Welcome to our first Artscope magazine of 2016. We hope you had a chance to follow our coverage from Art Basel Miami Beach on Instagram and Facebook in early December; this issue features two reports by Suzanne Volmer from the event and its satellite fairs as well as impressions from three of New England’s top gallery directors — Adam Adelson of Adelson Galleries, Mike Carroll of Schoolhouse Gallery and William Baczek of William Baczek Fine Arts. As we were putting ...

Leaving a Mark at D'Amour by Marguerite Serkin Springfield, Mass. - Graphite occurs naturally in many forms, and its appli- cation for modern inscription has a history dating back to sheep marking in 16th-century England. Formerly referred to as “Plumbago,” graphite was used as a paint base in Neolithic times by the Marita culture of the Danube to decorate ceramic pottery. Versatile, easily manipulated, and widely found in nature, graphite serves as an accessible and functionally effective tool in both ...

LAU AND LEDBETTER AT KNIZNICK by James Foritano Waltham, Mass. - As a critic, I have no trouble recom- mending the exhibit currently at the Kniznick Gallery in Brandeis University’s Women’s Studies Research Center. The art, craft and vision, as well as the curatorial presentation, are all top-notch. It’s only on the personal level, which is a big “only,” that I can’t guarantee the integrity of either the pitch, the come-on or the content which, though all perfectly innocent-looking, are ...

Marylin Arsem at the MFA by Elizabeth Michelman Boston, Mass. - Tuesday, December 8. I’m attending Day 29 in a series of 100 unique perfor- mances at the MFA this fall and winter by Boston’s leader in performance art, Marilyn Arsem. Arsem has not yet shown up, but I can already hear her disem- bodied voice musing over the previous day’s performance. The wall text before me explains that each day’s performance provides the inspiration for the next. 10:30 a.m. ...

HIGH-FLYING MURALS AT NEW ART CENTER by James Foritano Newton, Mass. - January and February are ordinarily months of cabin fever, when walls close in — unless, of course, you’re the kind of athlete who sees sport in snow and ice. For enthusiasts of the “great indoors,” as more and more I count myself, there are always walls begging to be inscribed, emblazoned with intuitions of the heart and soul. Skeptical? Suffering under the illusion that art is for artists ...

Making Artwork More Accessible at Smith by John Paul Stapleton Northampton, Mass. - From the new Whitney Museum of American Art building in New York City to our semi-local Peabody Essex Museum expansion project, renovations seemed to be the hot decision for 2015. The Smith College Museum of Art joined this league with their four-year renovation project that was of officially completed this past fall. Margi Caplan, the museum’s membership and marketing director, showed me around the museum to point ...

EVERY PICTURE TELLS A STORY by Greg Morell Portsmouth, New Hampshire - Feasting and drinking are two of my favorite pastimes, but they are not usually the subjects of contemporary artists. Jay Schadler, however, is not your usual artistic practitioner. A photo-illustrator in a unique niche, Schadler, a Michigan native, first earned a law degree at Syracuse University, but quickly left the law behind and began his adventure as a world-traveling special correspondent for ABC News with a gift for ...

THREE ARTISTS SHAPE THEIR VISIONS by Elizabeth Michelman Chestnut Hill, Massachusetts - Clay has always served as a carrier of culture, from creation myths and cookery to architecture, painting, sculpture and writing. Three sculptors currently exhibiting hand-built clay structures at Pine Manor College have adapted this medium to their contemporary idiom. Each one experiments to fulfill her individual aesthetic, expressive and communicative goals. Pursuing a woman-centered vision of birth, death and eroticism, Ellen Schön creates objects that exude desirability. Her ...

INTERNATIONAL POSTERS AT LAMONT by Linda Chestney Exeter, New Hampshire - It’s a fine art to be pithy while at the same time capturing your activist message in an image. That is the goal of “Graphic Advocacy: International Posters for the Digital Age 2001-2012,” the exhibi- tion that will be gracing the walls this January and February at Lamont Gallery on the Phillips Exeter Academy campus. Curated by Elizabeth Resnick, professor and chair of graphic design at the Massachusetts College ...

TOM FELS’ CYANOTYPES by Arlene Distler Brattleboro, Vermont - To view Tom Fels’ cyanotypes this January at Mitchell • Giddings Fine Arts (MGFA) is to enter a magic kingdom, a secret world of trees and leaves revealed by alchemy. The process of cyanotype goes back to the mid 1800s. Then, and well into the 20th century, it was primarily used to make “blueprints” of notes and diagrams. The origin of the nomer is obvious — cyano- types are made by ...

EPPRIDGE’S TIMELESS LOOK AT THE FAB FOUR by Brian Goslow Danbury, Connecticut - It was, inarguably, one of those moments in which everything changed. On February 9, 1964, The Beatles played on the Ed Sullivan Show for the first time, setting Beatlemania into full gear and sparking a cultural shift that still echoes today. Photojournalist Bill Eppridge documented the Fab Four’s first tour of the United States for Life magazine, taking “Three thousand images on 90 rolls of film” — ...

THE ART WORLD IS HOT, HOT, HOT by Suzanne Volmer South Beach Miami, Florida - Upon entering Art Basel Miami Beach, one was met with Rosemarie Trockel’s large, abstract, reptilian-looking wall installation, a monochromatic work with scales sprung slightly from the wall in low relief. The trends of relief and monochrome echoed as one progressed through the hallways and booths ahead. Although the color vibrancy for which Miami is known was retained, the current of its profusion was less. Trockel’s ...

NEW ENGLAND IMPRESSIONS by Suzanne Volmer South Beach Miami, Florida - Art Fair Week in Miami and Miami Beach is an exciting citywide celebration akin to Mardi Gras, with a cerebral edge. Miami Beach seized a moment 14 years ago by accepting an opportunity that was offered by the UBS-sponsored Art Basel franchise. Today, the presence of contemporary art and specifically art collecting energize this city. Miami’s art scene has personality; it is a dialogue of considerable public participation. The ...

UNDER-30 ARTISTS PUSH THE BOUNDARIES by Franklin W. Liu Cambridge, Mass. - Regardless of the prevailing generational societal values we identify with, is there an artist’s natural inclination to negate what came before in producing art that will be seen as a significant departure from previous generations’ work? The Cambridge Art Association (CAA) ponders these social dynamics when presenting the works of a select group of emerging artists aged 18 to 30 years old in its first exhibition of 2016, ...

EXPLORING HUE AT VAN VESSEM by Don Wilkinson Tiverton, Rhode Island - Along with red and yellow, blue is part of a holy trinity of primary colors from which all other hues are born. Its manifestations include navy, azure, baby blue, indigo, periwinkle, the absurdly named “true blue” and many others. It is ripe with symbolism: tranquility, peace and relaxation; conversely, it can be the avatar of melancholy, sadness and depression. In some parts of the world, it is the ...

CHALLENGING GENDER EXPRESSION AT ARTSPACE by J. Fatima Martins New Haven, Connecticut - As expected, Artspace New Haven has presented another challenging and amusing statement exhibition. “hello, world!” is an entertaining, absurdist and intellectual mixed-media, mixed- technology exhibition featuring erotic taco eating, vaginal pillows, muscle men, battling blonde wigs, Lorde lyrics, surreal hazy interiors, a Venn Diagram of dysfunctional family dynamics, videos of an artist’s head submerged in various watery locations, photographs that were buried and retrieved, a woman covered ...

100 YEARS OF ARCHITECTURE AT YALE by Kristin Nord New Haven, Connecticut - Later this spring, after almost 20 years, Robert A.M. Stern will be passing the torch as the dean of Yale’s School of Architecture to Deborah Berke, architect and founder of the New York-based Deborah Berke Partners. The exhibition on view through May 7 in the school’s Rudolph Hall gallery was developed in large part from a renowned spring seminar taught by Stern that looked at various studies ...

A POST-MODERN DREAMSCAPE by Kristin Nord New Canaan, Connecticut - It is during the fallow months in New Canaan, when the trees are a constellation of trunks and branches, that many of the town’s modernist houses come readily into view. Boasting one of the most significant collections of such homes in the United States, New Canaan now counts 91 structures still standing from the estimated 118 that were built from 1939 through 1979. At the center of this collection are ...

TINY HOUSES AT FULLER CRAFT by Brian Goslow Brockton, Mass. - For most of his life, Derek “Deek” Diedricksen has had an affinity for small structures. When he was 9 or 10, his father, at the time a high school woodworking teacher, gave him a copy of “Tiny Tiny Houses” by Lester Walker, an architect from Woodstock, New York. The 1987 book has become a guiding light not only for his life, but thousands of others around the world who ...

GRANT AND RESIDENCY APPLICATION TIPS by Laura Shabott (Laura Shabott is a Provincetown artist, writer and actor. An SMFA graduate [1995], she has returned to painting and drawing after 23 years in other mediums through a Romano Rizk Scholarship from the Provincetown Art Association and Museum. In this feature, she shares her tips for successful grant writing) Most creative people tend to focus on the process of art making and ignore the money part. But receiving a grant isn’t only ...

Thirteen large-scale works in oil by Vermont- and Massachusetts- based David Brewster — who says his creative process has always “sought out a kind of theater, often choosing opulent interiors and sylvan landscapes that are somehow distressed” — are featured in “Power- line” from November 4 through 28 at Chase Young Gallery, 450 Harrison Ave. #57, Boston. “Throughout my development I have continued to revisit these same scenarios, with their heightened sense of drama, movement and collapse, inviting the spectator ...