“Art is tactile, gives solace, reminds us to be grounded where we can have a dialogue and find ways to offer benefit and beauty.” Kaveh Mojtabai, Artscope’s publisher, shared these words with me after we’d had a long conversation on how much all of us desperately needed to escape our long-enforced period of solitude and see and return to our long running conversations and friendships in our galleries and museums. Mojtabai and I traveled to West Hartford for the opening ...

Upon reflection, the first thing that comes to mind when North Adams, Massachusetts, is mentioned is Mass MoCA, the giant, wondrous, football field of a contemporary art museum. The second thing is the dreaded hairpin turn on Route 2. Having recently moved to the area, many people who have vowed to come and visit me have mentioned both the museum and the hairpin turn in the same breath, a fitting nod to this city’s denizens meeting challenges against all odds. ...

The summer art calendar in coastal Maine is jam- packed by design. During the cold depths of a northern New England winter, all of us involved in the Maine art scene have plenty of time to think and plan. We know exactly when the away-crowds will return. We know precisely how short that window of opportunity is. And we take each and every effort to optimize our gallery and museum programming in the ways most likely to bring our diverse ...

As a child, Aaron Slater watched a PBS documentary film about glass artist Dale Chihuly. Soon, he was melting beer bottles and breaking glass in the basement, fascinated by what he had seen in Chihuly’s early work. That led to taking a variety of art classes in school. Later, he discovered the work of Rick Satava, whose glass jellyfish are known worldwide, and Paul Stankard, famous for his glass paper weights. He was also inspired by American glass pipe makers ...

Using blackout-curtain fabric as her canvas, things happen to the pigments on its surface which suggest skin, parchment, old maps, architectural paper; things happen to the paint because of the material: for instance, blackish acrylic tint blurs at the top — which leads artist Jackie Reeves onwards to expand the work’s realization. The material, process, and ideas evolve and change together, one inspiring the other, interacting with each other so that she is never quite sure what accident or intention ...

Inspired by Denmark’s Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, the Fuller Craft Museum, built in 1969, fits snugly into New England’s wooded landscape as an important note of modernist architecture that exists in harmony with nature. Its architectural signature is its twin-fountain reflecting poolabutting a large pond. Among other things, the pool centers the building’s design. Founder Myron Fuller’s intention was to create a place “to enrich the lives of the people of Brockton” which remains vital among Fuller Craft Museum’s ...

“The Evocative Mark Twain Inspires the Printmakers’ Network of Southern New England” is an immensely impressive exhibit featuring a wide breadth of accomplished veteran artists. Taking place at The Mark Twain House & Museum in West Hartford, Connecticut, the exhibition consists of 18 Printmakers’ Network of Southern New England (PNSNE) artists. Members of the PNSNE, an intimate, loosely organized group of 25 contemporary printmakers in total, each picked a quote from Mark Twain’s exhaustive writings and responded in their personal ...

In 1970, Sally and David Laughlin of Woodstock, Vermont, had a bright, vastly unpopular idea: to clean up the Ottauquechee River, which had been polluted with runoff from local mills and, during more recent years, with raw sewage. Like many unpopular bright ideas, theirs turned out to be visionary. David Laughlin, a dentist by profession, shared in a 2018 interview with Tim Traver, for his book, Fly Fishing & Conservation in Vermont: Stories of the Battenkill and Beyond, “My office ...

Located at a deep bend of the Cocheco River in the beating heart of burgeoning Dover, New Hampshire, is where you’ll find the historic Washington Street Mills complex. Over the past few years, something special has happened within this former textile mill, as the Seacoast Region city it calls home — the oldest permanent settlement in New Hampshire — has transformed into one of the fastest-growing communities in the state. This circa-1880s mill complex has sprung to new life through ...

Providence painter Kirstin Lamb’s early paintings were mushrooming accumulations of appropriated images referencing the history of domestic décor, portraiture and still life. Rendered in a style of artless caricature that masked her superior drafting skill, the encyclopedic scope of her imagery always suggested richer undercurrents. Lamb’s early paintings and drawings reflected the vanitas tradition of Dutch Master still life. She tossed in every kind of object or image that might grace a home or studio’s walls, complicating these collections with ...

Five exhibits are currently on display at the RISD Museum, “Drawing Closer: Four Hundred Years of Drawing from the RISD Museum,” “Trading Earth: Ceramics, Commodities, and Commerce,” “Striking Chords: Music in Ukiyo-e Prints,” “Variance: Making, Unmaking, and Remaking Disability,” and “Inherent Vice.” And each exhibition highlights a different aspect of the RISD Museum’s collection and mission as an institution. First, “Drawing Closer” brings together 67 works by European artists dating back to the 16th century that “consider how and why ...

What do you think is the average time museum-goers spend looking at art? A study in 2001 at the Metropolitan Museum of Art indicated the average time spent looking at great works of art  was 27.2 seconds. Fast forward to 2017, when the Art Institute of Chicago conducted the same study and found an increase to 28.63 seconds. I predict a current exhibition at the Currier Museum of Art in Manchester, New Hampshire, will skew the numbers of those studies. Upward. Iranian artist ...

Is the pandemic over? It looks like social behavior will be the determinant of that! So far, 2022 has been shaping up to be a memorable and celebratory artful year. Could the art world mark the ending of this global health crisis? All corners of the world are finally hosting biennials, triennials, retrospectives, art fairs, festivals, and the cherry on top is that traveling resumes. We are back in business, not business as usual... but something in between. For those ...

The dancers were like lit matches. We, on the other hand were five years late, and yet, on April 21, we are taken in like family at the Pao Arts Center, now celebrating its fifth anniversary, for its presentation of Lenora Lee Dance’s “Convergent Waves: Boston,” an immersive, multi-media dance performance to celebrate the contributions of local activists and non-profit leaders in Boston’s Chinatown community. The Pao Arts Center’s philosophy is that we are all late- comers to this favored continent ...

“An artist once said that paint picks up what life does to us. My practice has always been informed by my experience in the world. The act of painting is a bodily response and a gestural event where energy passes from the heart to the brush, absent of self-conscious thought. This leads to a place of authenticity, possibilities and clarity. These paintings were an attempt to escape the sabotage of the conscious mind and allow the paint to maintain its ...

To appreciate the beauty of life is to see it change over time. A sunset morphs from beginning — when the sun first starts to dip and the sky comes alight with mesmerizing hues — to end, as the sun finally lowers out of view and the sky becomes dark. In his artwork displayed in “Time and Space: Boundless,” at Miller White Fine Arts, Oscar Andrew Hammerstein sets out to capture every phase of life’s tantalizing moments all at once. ...

“From Palestine with Art,” an official collateral exhibition at La Biennale d’ Arte, “The Milk of Dreams” in Venice, Italy opened for the private days on April 19, 2022. Continuing until November 27, the packed show at Palazzo Mora takes the opportunity to show the world art community the excellence of artists of Palestinian heritage from Palestine and the Palestinian diaspora. Nancy Nesvet, curator of the exhibition sponsored by the Palestine Museum US, where she is head curator (as well ...

“A fun silver lining of the pandemic has been the opportunity to witness the shift of wardrobes from traditional business casual to a more casual style filled to the brim with unique, personal expression,” which has led to a two-month exhibition of masculine works, including couture leather jackets, uniquely printed t-shirts, jewelry and belts, made by over 20 Maine craft artists. “Hey Handsome! A Show of Rugged Attire & Accessories” runs from May 6 through June 26 at Maine Craft Portland, ...