arts scene. In this discussion with Artscope’s Marta Pauer Tursi, she explained what constitutes the 21st century museum experience, how curators engage the community, how she views diversity beyond national or regional identity and the intersection of art and technology. Ferrell came to Vermont in 2016 from Doha, Qatar, where for more than five years she worked with the National Museum of Qatar and the Mathaf: Arab Museum of Modern Art as deputy director of programs and exhibitions. Originally from Boise, Idaho, she also worked as director at the Salina Art Center, Kansas, and the Salt Lake Art Center, Utah. MPT: … [Read more...] about Cornered: Heather Ferrell
Traversing the Imagination: Wagner at Burlington City Arts
Burlington City Arts in Vermont is our own small-scale Centre Pompidou. I lived in the Marais district of Paris for close to seven years and the Pompidou, a short walk from my apartment, always offered up an experience of art that stayed long after I stepped back into the streets. Burlington City Arts is situated on Church Street, a four-block-long pedestrian downtown vibrant with cafes, local shops, bistro-style outdoor restaurants, pastry shops, street music and the occasional personal street drama. Like the Pompidou, it offers up experiences of art that leave you lingering in the three floors of gallery space, sometimes for hours. Under the direction of Heather Ferrell, the curator since 2016, the galleries demonstrate and reflect her international experience and vision. (See interview on page 9.) The current installation on the main floor is Crystal Wagner’s “Traverse,” a … [Read more...] about Traversing the Imagination: Wagner at Burlington City Arts