The Beginning Is Near At Bates by Jamie Thompson The highly publicized Occupy Wall Street protest in New York City’s Zuccotti Park in 2011 inspired the international Occupy Movement, which advocated for social and economic equality. Although much of the media attention to various Occupy protests focused on the sensational aspects of the movement — its tent communities and virulent social media campaigns, for example — participants utilized decidedly fewer melodramatic tactics to spread their messages. Posters, signs and banners, modest forms of communication though they are, carried striking imagery and thoughtprovoking slogans. “The Art of Occupy: The Occuprint Portfolio,” on view through March 26 at The Bates College Museum of Art in Lewiston, Maine, features some of the posters created and used during the protests. The Occupied Wall Street Journal, an affiliate of … [Read more...] about The Occuprint Portfolio
Issue Articles
Jason Smith’s Cultural Assessment
Mythic Imagery At Newport Art by Suzanne Volmer “Outer Myths,” Jason Smith’s solo exhibition, on view at the Newport Art Museum’s Wright Gallery through May 1, explores Smith’s fascination with creation myths. It is a kind of global study he has mined methodically, continent by continent, and then translated into a pointillist, mixed-media drawing style. Included are 16 artworks shown as introductory vignette that showcase the young artist’s talent. All drawings are sized uniformly, giving order to the presentation. Color opacity is a characteristic of Smith’s signature style that builds form through a moray of oscillating lines, causing shapes to emerge and recede. Smith uses white, black and soft pastel dots and bursts of Day-Glo color as the basis of his mark-making. Rather than the standard neutrals of archival framing, the artist’s mat choices are dusky pastels, … [Read more...] about Jason Smith’s Cultural Assessment
Wamala At Whistler
Still Waters Run Deep by James Dyment A studio artist at the Brush Art Gallery and Studios (aka “The Brush”) for more than a decade, Pamela Wamala is an artist who has mastered the art of self-promotion, a skill with which many artists struggle. At one point, she vowed to support herself solely on her desire to create. From the age of five, she painted with her maternal grandfather and later, during her time at Wilmington High School, was one of three students selected to complete an independent study with artist-inresidence Scott Prior, from whom she gained valuable insight. Prior’s art has been collected by museums such as the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. At age 16, Wamala’s desire to become an artist was also influenced by the art she saw while visiting a friend who had moved to Europe. She recently shared the names of some artists who have inspired her: Hopper, … [Read more...] about Wamala At Whistler
Performing For The Camera
Tseng Illuminates At Tufts by Franklin W. Liu The beauty of viewing a retrospective collection of artworks is that it reveals the artist’s unique, life-long personal view of the world; when that body of work transcends the status quo, it often modifies our own perception spanning that same passage of time. Tseng Kwong-Chi was such an artist. Tseng Kwong-Chi (1950-1990) vibrantly lived a brief 39 years. Unhampered by conventional societal standards, he lived what must have been an enviable, charmed life — keeping the company of celebrated cultural icons like Andy Warhol and Madonna — while his contemporaries Cindy Sherman, Julian Schnabel and Jeff Koons were the influential artists of the day, all making waves in the rocking 1980s, shaping Tseng’s thinking. Tseng’s “deconceptual” photography-art was staged: it pushed back against the viewer’s preconceived notion of … [Read more...] about Performing For The Camera
Beautiful Decay
Still Life Transforms at Danforth by J. Fatima Martins Danforth Museum of Art curator Jessica Roscio is disrupting the stillness of the popular and bucolic still-life arrangement. While studying the form, she noticed, “variations on the definition” of the genre, the most exciting element being the condition of flux. Roscio has designed another clever multi-component exhibition with a complicated theme: “Beautiful Decay,” a statement show featuring objects from Danforth’s permanent collection and three separate yet connected solo installations by invited contemporary artists, each offering a different process and aesthetic: Sarah Meyers Brent, abstracted assemblage and painting using readymade and organic material; Steve Duede, photographs of decomposing flowers and fruit; and David Weinberg, precise and exquisite still-life hyper-realism. The idea of being in the … [Read more...] about Beautiful Decay
What On Earth?
Beard & Weil Makes It Clear by J. Fatima Martins Upon entering the Beard & Weil Galleries, we’re immediately affected by the hypnotic fairy-power of clear glass. The first installation in “Theories of the Earth” is a three-dimensional still-life menagerie of transparent objects arranged cohesively to appear haphazard and jumbled on and underneath a long, rectangular, seven-legged painted white table. The entire thing projects a cold, alien world; it’s unsettling, yet completing, as if we’ve been transported into a magical dinner party, frozen at a precise moment. The table is laid with fragile glass vessels, bowls, plates and cups of various sizes and densities; two crystalclear, tall, tropical glass trees — ancient cycadophyta — flank each side, and an assortment of messy glass foliage is tossed throughout. There are glass fabrics and other drapery, a loaf of glass … [Read more...] about What On Earth?