YOUNG RUSSIANS AT SHATTUCK Don Wilkinson During a recent press conference in Moscow alongside Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, United States Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said that he told Vladimir Putin that relations between the United States and Russia had reached “a low point.” It’s hard to argue with that observation. Between rumored Russian tampering in the U.S. presidential election, increased accusations of expansionism and global overreach between the two nations, and the U.S. bombing of a Syrian airbase, at which some Russian military were assigned, it seems that the old Cold War has heated up again. With an ominous cloud of international mistrust and apprehension in the atmosphere, it is indeed a moment of serendipity as a sextet of young Russian painters exhibit at the Dedee Shattuck Gallery in Westport, Mass. Curator Ben Shattuck (son of … [Read more...] about FROM ST. PETERSBURG WITH LOVE
Issue Articles
NICK EDMONDS IN VT
GOING WITH THE GRAIN Beth Neville Coming full circle in his long life as a sculptor, Nick Edmonds creates sculptural worlds filled with people, boats, clouds and rocks. Each carefully carved wood sculpture takes the viewer to a extraordinary place. “Crystal Creek Pond” depicts his childhood memories of swimming in his grandfather’s trout pond. Small, carved wood pieces become hills, trees reflected in water, a quiet pond, or pebble rocks of glacial till. As an adolescent, Edmonds delighted in carving balsa wood into boats and people. Today, still carving small wood pieces, he combines them into detailed scenes and then paints the wood to tell his stories. They’ll be in “Pastoral” throughout May and June at the Catamount Arts Gallery in St. Johnsbury, Vermont. Each sculpture’s title clearly indicates Edmonds’ interpretational intensions. But the works are vague enough … [Read more...] about NICK EDMONDS IN VT
NOTES FROM THE UNDERGROUND
MICHELMAN MAKES SPACE Marguerite Serkin It is not often that the creative output of an artist matches her intellectual capacities. For Elizabeth Michelman, there is context and conceptual reasoning behind her creative choices as an artist and in exhibition design. She is able to convey the impetus behind her multi-faceted implementation through words and visual cues within the works themselves. Michelman, a longtime Artscope contributor, is notably versatile in her use of multimedia genres. Her artistic output as sculptor, installation artist, writer, and videographer and her two-dimensional constructs are linked under the aegis of Michelman’s clearly defined yet evolving aesthetic. The artist is able to convey tone and form through discreet choices in color and a deceptively whimsical placement of content which belies a strong, implied spatial understanding. Her “Notes … [Read more...] about NOTES FROM THE UNDERGROUND
NEW ENGLAND’S CONTEMPORARY CHARACTER
BOSTON ATHENAEUM’S WORKS ON PAPER Franklin W. Liu Nestled with quiet dignity on Boston’s bustling Beacon Hill since 1849, and just a stone’s throw from the Massachusetts State House, is the Boston Athenæum, one of the oldest, manifestly resourceful, independent libraries in the United States. Walking within its hallowed halls, with no need for reminder, researchers and visitors alike automatically slow down their gait and whisper in a reverential tones to avoid disturbing others on the premises. When one pauses to sit and enjoy a book in the warm glow of a long row of desk lamps capped with pleasing emerald green shades, one sees that most reading rooms are flanked by life-size, exquisite, pristine marble busts of noteworthy societal benefactors; a graceful ambiance permeates and is restorative to one’s psyche. Boston Athenæum is a hidden, precious gem housing … [Read more...] about NEW ENGLAND’S CONTEMPORARY CHARACTER
HENRYK ROSS AT THE MFA
BEARING WITNESS TO TRAGEDY Elayne Clift I was born a Jew on March 20, 1943. One week after 3,000 people just like me Perished in Cracow, I began to live. I began to live one month before How many Jewish lives ended in Warsaw? In Budapest? In Bergen Belsen? But for an ocean, and other gifts of fate, I might have been among them. I wrote those lines after seeing the film “Schindler’s List” some years ago. I thought about them recently when I visited the powerful exhibition “Memory Unearthed: The Lodz Ghetto Photographs of Henryk Ross,” on display for the first time in America at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. My poem might well have asked how many Jewish lives ended in Lodz. The answer is unbearable. Of the more than 160,000 people rounded up by the Nazis and sealed off from the world by barbed wire in the Lodz Ghetto of 1940 to 1945, only 877 survived. Henryk Ross … [Read more...] about HENRYK ROSS AT THE MFA
MATISSE IN THE STUDIO
THE ARTIST’S EYE DRAWS US IN Suzanne Volmer “Matisse in the Studio,” at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston through July 9, is the MFA’s spring/summer blockbuster. The show, jointly organized by the MFA and the Royal Academy of Arts, London in partnership with the Musée Matisse, Nice, includes “rare pairings of Matisse’s masterpieces with objects of inspiration.” MFA director Matthew Teitelbaum explained that “Matisse in the Studio” is an opportunity to consider “the connections across borders, sensibilities and functions that an artist’s eye can help us to see.” MFA curator Helen Burnham, Ann Dumas of the Royal Academy of Arts and Ellen McBreen, an associate professor at Wheaton College, co-curated “Matisse in the Studio” as an examination of Matisse’s artistic growth in relation to objects in his collection that inspired the trajectory of his innovation. The show … [Read more...] about MATISSE IN THE STUDIO