TRACING THE IMPACT OF COLONIALISM AND TECHNOLOGY ON SOUTHEAST ASIAN CULTURE With a specific curatorial theme that challenges art enthusiasts to reflect on Southeast Asian societal issues that transcend the historic, long, bloody Vietnam War to further back in its French colonial days, “Far from Indochine” intends to spark a lively discourse on imperialism’s impact on current-day themes in art and life originating from that region. The 19th Century French colonialism of Southeast Asia wrought havoc on the entire region, altering local culture while engulfing the nations of Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia, and later ensnarling Burma (now Myanmar), Malaysia and Thailand. It would affect all facets of expressive, emotional content including traditional architecture, literature, visual arts, chanting, music and dance. Now, the entire region is blossoming with a rebirth of conjoined past and … [Read more...] about Far from Indochine
September/October 2014
Ruth Rosner
CREATING WITH A STRONG YET SUBTLE VOICE Influence, like conjuring, is hard to measure, but we try, since art history without connections would present a falsely static picture of a lone figure pocketed in his or her own vacuum. So, I find myself in sculptor Ruth Rosner’s studio/apartment at treetop level over Brookline’s bustling Beacon Street, wondering from where she received that first complex imperative to “Go figure!” I’m feeling this imperative from the throats of multiple personae — women’s voices that seem to speak from themselves to themselves, so multi- dimensional, so inflected with subtle motions are they from foot to crown, that I think they could be, perhaps, meditating like the Buddha who, it’s said, discerning “whole worlds” contained within himself, withdrew under the Bo tree to sort things out. But no, Rosner’s personae are too restive to sit and sort; they … [Read more...] about Ruth Rosner
Beyond the New Yorker
ROZ CHAST SHOWS HER CRAFTY SIDE Artist Roz Chast has long been a master at probing the subterranean landscape of family life, whether charting the anxiety passed on to children unwittingly by their parents (see her marvelous “Wheel of Doom”) or the insights children have without sharing them with their parents (culled from her “Big Book of What I Really Believe”). Her sympathies clearly lie with all the imper- fect characters she has blessed us with for more than 30 years in her cartoons for the New Yorker, and in the dozen books she has written, seeing them as co-conspirators aboard a global lifeboat facing stormy seas. And so it seems fitting that in her real life she should open her bedroom closet each morning and encounter the “cremains” of her parents, her father tucked inside the Channel 13 tote bag he carried with him everywhere, and her mother, a life force if ever there … [Read more...] about Beyond the New Yorker
Sammy Chong
THE MONSTER WITHIN We all feel a sense of isolation at times, wandering crowded streets full of people disconnected from their surroundings, plugged into their electronics, eyes glued to screens glowing with a cold light. Sammy Chong captures the isolation of people in their everyday lives, in both his series of “Asterion” graphite drawings and layered Plexiglas scenes in which we are separated from those around us either by society or by our own minds. Both are on display this fall. “Asterion,” at the Milton Art Museum from September 15 through October 15, depicts detailed graphite drawings of people going through life cast out by those around them in the monstrous form of the Minotaur from the ancient Greek myth of Theseus. Each 22-by-30- inch drawing is almost photographic in its realism, down to the strands of fur on the Minotaur’s face. Loneliness emanates from the form of … [Read more...] about Sammy Chong
Transformations
ENCAUSTIC ARTISTS CHALLENGE BOUNDARIES Life is about transformation, change, transition, growth. Art, as a component of life, also follows that path. At its most fundamental level, art-making is always about trans- formation — the transformation of raw materials into a finished work, the transformation from concept to concrete result, the personal transfor- mation of the artist during the creative process. And once completed, nothing is ever the same. The work is unique, new and a result of minute, incremental changes; the artist is also transformed and no longer the same as when the process began.” “Transformations,” currently showing at the Sharon Arts Center Exhibition Gallery, features 42 works from 20 artists from New England Wax, a professional organization of artists in New England who work in the ancient medium of encaustic hot wax painting using heated beeswax to which … [Read more...] about Transformations
Fiberart International 2013
DIVERSE METHODS FIND A COMMON THREAD The traveling “Fiberart International 2013,” exhibition is organized to be a benchmark presentation in the field of contem- porary textile/fiber art. Jury member and multimedia artist Joyce J. Scott explained her selection criteria: “I am searching for an inner depth that differentiates art from its hobbyist and commercial cousins.” The exhibition, currently on view at the American Textile History Museum, is arranged in two galleries in the lower and upper temporary gallery spaces.” Here’s what you’ll see: a remarkable expansion of material exploration and workmanship and stylistic innovation repre- senting works from realism through the lexicon of abstraction. There is painting with fibers, sculpture, diverse forms of printmaking and new media. Subject is communicated in story- telling mode via portraiture, narrative allegory, metaphor … [Read more...] about Fiberart International 2013