Now entering its sixth year in a Watertown storefront, Room 83 Spring continues to insist local artists challenge their own artistic boundaries — and ours. To this end, directors Ellen Wineberg and Cathleen Daley invited painter Monique Johannet to guest-curate works by six abstract painters with Boston connections. Johannet views 20th century abstraction as an evolving family of practices intertwined with art’s changing history and artists’ personal timelines. Among the artists, who range widely in age and sensibility, she has introduced the mid-century paintings of an unsung post-war Boston abstractionist who, serendipitously, happens to have been her aunt. The interspersed works address each other in several different voices at once: constructivist, conceptualist, feminist, social activist and postmodern-ironic — with each voice respecting and employing abstraction. Diane … [Read more...] about CHALLENGING BOUNDARIES: WICKED HARD AT ROOM 83 SPRING

“Visages de Punk,” CambridgeSeven’s current exhibition, is Boston photographer JJ Gonson’s ode to Boston’s vibrant punk scene of the mid-to-late 1980s through the first half of the 1990s. This show features fairly unseen photographs of Kurt Cobain, Elliott Smith and the many fans and independent artists who made up the music scene of that time period. The work shows a new side to these artists that was only seen by close friends and core members of the music community. In collaboration with curator Kwesi Budu-Arthur, Gonson does an exceptional job of showing the faces of that period’s punk era to music lovers of all ages. This exhibition will be on view through October 19. The first thing one notices when looking at the work is Gonson’s choice of image titles; each piece is titled with just the subject’s first name. She made this decision because this show is the faces of punk. “I … [Read more...] about ROCKING AND ROLLING: GONSON GOES BEYOND THE IMAGE

Before Kim Alemian, graphic designer and webmaster for the South Shore Art Center, visited Colombia in 2015, she hadn’t seen street art (or graffiti) as a genuine art form — she saw it as vandalism. That changed during that trip to Bogotá after she and her students were invited to create a mural project for the Hogar Nueva Granada school on the campus of Colegio Fundacion Nueva Granada. The project was a direct result of an earlier visit to Colombia by one of Alemian’s students, Desmond Herzfelder, and his parents, and their meeting with one of its art teachers, Diana Londoño. He returned home with the idea of going back to the school to create a mural project that would engage the kids there. Alemian was asked to create the project. “For a week, we worked with street artists,” she explained. “Someone donated a lot of art supplies for us to work with. When we were going, we … [Read more...] about FROM BOGOTÁ TO BOSTON: STREET ARTISTS AT SSAC

In a world where image and imagination merge, Lesley University, in celebration of the recent opening of their newly expanded VFX/Animation Department, is enthusiastically highlighting Kyle Cooper’s signature work in a cursive, vibrant, sequential exhibition, “Kyle Cooper: The Art of The Title,” currently being presented in the Lunder Arts Center’s Roberts Gallery. Since the 1930s, film-credit-sequence design has taken a progressive, quantum leap in purpose and in presentation; its encompassing manner has now evolved into an art form of its own, enhanced by visually dazzling special effects and cutting-edge digital, virtual reality effects that speak with a poetic, didactic purpose. It’s all about how a feature film is introduced, its opening brimming with kinetic typeface awash in an undulating whirl of animated visuals. The opening credit sequence’s central design purpose is to … [Read more...] about COOPER AT LESLEY: CREDIT WHERE CREDIT IS DUE

Four local artists will create an installation of “Creature Comforts” at the Cambridge Art Association’s Kathryn Schultz Gallery from October 6 through November 2. The installation will be accompanied by the sound of spring “peepers” — small frogs that make a resonant pond chorus in the spring with their mating calls — serving as the backdrop for a New Gallery Concert Series event on October 20 at 7 p.m. that brings together new pieces of music and visual art. The show is curated by Gin Stone, who lives and works on Cape Cod and is a highly passionate environmentalist who uses her artistic craft to encourage the recycling of marine materials and gear by integrating it into her animal, bird and “Humane Taxidermy” sculptural pieces. Close study of her work reveals discarded pieces familiar to anyone who cherishes walking along a seashore. Especially striking is “Freyja,” which eerily … [Read more...] about FLOWERS OR SEX? CREATURE COMFORTS AT CAA

The vitality of a city is evident from your first moments in it. Urban vibrancy comes from the synergy of different factors — economic opportunities; diversity in all its expressions; dense, concentrated centers with a variety of businesses and architecture where pedestrian traffic is facilitated and encouraged; and, most essential, a city government who sees the success of the arts and culture sector as a quality of life indicator. Providence, Rhode Island is a vibrant city. Its long history of sustaining a creative economy began in its early days as a commercial port city, when the shipping industry was able to support the craftsmen who settled here. Providence continues to successfully attract and sustain artists, artisans, dancers, musicians, actors and innovative cultural entrepreneurs who, in turn, have made it one of the most culturally rich cities on the East Coast. In the … [Read more...] about GALLERY NIGHT PROVIDENCE: SHOWCASING URBAN VIBRANCE AND SYNERGY