The early months of the year are unpredictable, with the usual cold temperatures and nasty weather typically making it tougher to travel from place to place. On the other hand, it encourages picking a single place or district to settle into for the day and playing closer attention to the exhibitions they visit. It’s also a good time for artists and artisans to settle in to address those projects they’ve put up during the warm weather season. Over the past ...

I came up with this story concept during a gathering of friends, classmates and fellow artists. We’ve been getting together as often as possible after a hiatus of about 40 years for several reasons. At the core of this group are the former students of Ed Togneri, Bill (Willoughby) Elliott, Herb Cummings or Frank McCoy at Southeastern Massachusetts University (which became the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth in 1991). Many of us are from the Bachelor of Fine Arts Class of 1975 ...

Currently on view in Boston’s Seaport District on the second floor of one of that neighborhood’s sheathed-in-glass high-rise buildings is: “Adorning Boston and Beyond: Contemporary Studio Jewelry Then + Now.” Guest curated by MassArt Jewelry Professor, Heather White, for The Society of Arts + Crafts, the show is contoured to contextualize today’s jewelry trends using images and writings focused on the studio jewelry work of American post-war artists and designers. Such work blazed a conceptual imprint of enduring significance. White begins ...

“Context: Language, Media and Meaning,” a juried exhibition at the Fuller Craft Museum, showcases 30 works predominantly of fiber, handmade paper and textile from members of the Surface Design Association’s southern New England chapters. Each material work incorporates or refers to language. The phrase “Surface Design” refers to a self-selected group of artists sharing certain materials and practices, who borrow and challenge craft traditions while transcending disciplinary boundaries. Their engagement with language reflects curiosity and willingness to critique signifying structures, ...

There often is a distinction drawn between “decorative art” and “fine art.” Decorative art, such as ceramics, furniture, jewelry and textiles, is meant to be beautiful as well as useful, whereas fine art — including paintings, sculpture, drawings, watercolor, graphics, and architecture — is considered to be created for aesthetic purposes and judged for its beauty and meaningfulness. Wherever you fall on the spectrum of your definition, my opinion is that fine art is in the eye of the beholder. ...

Three artists are showing in the Kingston Gallery’s three gallery spaces during the cold month of February. Each brings back from a life of art well-ripened visions like fine wines or whatever analogy you prefer to represent experience thoroughly tasted and crafted. From a residency at the Hambidge Center in North Georgia about a decade ago, photographer Hilary Tolan has brought back a Rhododendron forest, lush with natural vigor, marinated in the slow juices of artistic contemplation for a mid-winter ...

“The only competition worthy of a wise man is with himself.” — Washington Allston When Howard Yezerski, owner of Howard Yezerski Gallery, was asked to be juror of the Bromfield Gallery’s 2019 “SOLO” competition, he was unsure of how the process would work. Sponsored annually by the artist-run gallery in Boston’s South End, the “SOLO” competition offers an advancing opportunity for New England artists without prior gallery representation to exhibit their work in an established gallery setting. “I was asked to ...

When it’s too cold to ski and you’re so over roasting chestnuts in an open fire, yet yearn for something to do that doesn’t involve staring at a device screen, pack the kids and the dog into the car and head to Saint Johnsbury, Vermont. Yes, it’s 50 miles and an hour from a Starbucks outpost, but the drive along snowy landscapes is meditative and worth every mile traveled when you get to your destination. This part of Vermont is ...

Marjorie Hellman, Ken Steinkamp and Adam Waimon exhibit in solo situations at ArtProv Gallery through January 19. For collectors and other visitors, this means one artist per room. The arrangement allows for a luxurious feeling of immersion in which to contemplate each artist’s strengths. The solo hanging approach is a subtle evolution for the gallery and expresses confidence in the conceptual integrity of the works of these artists who ArtProv Director Michele Aucoin has represented for three years or more. The ...

Twenty-five years ago, Vincent Crotty left his native Ireland and emigrated to Dorchester where he discovered a “land of opportunity” and a mentor who recognized his painting talents and counseled, “If you want to be an artist, start working on it now!” He picked up his brushes and has been developing his skills ever since. Eight years ago, he became an American citizen. Recording American cities’ back alleys and working-class life dates back to the early 20th century New York-based ...

American architect Thom Mayne once said, “The huge problem in our society is the enormous ignorance of the ideas that underlie modern art.” You would think that was bad enough. But, what about unsold art? Art is made. Art is exhibited. Art is sold. And, yes, art accumulates. There is more art made than sold (For this article, art refers specifically to painting). In their lifetime, the excess is stored under artist’s beds, in their closets and their studios. This ...

Deborah McDuff’s exhibition, “Impact on Innocence: Mass Incarceration,” on show from February 1 through 22 at the Augusta Savage Gallery at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, couldn’t be more timely or urgent. Using charcoal on canvas, McDuff’s larger than life portraits of women, children and men of color who experience the trauma of prison reveal the pain of incarceration experienced not only by those who are imprisoned but by their loved ones, especially children. Theirs are the faces of loss, ...

In Rebecca Skinner’s two exhibits, at 6 Bridges Gallery and the Brookline Arts Center, striking images depict abandoned mills and factories in total ruin. Decay has thoroughly set in. Elements of nature have begun to re-establish their territory. Her photographs portray spaces once bustling with workers and loaded with products of every description, now standing, after years of neglect, totally dilapidated. Some words come to mind in observing Skinner’s images of these buildings: curiosity, exploration, observation, documentation, reverence. Her extensive ...

“Intersection of Scale,” on view January 17 through February 6 at the Chazan Gallery at Wheeler in Providence, Rhode Island presents a macro discussion about micro-scale, evidence-based art practices featuring maquettes by Doug Bosch, painting, drawings and prints by Damon Campagna and electron microscope-facilitated photography by Geoff Williams. In some cases, Bosch’s small sculptures look like circuit boards. They might even seem like paired-down remains of the still-popular electronic board game, “Operation,” that will buzz interactively at the slightest movement ...

The title says a lot, as far as words go, to point in the direction of artist Evelyn Davis-Walker’s “House + Wife Revisited” installation currently at the Thompson Gallery of the Cambridge School of Weston. Better, since it is visual art, to go see it. Better yet to help install it as students will be, and probably are doing as I write. Walker-Davis is a graphic artist using collage to make the point of feminine subservience as a societal norm ...

Catherine Carter has always loved teaching. “The act of visual self-expression is the greatest joy I know, and I can never get enough of supporting others who seek that joy for themselves,” said Carter, who recently opened Catherine Carter Art Studio, where she’ll host classes and workshops at Hatch Street Studios in New Bedford, Massachusetts. A teacher of art to all ages for the past two decades, Carter began slowly when starting her own art school. She moved to New ...

Collaborative effort; bilingual apps; recasting a museum’s holdings. Using a particular fine art or natural history collection as a starting point by which to explore history and values of a particular place and time. Changing the perception that cultural institutions are elitist — and remaking them as egalitarian centers that embrace and foster New England’s sense of place. The museum world is changing, as workshops at the 100th anniversary conference of the New England Museum Association in Stamford, Connecticut, recently ...

Art Basel Miami Beach 2018 was bustling with crowds of people and visitors at the VIP and public days were rewarded with phenomenal work, both current and historic. Painting is back in a big way as drawing takes precedence over photography in the annals of art. Photography is still big, but is painted upon with cultural symbols embellishing work ranging from portraits of animals to landscapes to cultural figures. At Art Basel, sculpture left the kitsch behind; the Mickey Mouses ...

With many people feeling it’s futile to watch the news or read about current events because one minute later they are not current at all and something more important has grabbed the headlines, the immediate result, at least judging by the work exhibited during Miami Art Week 2018, is that artists did not comment on politics through their work to the extent that they had in recent fairs. Instead, they depicted humor, kitsch, film and music personalities because those have ...

“Migration: A Curated Fiber Arts Exhibition” runs from January 10 through February 28 at the Umbrella Community Arts Center, 40 Stow St., Concord, Massachusetts. The show, curated by the Umbrella Visual Arts Program who invited artists from diverse contemporary and craft traditions, will “contemplate ‘migrations’ within shifting and fluid ways of being and defining our own cultural, gendered and embodied identities.” Featuring handcrafted objects, interactive installations, talks and performances by Louise Berliner, Nayda A. Cuevas, Jodi Colella, Merrill Comeau, Nancy ...

“Half-Silvered,” the current exhibition in the Women’s Studies Research Center’s Kniznick Gallery at Brandeis University, features photographs by Karin Rosenthal and kinetic sculptures by Anne Lilly that explore the relationship of the human figure to its reflection. Rosenthal’s photographs are carefully composed black-and-white images of human figures disguised by water, wind, shadow and light. Lilly’s works, made of stainless steel, use visual acuity and motion to create a psychological space of wonder and suspense. The reflections of the self — ...