Don't Judge A Book... by Marcia Santore With paper and fabric, stitches, ribbon, lace, embroidery and reclaimed antique objects, Gail Smuda uses the contemporary art form of the artist’s book to reach into the past, creating intriguing objects that convey stories of another time. Artist’s books can be a challenging medium to understand. Most people expect to view art at a distance, eyes only, perhaps from behind a rope or a painted line on the floor that reminds them not to get too close. Smuda’s books require a more intimate engagement. They are small, with multiple pages that must be turned or unfurled to find the treasures within. Some stand alone, like “The Burning of the Convent,” hand-stitched fabric pages with “Love” on one cover and “Hate” on the other. Others have containers: “Cats of Nine Tales” has nine tiny paper books, each tucked within its own box, … [Read more...] about Gail Smuda
Issue Articles
Beverly Rippel
Layered In Intensity by Brian Goslow Beverly Rippel’s work has many layers, both in materials and subject matter. Whether it’s her not-so-traditional still-lifes, abstract bodyscapes, dramatic renderings of seemingly unworthy cigarette lighters, matchbooks and eight-balls, ghostly white and monochromatic works and en plein air paintings from the Gloucester shore or her “big sky studio” in the woods of Easton — or her thought-provoking “Water Pistols and Cap Guns Series” — you always feel the intensity of her paintings in oil. Projects Gallery of Miami showed her “Blue and Orange Cap Gun” from the series this past December at Aqua Art Miami, and an entire wall of the work will be displayed in Violence Transformed Exhibitions’ “Guns and Gun Violence in America” show this April at Cambridge College’s Mass. Ave. Gallery. Her first gun painting was made in response to a … [Read more...] about Beverly Rippel
Nathan Miner
It's About Time by Suzanne Volmer During a visit to Nathan Miner’s Somerville studio located near the intellectual epicenter of Harvard and MIT, the artist described his paintings as being about time. He is interested in the aesthetics of inversion, and his painterly content has a geometric push and pull against equilibrium that addresses the space-time continuum. Miner’s premise is particularly apropos considering the announcement in the news of folds recently discovered in the spatial fabric. While discussing his artwork, Miner brought out some books that have influenced his creative development: Fritjof Capra’s “The Tao of Physics,” Stephen Hawking’s “Brief History of Time” and “The Book” by Alan Watts. He cited these texts as furthering a larger discussion about layers of information in his artwork. Miner’s paintings and related artifacts can be seen in “Decade,” a … [Read more...] about Nathan Miner
Kirstin Lamb
Much Of A Muchness by Elizabeth Michelman “Did you ever see such a thing as a drawing of a muchness?” the Dormouse asks Lewis Carroll’s Alice at the Mad Hatter’s tea party. It’s a maddening “muchness” Providence artist Kirstin Lamb draws and paints in her campaign against rumors of the Death of Painting. But Lamb is not mad, she is simply committed to the critical debate about what painting can be — and can no longer be. Excess is her trope and appropriation is her tool. A virtuoso in the handling and history of paint, she reveals the contingent stance of the consumer who is showered with cultural representations of the construction of desire and of feminine ambivalence. Like any conventional painter, Lamb prepares panels for painting, sets up still-life props, chooses paints, mixes colors and applies them with a brush. Recognizable content abounds in the paintings — … [Read more...] about Kirstin Lamb
Emma Hogarth
Time Machine To The Present by Sarah Rushford “Compound Vision,” Emma Hogarth’s site-responsive interactive video installation, is a time machine that delivers us to the present. Currently featured in the “You Are Here” exhibition on view through March 26 at the New Art Center, 61 Washington Park, Newtonville, Mass., it operates as a portal through which the viewer passes in order to re-experience time and place. By viewing recorded and live video projections of the New Art Center’s architectural details, the viewer re-sees that irresistible blue window at the head of the gallery, the red door they just walked through and an image of themselves looking at the piece. These unfold quietly, with a charge. Here are some excerpts from a conversation with Hogarth about ideas that are central to her current interdisciplinary work. Rushford: You use the word "uncanny" in … [Read more...] about Emma Hogarth
Kate Gilbert
Keeping Up With The Active Activist by Donna Dodson In addition to being a fabulous administrator of public art as the director of the Boston-based non-profit organization Now + There, Kate Gilbert is a fabulous artist. From 2009 to 2011, her abstract work in painting took a turn toward sculpture when she started cutting the canvas to access the depth beyond the surface. Her graduate work from 2012-2013 at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston led her to explore concepts of consumerism and high fashion with one-of-a-kind wearables: wristlets, vests, dresses, hoods and jackets that allude to anxiety, fear, protection and utility. “Sculpture is the biggest umbrella of disciplines,” Gilbert said. “It incorporates objects, performance, installation, video, interactive and social practice.” Collaboration is a big part of her studio practice. She has worked with … [Read more...] about Kate Gilbert