As we were going to press with this issue, a few days prior to Christmas, all of the exhibitions that are reviewed and previewed were scheduled to run as planned. If you plan on seeing any of these shows, as part of your preparations, please check with each venue’s website prior to leaving and consider contacting them on the day of your trip to confirm they’re open or if there are any specific arrangements you need to make (especially pre-ticketing). ...

To its devoted proponents, Japanese water-based printmaking, known as “mokuhanga,” is more than a means of self-expression — it is a discipline, a practice, even a way of life. Each aspect of mokuhanga demands a spirit of humility and respect for the art form, with an attentiveness and regard for the storied legacy the technique carries. Among modern-day practitioners working in the medium, some have abandoned vocations and professional careers to devote themselves to mokuhanga as a dedicated life’s path. ...

Valentine’s Day is approaching and “Love Stories,” a fabulous exhibition of portraits from the National Portrait Gallery, London, is a perfect way to explore love and sex vicariously. Over 100 paintings of famous people, famous artists, famous love affairs and famous sex scandals fill the Worcester Art Museum gallery. Almost every art style and medium is represented beginning with the 1571 oil portraits of the Archbishop of York and his wife, through 2018 photos of Prince Harry and Meghan Markle. ...

Attleboro Arts Museum’s Executive Director, Mim Fawcett, made an insightful decision inviting gallerist LaiSun Keane to jury the prize awards for the museum’s current Members’ Show. LaiSun Keane Gallery opened with a real freshness in Boston’s SoWa Arts District in September 2020 and since then has presented a roster of innovative exhibitions. Her gallery has participated in art fairs “SPRING/BREAK” and “Art on Paper” during New York City Art Fair Week and most recently participated in “Untitled” during Miami’s Art ...

The Cambridge Art Association (CAA) is saluting the new year by presenting the art of today and providing an opportunity for viewers to join a critical culture dialog about timeless issues that concern us all. Its first exhibition of 2022, “Vernacular Glamour,” is part of the Platform Curatorial Opportunity series launched in 2019 by the CAA for curators to explore new curatorial and exhibition concepts. It will be on view in its Kathryn Schultz Gallery from January 6 through February ...

The day I went to see the two shows reviewed here, I heard the news that the British Empire was getting a nip/tuck when Barbados announced it would henceforth be a republic. The news item reminded me of a remark one of my college professors made a good many years ago. Empires fall, he said, “Look at the Habsburgs — what do you have but Vienna and the suburbs.” During the 20-minute drive to the Burlington City Arts Gallery, I ...

Last fall, I was honored to be asked to jury the Bromfield Gallery’s SOLO 2022 Competition. I set out on the task looking for work that would call out to passerby in a neighborhood filled with top-rate galleries and artists. This January, Virginia Mahoney and Anne Birutė Harris will present work to carry you away visually, in experience and in thought. Harris’ “PEAK” solo show combines painting, performance, photographyandvideoinintroducingherseven-year“collaboration” with the tallest mountain in Massachusetts, Mount Greylock. Her working relationship ...

I first discovered Kim Triedman’s multi-layered work in ArtSpace Maynard’s 2018 exhibition, “Waste Not,” in which most of the work engaged the feelings of discourse taking place in the United States at the time. Having loved old buildings and old things, I was immediately drawn to her use of old window frames as frames for her collages. It took several close looks – some of those not taking place till I had returned home to review photos I had taken ...

At Boston Sculptors Gallery, audiences have the opportunity to see “Bespoke” by Kenson Truong by simply parting a curtain and walking into a pitch-black gallery. The idea is to stand in that space shining a flashlight at any one of the four walls to see text printed in red and blue, which is visible only when using the high intensity black light provided. Viewers in the dark connect with the text as they search for narrative revealed with the radial ...

To experience the dream of another is something that many regard as an impossible feat. The closest we may come is by being immersed in the extraordinary video installations of Cuban-American interdisciplinary artist Allison Maria Rodriguez at the Nesto Gallery at Milton Academy. “There is power in creativity, there is strength in imagining,” Rodriguez said, noting that imagination is a force encouraged in childhood and suppressed in adulthood. Her exhibition, “Worlds Within,” is comprised of several digital animations from Rodriguez’s ...

It is not just for the expression of an aesthetic and experience of lifeways, history and ceremony thousands of years old, nor because it connects us to, reminds us of the values of living in balance with each other and earth, but because it is a form of revolutionary resistance against the oppression of white supremacy, colonialism and fascism that Indigenous art is so important. As any native person from Wampanoag to Kwakiutl will tell you, “We are still here.” ...

I’m in the atelier of Alexandra Rozenman in her Joy Street Studio in Somerville just beyond Union Square, its majestic length filled with the mostly quiet energy of artists of all persuasions working industriously in their brick studios. Joy Street ends at the appropriately named Brickbottom Building where on January 27, Rozenman will be featured in their lobby gallery space, along with two other artist/ colleagues, in a month-long exhibit entitled “Space ←→ Color ←→ Movement: Lyrical Realism into Poetic ...

Mark and Angie Setevdemio, founders of Creative Connections Gift Shop & Gallery in Ashburnham, Massachusetts, have known Vermont artist Susan Wahlrab since she was their art professor at Framingham State College 30 years ago. Fast forward, and they are now hosting her exhibition, “Garden in the Forest,” in their second-floor gallery space. “We’ve been admirers of Susan’s work since we were in college,” Mark said. “We were taken with her printmaking at the time, and later her dramatic use of ...

The sky was blue all week, with nary a raindrop falling to mar the art world experience of Miami Art Week or keep visitors from the many outside installations on the beach. This Art Basel Miami Beach and Miami Art Week was different than those of years past. The crowds were thinner but determined to obtain work and bring it home. Most galleries sold out their work within the first two VIP days, as buyers did not know when the ...

“Straits of Magellan,” an exhibition featuring paintings of the southern tip of South America by Lola Chaisson, takes place from January 5 through February 12 at 6 Bridges Gallery, 77 Main Street, Maynard, Massachusetts. The show will feature sketches, photos and memories in which Chaisson captures the spirit of a voyage taken shortly before the pandemic. "Rather than focus on being 'stuck at home,' I picked up my brushes and looked back to the open vistas where mountains stretched up to ...