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September/October 2019

THE CHIPS HAVE FALLEN: HARTSHORN’S STRETCHES GRAPHIC DESIGN AT CCRI

// Artscope Online, Current Issue, Exhibits, Featured, September/October 2019, Visual Arts

by Elizabeth Michelman

With one hand on the tiller and the other on the mainsheet, the sailor tests the wind, sensing the speed of the boat and the air slipping against his face. He shifts his weight and adjusts his course, and the sail billows around the landmarks in his field of vision. A moment of calm: then, swifter than a gull, he glides through an ever-changing perspective of his own invention. A rising star in Boston’s world of corporate advertising, Mark Hartshorn began to weary of sacrificing his creative freedom to the demands of the client. Leaving his career as art director with hardly a glance behind, he returned to the Art Institute of Boston, now Lesley University College of Art and Design, to get his M.F.A. in interdisciplinary forms and works on paper. An identity crisis flared again when the Community College of Rhode Island asked him to teach 4D design and web design. He was forced to … [Read more...] about THE CHIPS HAVE FALLEN: HARTSHORN’S STRETCHES GRAPHIC DESIGN AT CCRI

AMERICA DECONSTRUCTED: KENTUCKY ARTISTS INITIATE CONVERSATION

// Artscope Online, Exhibits, September/October 2019, Visual Arts

by Linda Chestney

When I was younger — a true farmer’s daughter from South Dakota — I absorbed the implied social lesson: “Don’t discuss money, religion or politics at the dining room table.” These days, people don’t seem to understand this social norm we all once learned. Coming from a homogenous small-town-USA environment, religion was never a touchy subject because everyone believed basically the same thing. I assumed everyone believed what I did. In our town, out in the plains of the Midwest, we’d say the Pledge of Allegiance parroting our teachers’ “one nation under God.” So why shouldn’t we talk about religion? Your views are your views, and everyone has a right to believe in what they want. Some religions are so paradoxical that wars have started over them. Recently people can’t seem to stop talking about politics. This never ends well. I personally avoid talking about politics, even with my … [Read more...] about AMERICA DECONSTRUCTED: KENTUCKY ARTISTS INITIATE CONVERSATION

ART WITH A MESSAGE: SAMANTHA FIELDS’ RECYCLED CLOTHING PROJECT

// Artscope Online, Exhibits, Featured, September/October 2019, Visual Arts

by Elizabeth Michelman

This six-week pop-up public art project in a downtown storefront is the brainchild of School of the Museum of Fine Arts at Tufts University professor Samantha Fields. It combines spectacle, public participation and hands-on learning. The ongoing, performative deconstruction of clothing resembles sculptor Ann Hamilton’s transformations of objects through bizarre, slowly repeated motions. Fields’ purpose is political, to redirect the expectations of consumers in a prime shopping district. The project fosters awareness of habits of consumption that connect to patterns of social injustice and environmental destruction worldwide. Funded under the Now + There Accelerator Program and the City of Boston’s Transformative Public Art Program, Desires was to launch before Artscope’s September publication date. But the dicey retail environment of Downtown Crossing has yet to yield an empty … [Read more...] about ART WITH A MESSAGE: SAMANTHA FIELDS’ RECYCLED CLOTHING PROJECT

MASTERFUL COLLECTIONS: MAINE’S UNIVERSITIES SHOWCASE AMERICA’S BEST

// Artscope Online, Exhibits, Featured, September/October 2019, Visual Arts

by Nancy Nesvet

Driving across the Piscataqua River Bridge, connecting Portsmouth, New Hampshire, with Kittery, Maine, a magnetic force seems to pull me to the end of the North American continent, east to the sea. Stately evergreen trees bordering the highway end as pines appear, their fragrance and statuesque beauty announcing that northeastern state where the sun first rises on America and a new Maine day. My Maine college art museums tour begins at Bowdoin College, with some of the oldest American art in any museum. With over 5000 art objects in its collection, and a statue commemorating the bear brought back from 1898 graduate Donald B. MacMillan’s 1915 Arctic expedition guarding its campus and Andy Warhol’s 1983 graphite drawing “Polar Bear” in its permanent collection, The Bowdoin College Museum of Art’s Maine-focused work emphasizes the state’s wild environment and constant struggle with … [Read more...] about MASTERFUL COLLECTIONS: MAINE’S UNIVERSITIES SHOWCASE AMERICA’S BEST

MIDCOAST MAINE: LOCAL COLOR AND FOODS AWAIT FALL ADVENTURERS

// Artscope Online, Current Exhibits, Current Issue, Exhibits, Featured, September/October 2019, Visual Arts

by Leah Hamilton French

I like to joke that I found freedom in Maine. And in a way, it’s true. Recently, I traveled up the coast to the small town of Freedom for a much-needed weekend away. While there, I was delighted to find not just the peaceful, bucolic scenery I had been craving but also a region bursting with local flavor — from lobster shacks, farm-to-table restaurants and an Amish charcuterie to open studios, galleries and off the beaten path museums. Though summer is nearly over, the foliage will soon be blazing, and there is plenty of time to visit Midcoast Maine before winter. Local Color Gallery and Local Foods // Belfast, ME Belfast, at the mouth of the Passagassawakeag River, has a bustling arts scene for such a small city. Many artists live and work in the region, displaying their work in Belfast’s many galleries, and the city hosts a monthly Fourth Friday Art Walk. Finch Gallery, Belfast … [Read more...] about MIDCOAST MAINE: LOCAL COLOR AND FOODS AWAIT FALL ADVENTURERS

LIFE’S DECISIVE MOMENTS: MALEK CELEBRATES PEOPLE AT WORK

// Artscope Online, Current Issue, Exhibits, Featured, September/October 2019

by Marguerite Serkin

Photographer Tad Malek knows a bit about patience. With a background in color landscape photography, Malek has spent full days immersed in natural surroundings, waiting for the perfect still. Malek’s current exhibition, “People at Work and Other Environmental Portraits,” on view at Springfield Museums, marks a departure from the restraint of waiting for that consummate shot into the realm of portraiture in the moment, with all its alluring fallibility and epiphanic fulfillment. Choosing almost exclusively black-and-white images for “People at Work and Other Environmental Portraits,” Malek has deliberately shifted media to capture the rich textures and nuanced variations within each piece. Sharp exposure delineates the finest detail, whether it be the lines along the walkway of the “Brooklyn Bridge Lady in the Shade,” 2008; the sculpted musculature of a male bather in “Rio de Janeiro … [Read more...] about LIFE’S DECISIVE MOMENTS: MALEK CELEBRATES PEOPLE AT WORK