Dear Artscope reader, When I took the position of managing editor back in 2006, I couldn’t have imagined we would still be having these bi-monthly conversations and celebrating the artists of the New England region 17 years later. But thankfully, here we are, continuing to be inspired by the efforts and creativity of our arts community. When he first started the magazine, publisher Kaveh Mojtabai had envisioned Artscope carrying the dialogue in the arts between artists, patrons and the public ...

While most of New England waits for spring, few are more eager for the first blossoms of the season as Robin Reynolds, whose floral paintings of her North Brookfield, Massachusetts garden can be seen in upcoming months at galleries throughout the region, including The Legacy Collection at Bryan Memorial Gallery in Jeffersonville, Vermont, The Cynthia Winings, G. Watson and George Marshall Store galleries in Maine, group shows at Soprafina Gallery in Boston, CUSP Gallery in Newport, Rhode Island, and ArtsWorcester ...

Kelly Slater is an artist that I have known for a number of years, mostly from my years at Atlantic Works Gallery in East Boston, when our memberships overlapped. I have watched Slater’s work go from tender, timid renderings to powerful, contrasted, energetic and unselfconscious telepathic conversations with trees and wooded environments. When I asked her what contributed to her outburst of confidence, she stated that over time she had connected to a vortex of inner awakenings, spawned by honing ...

For the second-ever exhibition in their newly constructed Joan Dignam Schmaltz Gallery of Art at the Paul J. Schupf Art Center in downtown Waterville, Maine, the Colby College Museum of Art is showcasing the thought- provoking interplay between the thematically connected work of two otherwise utterly distinct artists. This exhibition, “Ashley Bryan/Paula Wilson: Take the World into Your Arms” — guest curated by Jennifer R. Gross, the inaugural executive director of the Hauser & Wirth Institute and founding director of ...

The 30-foot-long wall of Stephen LaPierre’s Rocky Neck studio is covered from top to bottom with paintings of clowns. LaPierre’s oldest clown painting, the impetus for this wacky yet cerebral series, hangs at the room’s far end. Featuring a low-lit bar filled with face-painted patrons, the piece is darker and cruder than its more contemporary companions. Visitors to LaPierre’s studio would be hard-pressed not to notice another stark difference between “Clowns at the Bar” and the other works surrounding it: ...

New England’s legacy of textile and innovation relives its heyday. Its fiber art time! We have seen a resurgence of fiber art, and the trend is rising. Historically most associated with a feminist movement and today no longer restricted to gender, fiber art has been shaking the art world, while defying the limits and boundaries of art technology. The textile evolution continues to impact all areas of art, business and economy worldwide. Textiles secured prominent value in museums, biennials, art ...

Recently I visited sculptor Nora Valdez at her studio at Humphreys Street Studios in Dorchester, Massachusetts, to get a preview of her upcoming exhibition “A Common Thread,” which takes place from March 1 through April 2 at Boston Sculptors Gallery. During our studio visit, Valdez carefully reached into a portfolio taking out vintage-looking garment pieces on which she had drawn with black ink. Her idea was that these drawings would soon become part of an installation for the show. What ...

Lisa Houck’s solo exhibition at the Art Complex Museum in Duxbury, Massachusetts, features her prolific and vivid versatility, with about a dozen watercolors, small (6” by 7”) to large (50” by 20”), around 40 framed mosaics ranging from (8” by 8” to 30” by 12”), a smattering of linoleum block prints and one oil on wood, three panel folding screen: “Unusual Bird Behavior Confounds Scientists.” The title typifies her themes, as well as the theme of the exhibition, which is “Botanical ...

“Designing the Dream State” is a solo exhibition by Hartford Art School’s inaugural Whitney Artist-in-Residence Chiraag Bhakta. The show will be held in the Joseloff Gallery from February 23 to March 25. Bhakta, a Hartford Art School  graphic design alumnus, is an artist and designer who works in “archival research, storytelling and collaboration in a variety of media” to unveil “the history, legacies and ongoing impact of western imperialism in our everyday lives.” “Designing the Dream State” addresses empire building ...

This is a love story. A mesmerizing tale about two people who’ve shared their life more than 51 years, but, in actuality, the “love story” began long, long before that — over 1,100 years ago in English trees. That’s when certain trees began their life, and many centuries later entwined the lives and passion of a couple of artists named Lawrence and Victoria Elbroch. It’s complicated, you see. They are from different geographic areas. She, the United Kingdom. He, New ...

The camera is ubiquitous. Embedded in our phones, it sits in every pocket and purse; drilled into the walls of businesses and subway stations; fixed to traffic lights and the masonry of buildings. Its lens and spiraling aperture, recording and passive, document moments both absurdly pedestrian and of special importance, unquestionably more the former these days. The glut of photographs — now digital, ephemeral — renders our image of ourselves disposable, making for a curated life that belies reality. None ...

“There’s all kinds of life-experiences that come to one unasked-for,” said sculptor and painter Marjorie Minkin while showing me her light-filled Lexan relief sculptures one November evening on her Waltham studio wall. We are discussing her approaching exhibition at the John Joseph Moakley Federal Courthouse on Fan Pier in Boston Harbor. Skins of translucent polycarbonate dance on the white wall, their lines, shadows, reflections and rills of color overlapping. Migrating to the curved brick wall of the Courthouse’s Atrium Gallery, ...

“Abstraction focuses on a private world,” muses Erica H. Adams in “Spirit in the Dark,” an exhibition of 23 small watercolors at the Moakley Federal Courthouse through March 30. For the first five months of the pandemic, following the March 2020 lockdown, Adams stayed at home in Mashpee, on Cape Cod. “Having no new experiences and thus reliving old experiences,” she endured the anxiety, disorientation, loneliness and frustration by painting an ongoing series of small abstract works on paper. A ...

American crafts are among the finest in the world. In 2004, the trustees of the Fuller Craft Museum recognized this fact and wisely decided to re-invent the museum to specialize in American crafts. Five current exhibitions at Fuller demonstrate how broadly the “crafts” concept can be stretched to include more than beautiful utilitarian objects. The exhibiting artists include both highly skilled and novice artisans. The craft materials are as diverse as aluminum sheets and a hydroponic garden. The topics of the exhibits vary widely from food distribution problems to elegant jewelry. Especially important are two exhibitions, one about the social ...

At the helm of exhibition programming at URI Feinstein Providence Campus Gallery, Steven Pennell presents art shows about various topics from everyday life. “Coordinator of Urban Arts and Culture,” Pannell delivers art programming brimming with ideas and social issues as gallery experience to  enjoy, consider and be challenged by. The floor plan of the gallery runs the full length of a city block in a landmarked Beaux Arts building. Formerly Shepherd’s Department Store, it has many large display windows. The space ...

Multidisciplinary artists Ashley Page and Alejandra Cuadra both say they share a brain. The metaphor rings true in their work: many of the artists’ sculptures and installations look as if they belong in a shared space. Their pieces, vulnerable and bold, often appear to have sprouted from similar lines of inquiry or emerged out of a common desire to reclaim (a place; a concept; a body). And in one show, at least, they have. On view through April 2 at ...

After visiting several exhibitions this winter, two artists’ works especially stayed with me, provocatively, after viewing them each in two different exhibits: Milo, and Anastasia Semash. Milo’s work was shown as part of a recently concluded exhibition at the Belmont Art Gallery in Belmont, Massachusetts titled “Off the Clock,” a witty reference to a slew of invited artists who teach in the Belmont Public Schools, but who don’t drop their brushes or ignore their easels after hours when they are ...

Arts displacement, although a systemic, chronic problem in Greater Boston, also takes toll outside the metropolitan area, in once industrial Massachusetts cities like Worcester, Lowell, New Bedford and Salem. The Arts & Business Council of Greater Boston (A&BC), whose initiatives include Volunteer Lawyers for the Arts, Business on Board, artist fellowships, and others, including Creative Campus, its solution to creating and/or preserving arts/cultural spaces. It is currently partnering with Creative Hub Worcester, transforming a historic Boys Club into artist workspaces ...

In her solo show, “The Skies Cried as my Fathers Died,” Rhode Island artist Rachel Brask, who has a studio in East Providence, displays her paintings of rainy skyscapes that express the complexity of grief and of mourning the loss of two fathers in the same year, while also seeking beauty and light in the dark. This new series of oil paintings, created in 2022, will be on exhibit from March 1 through 30 at the Preservation Framer Churchwood Gallery, ...