by Marta Pauer-Tursi The fourth biennial exhibition at Helen Day Art Center features the works of five MFA degree students from the Northeast. This year, more than 150 applicants’ works were considered for this juried exhibition. Four of the artists are women working in various mediums including painting, photography and sculpture. Two are from the Middle East, and the three Americans are from the West Coast, the South and New England. The majority of them are keenly aware of the political and social environment of their young adulthood, and their work reflects a unique perspective and statement on the implications of public policy and politics on the flow of human life. Arghavan Khosravi, a native of Tehran, Iran, explores aspects of identity and political experience in a series of works on paper. Among the works on exhibition are four meticulously adorned wooden boxes … [Read more...] about FRESH EYES AT HELEN DAY: MFA STUDENTS SHINE
Issue Articles
A WONDER-FULL WORLD: PROP MASTER MICHAEL STASIUK
by Greg Morell The studio of Portsmouth artist Michael Stasiuk is a wonder world of creative imagination where obscure found objects are manipulated, jointed, glued and crafted into magical, animated, anthropomorphic spirits of fancy. Working with very simple tools — a drill, a small band saw, a series of hand tools — his wizardry of inventive fabrication conjures a panoply of whimsical characters and kooky creatures. His work is lighthearted, clever, amusing and a visual delight to both art aficionados and young children. Stasiuk’s veritable carnival of characters spring to life from rummaged objects that he discovers at flea markets, garage sales, antique shops and Colorado roadsides. Wooden children’s shoe shapers from the 1800s, bowling pins, croquet mallets, pick-up sticks, old brushes, broken chairs and toy blocks are the detritus transformed by this modern Geppetto … [Read more...] about A WONDER-FULL WORLD: PROP MASTER MICHAEL STASIUK
Text in Contemporary Art at Jamestown Arts Center
By Elizabeth Michelman The intersection of language and visual form provides both the tools and the subject of conceptual art. “WORD: Text in Contemporary Art” at the Jamestown Arts Center offers over 55 images, objects and installations contrasting canonical works with recent forays in the art-form. While concentrating on artists in southern New England, curator Karen Conway has also tapped collectors, galleries and artist studios in New York and the Midwest. Voyages at an end as well as explorations underway complement each other in the spacious former boat repair shop through early August. The works of the earlier conceptualists, like words in Scrabble, attract clusters of new invention. We see Lesley Dill and May Stevens appropriating texts of Emily Dickinson and Virginia Woolf to explore forms of verbal symbolizing. Glen Ligon uses stenciled black-and-white surfaces to … [Read more...] about Text in Contemporary Art at Jamestown Arts Center
ARTSCOPE’S GUIDE TO BASEL ART FAIRS 2017
by Nancy Nesvet In the wake of nations attempting to close their borders, the Basel Art Fairs have expanded the world of art and art’s very definition to become the most inclusive ever in art’s history. Including not only ideas but the process by which those ideas are expressed, these shows amaze in the variety of sensual experience, including sound, vision, physical feeling, taste (and I don’t mean the food kind) and more. Art Basel, Basel’s oldest and best Art Fair, includes eight sectors; Unlimited, shows 76 projects, unlimited in size and scale including interventions, installations and other non-scaled pieces. Parcours, from the French meaning "journeys", offsite at the Cathedral Square and throughout the old city of Basel, offers current work of contemporary living artists including installations, guided journeys, interventions and repurposed sculpture. The Film Sector offers … [Read more...] about ARTSCOPE’S GUIDE TO BASEL ART FAIRS 2017
ARTSCOPE AT ART BASEL SWITZERLAND: DAY TWO
by Nancy Nesvet TUESDAY, JUNE 13, 2017 Day two at Art Basel. In this wonderland of art, I am still totally at play, seeing the installations at Parcours, in the cathedral square and down by the Rhine River, but coming around to reality via some installations and sculpture at "Unlimited" in the city square called Messerplatz. First confronted by Al Wei Wei’s “Iron Tree” (2016), which changes patina as it ages, it also brings nature and the manmade relationship with nature into perspective. That relationship seems a theme of Parcours, curator Samuel Leuenberger’s brilliant trek through the city through the following of artwork installations. Reza Aramsh recreates Michelangelo’s “Slave” in resin, but tiesits hands behind his back with a rope, making him captive and towering on a plinth over the river. Katinka Bock’s “Parasite Fountain” (2017) creates ametal fish that draws water … [Read more...] about ARTSCOPE AT ART BASEL SWITZERLAND: DAY TWO