Featuring “an accomplished group of professionals who are active practitioners of disciplines ranging from digital media, photography, drawing, painting and sculpture, to printmaking and artists’ books,” “SUMMA: Visual Arts Faculty 2018” features artwork created by full- and part-time faculty members of the visual arts department at the College of the Holy Cross, and will be on view through October 12 at the Iris and B. Gerald Cantor Art Gallery, 1 College St., Worcester, Massachusetts. Participating artists include Michael Beatty (associate professor and studio division head); Rachelle Beaudoin (lecturer); John Carney (studio supervisor); Matthew Gamber (assistant professor); Victor Pacheco (lecturer); professors Cristi Rinklin and Susan Schmidt; and Leslie Schomp (senior lecturer). Gordon D. Chase’s “The Insanity of Violence,” which opens on September 4 and continues through through … [Read more...] about CAPSULE PREVIEWS
Issue Articles
MAKING CONNECTIONS WITH DONNA DODSON
Sally Eyring is a renaissance woman. She is equal parts studio artist in glass and fibers, innovator of 3-D loom techniques and fibre de verre glass casting techniques, proficient educator in local and national weaving guilds, and ESL teacher and activist. Eyring has always loved to make things with her hands — weaving, sewing and working with clay were her earliest creative outlets. She got her start in life as a high school math teacher but successfully transitioned out of education into a high-tech and much more lucrative career as an IT manager. In 2002, she became awestruck by one of John La Farge’s windows in the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston called “Peonies Blown in the Wind,” and she was hooked. That led her to study at the Corning Museum of Glass in upstate New York with Kimiake and Shin-ichi Higuchi, both of whom are world-renowned pâte de verre artists. When she retired in … [Read more...] about MAKING CONNECTIONS WITH DONNA DODSON
MILTON: A RENAISSANCE TOWN
Let’s take a summer road-trip and explore Milton, one of Boston’s quietest, prettiest, oldest and most historic garden suburbs to see a sampling of its art and architecture. For lunch or supper, there are several new restaurants in town for a take-out picnic to enjoy at the historic Eustis Estate, or take in a leisurely lunch with a glass of wine at three new restaurants on Adams Street. Over the past few years, Milton, which shares a border with Boston, has experienced a Renaissance for dining and viewing art and is well worth trip via Route 93-south. Arriving at 1424 Canton Avenue, one discovers the fabulous gatehouse and gardens leading to the 80-acre Eustis Estate. The Eustis mansion is a splendid, rough-hewn Victorian stone structure built by William Eustis for his wife and family. It is decorative in style, massive in size, and designed to impress wealthy Bostonians on their … [Read more...] about MILTON: A RENAISSANCE TOWN
PAST PERFECT?: FRUITLANDS HONORS ITS ROOTS
Nestled in one of the most idyllic landscapes of New England, the Fruitlands Museum in Harvard, Massachusetts (a short drive off of Route 2) is currently presenting diverse offerings in recognition of its past as the utopian community established by idealists of the New England Transcendentalist Movement, and its present affiliation, as of 2016, with The Trustees of Reservations, the largest conservation and preservation organization in Massachusetts. In the summer of 1843, preeminent adherents of the Transcendental Movement in nearby Concord, Massachusetts — Bronson Alcott and Charles Lane — founded Fruitlands as a “New Eden,” an experiment in communal living that aspired to help Fruitlands’ inhabitants achieve their highest potential and thereby to inspire positive change in society. This was to be accomplished by an ascetic lifestyle — vegan diet, temperance for all, farming by … [Read more...] about PAST PERFECT?: FRUITLANDS HONORS ITS ROOTS
MAINE’S MINI-MECCA: CONTEMPORARY ON THE COAST
I was the victim of a studio flood in Northampton, Massachusetts. The sewer drain next to the back door of my basement studio plugged and I was inundated with a nasty slurry of fetid water that infected my costumes, my library and anything under two and half feet in height. I was not looking forward to reliving the disaster as I headed to Tom Burckhardt’s “Studio Flood,” one of four exhibitions currently on view on at Rockland’s Center for Maine Contemporary Art (CMCA). However, much to my surprise, I was enthralled. This is a true miracle of cardboard construction in amazing detail. Creatively clever, smartly humorous, this artist’s topsy-turvy phantasmagoria of mind-bending detail is a delicious take on devastation. You cannot help but smile at its conceit. Every nook and cranny is filled with carefully crafted ephemera, all executed with exacting detail. Paint brushes, tubes of … [Read more...] about MAINE’S MINI-MECCA: CONTEMPORARY ON THE COAST
WATERCOLOR WONDERS: 7TH ANNUAL GREEN MOUNTAIN SHOW
The big, red, high-drive barn at Lareau Farm, standing at the edge of fields and against a backdrop of forested hillside, offers about as iconic a Vermont landscape as you can find. The 1895 barn has the clean, elegant lines and proportions of its genre. Inside, its rustic beams, rough boards and soaring hayloft speak to its working past. This landmark barn, listed on the National Register of Historic Places, is home to the Green Mountain Watercolor Exhibition (GMWE). With a recent superb restoration, the barn has fabulous gallery space with high quality lighting, ample walls that provide rich but not distracting surfaces, and lots of atmosphere. The Seventh Annual Green Mountain Watercolor Exhibition opened in the Big Red Barn Gallery at Lareau Farm in Waitsfield, Vermont on June 17 and runs through July 28. This year’s exhibition features 96 watercolor paintings by artists from … [Read more...] about WATERCOLOR WONDERS: 7TH ANNUAL GREEN MOUNTAIN SHOW