How refreshing to review the artwork of someone who actually knows how to draw and is not afraid to use that skill to express strong emotions and political opinions! Francisco Goya did it! Pablo Picasso did it! Theodore Gericault did it! Nomi Silverman does it! Silverman’s exhibition, “Palpable Process,” at the Center for Contemporary Printmaking, is a small sampling of her artistic output which includes sculpture, painting, pastels and bookmaking, in addition to her prints. The theme uniting all Silverman’s works is an exploration of the stress of modern life and the extreme stress of peoples’ migrations from one locale to another. She uses the human figure again and again to depict this stress. For her, immigration is embedded in her personal history. She writes, “My family, like so many others, left the home they knew in Minsk, Belarus for a better life in America, the land of … [Read more...] about EXPLORING MODERN LIFE STRESS: NOMI SILVERMAN’S PALPABLE PROGRESS AT CCP NORWALK
Issue Articles
LANDSCAPES, PERU AND SALT PILES: NATURE’S MYSTICAL FEATURES POWER HYATT PHOTOGRAPHS
Carl Austin Hyatt is calling us “Westerners” to a paradigm shift. Some might call it a dramatic point of departure for our culture. Others would call it an “it’s about time” movement. Whatever you choose to call it, Hyatt lives by it, feels it in his bones, believes in it. What is “it?” The connection to nature — that nature is alive, conscious, playful. But it’s more than that. Hyatt says nature speaks to him. Rocks speak to him. Even salt. Hyatt recalled that when he was still in his teens, he began having “mystical” experiences in nature. These experiences came with a sense of deep conviction about certain realities/presences, Hyatt said. This was also the beginning of seeing the blind spots, indeed errors, he says, of our dominant technological, modern Western culture. A longtime admirer of Thoreau, he longed for connection to place. He eventually found that on the seacoast of New … [Read more...] about LANDSCAPES, PERU AND SALT PILES: NATURE’S MYSTICAL FEATURES POWER HYATT PHOTOGRAPHS
SEARCHING FOR NEW BUZZWORDS AT MASS MOCA: JOSEPH GRIGELY SEEKS A GREATER THEME OF COMMUNICATION
Joseph Grigely’s exhibition, “In What Way Wham? (White Noise and Other Works, 1996-2023),” on view at MASS MoCA through March, is a visual conversation about deafness. The titular pieces, “White Noise (monochrome),” 2000, and “White Noise (polychrome),” 2023, are a pair of cylindrical rooms the insides of which are plastered with handwritten notes on white and colorful paper, respectively. The conversations are fragmented, some in neat lettering and some quickly scrawled. The papers vary from stained napkins to notebook paper and the backs of paperwork. Visitors who hadn’t chosen to read the welcoming blurb tried to make sense of the fragments of writing, trying to eke out a narrative or overarching message from the scattered phrases but mostly remaining confused. The words in “White Noise” are not a logic puzzle to be solved or a book to be read chapter by chapter. They are, as the … [Read more...] about SEARCHING FOR NEW BUZZWORDS AT MASS MOCA: JOSEPH GRIGELY SEEKS A GREATER THEME OF COMMUNICATION
RADIO OF UNCERTAINTY: TINJA RUUSUVUORI SOUND ECHOES AT PROVINCETOWN’S FAWC
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
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