Welcome Artscope reader, As we celebrate our 18th anniversary with this issue, we open it with stories on two artists celebrating their own milestones and serving as inspiration to us all. Frederick “Fritz” Kubitz, who at 95 still finds himself painting, is feted in “All About Boston” at the Guild of Boston Artists. In her preview, Lee Roscoe profiles his time as one of the world’s great architects — including his designing of the iconic TWA Flight Center at JFK ...

Mira Cantor has taught color theory, drawing and painting for 40 years, 25 of them as a tenured professor in the Art and Architecture Department at Northeastern University. She has always been driven to learn as well as to teach through her art. Artscope Magazine’s Elizabeth Michelman “Cornered” Cantor in her studio a month before her March 2024 exhibition at Boston’s Kingston Gallery to discuss the paintings and drawings she’d completed during her 2023 sabbatical. Cantor has spent the last ...

Frederick “Fritz” Kubitz’s retrospective exhibition of oil paintings, “All About Boston,” will take place at the Guild of Boston Artists in their Newbury Street gallery, concurrent with the Boston Marathon and One Boston Day on April 15. Kubitz is also a distinguished architect who trained at MIT and worked for the renowned Eero Saarinen, and other firms, and then ultimately for himself. He was involved in the design of many institutional structures such as the avantgarde TWA Flight Center at ...

Pigeons, a common name for gray doves, symbolizes peace. They often roam urban epicenters and make home wherever they land. The resilience of their spirit is often overlooked because we see them often. Dina Nazmi Khorchid’s textile and installation work draws from the metaphor of the pigeon to talk about her migration story. Khorchid is like what surrealistic blues poet aja monet calls “born of distance between now and then” as the sediments of inherited trauma and migratory patterns influence ...

It is not until I return back to the layers of tree bark that frame the entrance to “Our Time on Earth” that I am bold enough to put my nose to it and inhale deeply. My suspicions are confirmed: it smells delicious, like sweet amber and something quietly sharp. I think immediately of how I want to wear it—to bottle it up — to be able to envelop myself in it any time I want. The thought is followed ...

The range and depth of experience represented in “Emancipation: The Unfinished Project of Liberation” at the Williams College Museum of Art (WCMA) is a vortex arrived to by the layers of observation and research of the curators and represented artists in this expansive exhibition. As the 160th anniversary of the “Emancipation Proclamation” has just past us in 2023, the exhibition examines how emancipation has evolved through a multi-dimensional, cyclical timeline and how its manifestation may appear in the future. The ...

Nina Simone would likely be happy to know that her 1965 song, “Feeling Good,” along with other songs from that time period, inspired the Hood Museum of Art’s current exhibition “And I’m Feeling Good: Relaxation and Resistance.” Located in Hanover, New Hampshire, on the campus of Dartmouth College, the museum drew from its expansive collection of photographs to showcase photography that celebrates Black lives and community along with simple moments of beauty, and the importance of being positive and joyful. ...

In a world too often portrayed as exclusively fractured and discordant, there is an urgent need to counter this view, offering instead a clearer picture of the infinite ways humans have worked to create bonds of harmonious interaction, whether for pragmatic needs, such as trade and cooperative commerce, or prompted by moral and ethical imperatives. Behind the strife of war and conflict we are shown daily, there is and has been a constant underlay of social stability built on mutual ...

“Unfinished Business” at the Newport Art Museum includes 40 works by female-identifying artists, depicting a full range of media and artistic intent, from angst to protest, concern for the environment, empathy and reverie. Exhibited on several floors of the museum’s John N. A. Griswold House, designed by architect Richard Morris Hunt and completed in 1864, the artwork both resonates and contrasts with the building’s soaring ceilings and heavily carved wooden interior. The exhibit title is a quote from former Secretary ...

In “Packing for Mars,” Jessica Straus reminds us that taking planet Earth for granted can no longer be an option. Jessica Straus’s solo exhibition presents a captivating fusion of black humor, nostalgia, longing and regret, echoing the timeless wisdom of Antoine de Saint-Exupéry’s “The Little Prince,” which suggests that adults often lose touch with the essential innocence of childhood. Set against the backdrop of the Boston Sculpture Gallery, located in Boston, Massachusetts, from April 4 to May 5, Straus’s showcase ...

An indication of an artist that excels in his or her field is their drive to grow, improve upon existing accomplishments and do it, “just that much better” next time. If you add on teaching and changing someone’s world view, all the better. Rockland, Maine artist Kim Bernard does all those things. Her creative expressions over the years are diverse — she said that they feed off each other and are ultimately connected. But how to capture a woman of ...

Taking its name from a 1976 song by Tom Waits, Brad Chapman Bleau’s first solo exhibition, “Step Right Up,” like the forementioned composition, is offering something for everyone in, “An exhibition of Junk Paintings and Assemblage Sculptures” at the Mary Cosgrove Dolphin Gallery at Worcester State University, where he is a gallery curator and adjunct professor of art. Entering his second-floor workspace at the Worcester Center for Crafts, in an area that also hosts Worcester State University Visual and Performing ...

“Streaming: Sculpture by Christy Rupp” in the Fairfield University Art Museum’s Quick Center Marsh Gallery is a must see. Artists that work with recycled trash as their medium will witness a master’s hand with detritus and see work deeply endowed with the informed passion of a citizen scientist. As you enter, there is an all-consuming 30’ by 40’ stock photo on the largest gallery wall. It is like an IMAX image of mountains of plastic to the horizon without a ...

Freedom Baird is the vortex of her ideas. They are a constant flow of conceptual strings of consciousness. The manifestation of these ideas take form in the manner of the Magician in the Tarot deck; those which start as brilliant sparks in the mind’s eye manifest in varying installations and art pieces, crystallizing and forming as an act of communication. At the Umbrella Center for the Arts in Concord, Massachusetts, curator Stephanie Marlin-Curiel is collaborating with educator Dr. Linda Booth ...

A juried art exhibition is always a time of great excitement for local artists. Who was accepted? Who won the prize money? The 51st “Annual Winter Juried Show” of the Duxbury Art Association (DAA) is no exception, and the DAA is fortunate to be able to display the chosen art in the handsome Art Complex Museum. Jurors Patricia Walsh, Laura Barletta and Carl Lopes chose art that ranges from abstraction to realism across a wide range of media including an ...

Should you go to the Mary Heaton Vorse House for the exhibition of art from 12 galleries that are members of the Provincetown Art Gallery Association (PAGA), you will have the rare experience of seeing art in an impeccably restored 18th century home. Run by the Provincetown Arts Society (PAS), the house has been exhibiting art, hosting films and offering residencies to artists of any kind since 2020. The Society’s director, Gene Tartaglia, said that the Provincetown Arts Society supports ...

The show title, “Duty-Free Paradise,” offers a glimpse of content through wordplay, punning to self-describe this solo exhibition by Lani Asunción at the Mills Gallery at the Boston Center for the Arts (BCA), that continues through April 13. Achieving a great exhibition layout is a subtle thing. “Duty-Free Paradise” benefits from being presented in kunsthalle-style, which involves clean, uncluttered placement so that complex ideas can emerge to reveal layers of meaning. In this case, there is a feeling of space, ...

The “Skyward Bound” and “Revival: A Spiritual Journey” solo exhibitions at the Ely Center of Contemporary Art bring two Guyanese, New England-based artists sharing personal experiences and reflections on cultural identity. “Skyward Bound” marks Marlon Forrester’s reentry into the New Haven art scene with a profoundly engaging body of work that defies conventional boundaries of color, shape and form. Originating from Guyana and based in Boston, Forrester boasts an academic background that includes a B.A. from the School of the ...

Global migration patterns are covered daily in the news due to the political and social conflict that arises when people from “elsewhere” attempt to move due to war, effects of climate change, religious persecution, cultural intolerance, colonialism, gender inequality or poverty, then resettle in a new place to experience personal safety and freedom. Over the last several years, migration has become ever more fraught with tension between those who support humanitarian efforts and those who view these people on the ...

Manchester, New Hampshire proves to be a difficult city for artists but has the potential to be one of New England’s most accommodating. Stocked with mill buildings lining the Merrimack River and a downtown filled with newly emptied office spaces, the “Queen City” is a cynical gentrifier’s dream. But there are those who argue that fostering a home-grown artistic community would offer a more durable investment than the promises made by fickle tech companies, who come and go with each ...

Amidst over 2 million square feet of cultural space in the Greater Boston region, there are two unsung heroes in the city of Somerville that aim to preserve and create arts space. In 2019, Somerville adopted a Fabrication District along with an ACE (Arts and Creative Enterprise) requirement when developing. The spirit of the Fabrication District is to preserve these usually 100-year-old-plus former industrial buildings as artist and creative communities for affordable individual artist workspaces. In Somerville, these are Joy ...

On a brisk night in Worcester, Massachusetts, artist Beatriz Whitehill and I trekked to see “Sneha Shrestha: Ritual and Devotion” at the Iris and B. Gerald Cantor Art Gallery at the College of the Holy Cross. The exhibition is the first institutional solo presentation by the artist who is best known for her large- scale murals and street art under the alias IMAGINE. With the rush hour traffic, it felt like there was a pressing. My mother always said, “There’s ...