Tinja Ruusuvuori is an international artist currently in her Second Year Fellowship at the Fine Arts Work Center (FAWC), Provincetown, a renowned residency with seven months of uninterrupted time, housing, studio and a stipend. Her first year as a Fellow, 2022-2023, had the joys and complexities of being in a new place. Returning this past October for another seven months, she found herself in a different scenario. “I had friends, knew the town, people recognized me on the main street and said, ‘Welcome home!’” Born in Tampere, Finland’s third-largest city, Ruusuvuori grew up on a small island with 40 residents, part of an archipelago boasting 40,000 islands and skerries. Living in Provincetown, which is surrounded on three sides by water, is familiar to her with the presence of the sea. As a filmmaker (her work has been shown at the Visions du Réel, Toronto Hot Docs, and Camden … [Read more...] about RADIO OF UNCERTAINTY: TINJA RUUSUVUORI SOUND ECHOES AT PROVINCETOWN’S FAWC
Issue Articles
PAINTING JOY THROUGH PAIN: BETHANY NOËL “CONTROLS” MIGRAINES THROUGH HER ART
“There are three types of days. Days where I can do everything, days where I’m fine but can’t do it all, and days where I’m interrupted, and we have to start again.” Clad in paint-spattered coveralls, artist Bethany Noël shows me around her 500-square-foot Holliston Mills studio in Holliston, Massachusetts. We’re “supervised” by her four-legged studio mate and trail companion, Sargent, a large and soulful-eyed German Shepherd mix. “He’s named after the painter,” she confirmed. Under filtered winter light, a series of squiggly black-and-white plein air ink sketches rest in loose rows on a table running half the length of the studio’s windowed wall. She pulls a palm-sized one off the table and shows me. “This is the source sketch for ‘Joy,’” she said. The finished painting, currently on view at the Open Door Arts Gallery at the Worcester Art Museum, in Worcester, Massachusetts, is a … [Read more...] about PAINTING JOY THROUGH PAIN: BETHANY NOËL “CONTROLS” MIGRAINES THROUGH HER ART
A MUCH LESS TORTUOUS PATH: PEBWORTH INSTALLS NEW ENVIRONMENTS IN NORTH ADAMS
After living in San Francisco for 30 years, in a post-pandemic dimensional shift, Alison Pebworth took to the road exploring artist residency after artist residency (including the MacDowell Colony in Peterborough, New Hampshire), before she landed in the Berkshires. After staying with her nephew for a short while, she settled into a small cabin in the woods, experiencing the complete opposite to the residencies: solitude and meditation. Here she undertook a personal journey, pointing inward, turning out deeply contemplative drawings. Eventually came the first tilt of the pendulum that led Pebworth down a rabbit hole of synchronicity, where events unfolded towards her residency at MASS MoCA in a most unusual and serendipitous way: she was invited to a dinner where MASS MoCA Director Kristy Edmunds happened to be one of the guests. She and Pebworth began to talk, and Edmunds was drawn to … [Read more...] about A MUCH LESS TORTUOUS PATH: PEBWORTH INSTALLS NEW ENVIRONMENTS IN NORTH ADAMS
ALL THINGS SPARKLEY: CHELSEA BRADWAY’S PHOTOGRAPHS SPEAK LOUDLY
I first saw the photography of Chelsea Bradway at the Franklin Square Salon at the Hanover Theatre in Worcester, Massachusetts. The September 2021 reception for her “Be a Lady They Said” exhibition, presented by ArtsWorcester, had the double benefit of being an opening and the first time many people felt safe coming together again in a public gathering. My notes from that afternoon said that Bradway was a self- proclaimed whimsical photographer who aims to construct a collective voice through her photographic subjects, aiming to dismantle preconceptions of femininity and power with her own words stating, “When silence is broken around the modern struggle between women’s personal and professional identities, both subject and observer can reclaim some of themselves from fear, and stand up for what they believe in.” Some of her female subjects in the show were professionals – including … [Read more...] about ALL THINGS SPARKLEY: CHELSEA BRADWAY’S PHOTOGRAPHS SPEAK LOUDLY
“AS SMALL AS A WORLD AND AS LARGE AS ALONE”: PENELOPE JONES’ STRIPPED-DOWN ABSTRACT VISIONS
These words from E.E. Cummings’s “Maggie and Milly and Molly and May” could be used to describe Penelope Jones’ oil paintings on panel and precision-cut paper collages which are anti-heroic in scale, and yet her stripped-down abstract visions, often no taller than her outstretched hand, could easily fell a Goliath. If Jones’ recent paintings in oil and gouache come from the heart, the compressed collages of her “Border Series” spring from the head. Jones’ decades of teaching painting and drawing at Bates College lend authority and grace to her intimate compositions and carefully orchestrated color relationships. Warm and cool tones vibrate in arresting tension, while pure hues sing out against more muted shades. Subtle patterns of variation in value and texture repeatedly delight the eye. Paper (often affixed to a wood panel), is Jones’ silent partner. Fibrous and resilient, it … [Read more...] about “AS SMALL AS A WORLD AND AS LARGE AS ALONE”: PENELOPE JONES’ STRIPPED-DOWN ABSTRACT VISIONS
A DESCENT INTO THE UNSEEN: BRATTLEBORO’S MYLES DANAHER’S “UNFOLDING” LANDSCAPES
Myles Danaher’s studio in Brattleboro, Vermont has the aura of authenticity from an artist dedicated to his craft and willing to work hard. Tubes of partially used oils oozing slightly around their caps are stacked haphazardly across a paint-stained table in front of a cluster of brushes standing upright in glass jars as if petitioning to be used. Multiple vintage stereo speakers – KLH, Advent – are stacked to the ceiling, pouring out pastoral orchestral music into the sunlit room. “This is how I get through,” the artist shared as we entered the studio. “I keep it at about this volume, and I can stand here, and just...” Turning to a collection of monoprints, Danaher motioned to a compact press, acquired from fellow artist William Hays. Working the press is “another way I loosen up,” Danaher explained. A longtime protégé of Wolf Kahn, Danaher began his formal studies at the Portland … [Read more...] about A DESCENT INTO THE UNSEEN: BRATTLEBORO’S MYLES DANAHER’S “UNFOLDING” LANDSCAPES