Article Excerpts
Welcome
Welcome to our final issue of 2014. Many of the stories are the result of longterm planning, including Kristin Nord’s artist profile of Michael Madore, whose work has been on our radar for a few years. This is the first opportunity we’ve had to cover him in conjunction with an exhibition — “Castellology,” currently on view at the MS17 Art Project at the Atrium at Harris Place in New London; in December, it’ll be displayed at Connecticut’s Office of the ...Three Easy Pieces: Simon Fujiwara
[caption id="attachment_4281" align="alignnone" width="200"] Simon Fujiwara with designfor New Pompidou, Parisproject.[/caption] Simon Fujiwara’s aesthetic vocabulary is varied and inclusive. In his exhibit at Harvard’s Carpenter Center for Visual Arts, he skips lightly between media — shuffling text, sculpture, photographs and video with apparent aplomb. In years past, this may have left guests curiously pondering artistic boundaries and teleology. But the current environment frees us from media restraints and expectations and allows Fujiwara to focus on the narrative of the relationships ...IMPRESSIONS OF NEW ENGLAND XIV – PORTRAYING THE HUMAN SPIRIT
[caption id="attachment_4284" align="alignnone" width="200"] LEFT: Shirley Fachilla, PassageThrough St. Lazare, oil, 24” x 20”.RIGHT: Ronnie Cramer, Homework,watercolor, 8” x 10”.[/caption] Approaching The Bennington Center for the Arts, one is reminded of landscapes quintessentially Vermont. Built in a field off Gypsy Lane on the outskirts of Bennington, this is not the traditional locale for a museum. Based on the barn paintings of Eric Sloane, its architecture honors the Center’s commitment to traditional Americana. White clapboards cover a meticulously maintained primary building ...Viewpoints: 20 Years of Adderly
[caption id="attachment_4291" align="alignnone" width="200"] Renée Cox, SacredGeometry, archival digitalprint on cotton rag.[/caption] Featuring an impressive list of names and focused on artists of color, “Viewpoints: 20 Years of Adderley,” on view through December 6 at Massachusetts College of Art and Design, spotlights visual storytelling that includes the abstract and the narrative bound into a journey of identity, relationship and originality. The entirety is framed as a celebration to highlight the achievements of those who have been speakers in MassArt’s Adderley ...Castellology
[caption id="attachment_4295" align="alignnone" width="200"] Klein-Schweiz (Little Switzerland), 2008, ink, pen, paper, 15” x 20’’.[/caption] MADORE SHATTERS THE SPECTRUM Michael Madore claims he began as a furtive artist, drawing in the seclusion of the woods, in the garage, or sometimes up in a tree. Family life was fractious and cacophonous for the young man, the eldest of seven, with hypersensitivities to both noise and smell. And his obsessive toe tapping, uncontrollable giggling and unintentional grimacing was known to drive his classroom ...70 Years of Printmaking
[caption id="attachment_4300" align="alignnone" width="200"] Clare Romano, On the Grass,1978, collagraph; ed. 3/150,10” x 30.5”.[/caption] Clare Romano and John Ross are major figures in the world of printmaking as both artists and educators, with independent voices that share subject focus. Their target is structure, and their language is line, color and space. Ross’ 1984 master collagraph ”Homage to the City,” a 30” x 67” triptych printed to the very edge on black paper, shows the artist’s clear devotion and appreciation for ...On Her Own Terms
[caption id="attachment_4303" align="alignnone" width="200"] Hiding No. 12, mezzotint on paper, 5” x 4”.[/caption] CLARA LIEU EXPLORES HER HEART OF DARKNESS Images of people in states of extreme suffering evoke a range of responses: sadness, anxiety, fear, empathy and, sometimes, instinctive recoil. When approaching the grimacing faces and contorted fullfigure female portraits by Clara Lieu that will be on view concurrently at Simmons College and Framingham State University, it can be upsetting and even frightening to engage with these images. Yet, ...Cover Story: Two Painters
[caption id="attachment_4306" align="alignnone" width="200"] Marc Kehoe, Visita Italia!, 2014,oil on canvas, 22” x 28”.[/caption] KEHOE AND GOSCH ARE BREAKING BAD The so-called “bad painting” movement, as championed and celebrated by alternative art publications such as Hi-Fructose and Juxtapoz, certainly has less adherents in the often aesthetically conservative galleries of southeastern New England, especially outside of hotspots such as Providence, Pawtucket and New Bedford. However, in the small, pastoral border town of Tiverton, Rhode Island, the Van Vessem Gallery is exhibiting ...To Borrow, Cut, Copy, and Steal
[caption id="attachment_4308" align="alignnone" width="200"] 28 Columns, 2014, painted polycomposite columns.[/caption] AARON T STEPHAN LAUGHS WITH US Aaron T Stephan’s work critiques the exclusivity of the art world with a dose of satire and a splash of eccentricity. A bit like a court jester, Stephan gets us to laugh about the art world while simultaneously acknowledging and appreciating its majesty. He invites viewers to be a part of the experience, encouraging them to find the humor in art institutions that, by ...Unnaturally Beautiful
[caption id="attachment_4310" align="alignnone" width="200"] Still Life with Shells #1, 2014, ballpoint pen on paper, 29.5” x 40.5”.[/caption] JOO LEE KANG QUESTIONS NATURE Initially one is struck by the detailed, precisioned control Joo Lee Kang exercises over her medium — a Bic ballpoint pen. Her renderings draw you in for a closer look as you marvel at the shading, the anatomical precision of the insects, animals and plant life she has executed with such depth of detail. But what stops you ...Manna
[caption id="attachment_4313" align="alignnone" width="200"] Albrecht Dürer, The Flight into Egypt (one of 19 cuts from the series The Life of the Virgin), 1511, woodcut (Photo courtesy of Steve Briggs).[/caption] TUFT'S FEAST FOR THE SOUL Culled from Tufts University’s permanent art collection, “Manna” is a commanding, panoramic and wonderful art-feast curated by its director of galleries and collections, Amy Ingrid Schlegel. From over 2,000 noteworthy original artworks, Schlegel selected 46 pieces that delineate an astoundingly vast range of significant art, dating ...Boston Printmakers and Claudia Flynn
[caption id="attachment_4317" align="alignnone" width="200"] Karen Kunc, Tar and Sugar, 2009, woodcut.[/caption] PALATE TO PLATE: PRINTS AND RECIPES FROM MEMBERS OF THE BOSTON PRINTMAKERS Two unrelated exhibitions, one a large collection of works on paper by various artists, the other an intimate group of mixed-media sculptures and paintings by one author, appear to be at variance with each other, but they share a significant conceptual subject: time. In mood, one exhibition is intoxicating, the other sober. “Palate to Plate” shows us ...Coyote Connections
[caption id="attachment_4319" align="alignnone" width="200"] Donna Asmussen, Ever Watchful.[/caption] HONORING ONE OF MAINE'S NATIVE SONS Geri Vistein and Anne Zill have co-curated “Coyote Connections,” a group show featuring over 30 artists from Maine. Through paintings, sculptures, prints, drawings, photographs and sculptures, the subject of the coyote is invoked and presented in an exciting visual array, from the realistic to the spiritual, the figurative to the imaginative, the reverent to the evocative, the coyote and its relationship to the landscape and the ...Medley
[caption id="attachment_4321" align="alignnone" width="200"] M.J. Blanchette, Scale, oil on board.[/caption] DERRYFIELD GOES FOR THE GOLD “MEDLEY,” a group exhibition at the Lyceum Gallery at Derryfield School in Manchester, N.H., brings together four talented artists from four decades of Derryfield graduates. To celebrate the school’s 50th anniversary, Derryfield art teacher Andy Moerlein (artscope magazine, September/October 2011) has developed a series of exhibitions featuring alumni artists that will extend through the entire academic year. To enter the gallery, a visitor first rings ...The Centennial Exhibition
[caption id="attachment_4324" align="alignnone" width="200"] Anita I. Johnson, Reflection, oil, 32” x 34”.[/caption] THE GUILD OF BOSTON ARTISTS' LEGACY CONTINUES When you visit the Guild of Boston Artists, celebrating 100 years at its Newbury Street location this November, you’re quickly reminded of how much the “Boston School” style — and the teachings of its founders — has defined what it means to be a New Englander. These are paintings and sculpture that perfectly portray our maritime heritage; visually preach the value ...Suffer a Sea-Change
[caption id="attachment_4328" align="alignnone" width="200"] Sea Life 7, 2014, oil, 8” x 8”.[/caption] CATHY WYSOCKI'S OUT-LANDISH CREATURES Having hopped off the Red Line at the JFK/UMass stop, then wending my way along Dorchester Avenue to #950, I morph from commuter to intrepid reporter and explorer/aid worker. It’s a complex transformation but I can handle it. I’m human, I multi-task. We came from the sea and adapted to the land, and now we’re heading pell-mell to outer space — or maybe back ...Art in the Cemetery
[caption id="attachment_4227" align="alignnone" width="200"] Miriam Perkins, Born Again [/caption][caption id="attachment_4229" align="alignnone" width="200"] Dan Rocha, Laurel Arch[/caption] A LOWELL LANDMARK COMES ALIVE Art in the cemetery? “That’s odd.” “Why make art in a cemetery?” “That sounds gloomy.” These are typical responses to the above question but, as it turns out, there is a bit of art history in Lowell Cemetery. Listed on the National Register of Historic Places, it opened in 1841 and was designed as one of the first garden-style ...Mitchell-Giddings, Brattleboro
[caption id="attachment_4243" align="alignnone" width="200"] Mitchell-Giddings Fine Arts Gallery[/caption] SHOWCASING VERMONT'S ART TOWN While singled out by Style Magazine as one of the nation’s top art towns, and Smithsonian Magazine as one of the best small towns to live in for the quality and number of its arts organizations and venues, Brattleboro has never had a gallery like Mitchell-Giddings Fine Arts. That is, a large commercial gallery with plenty of wall and floor space to show the kind of large-scale work ...Walking the Walk
[caption id="attachment_4248" align="alignnone" width="200"] Donna Berger, The Mill Girls[/caption] REVITALIZING PAWTUCKET'S ART SCENE In Pawtucket, “Chalk Wall,” a text-based installation by New Orleans artist Candy Chang, curves around a building’s retaining wall on the city’s Main Street. The sweep of the installation’s blackboard surface begins with the words, “In my lifetime… I want to…” Chalk is available for passersby to complete this sentence. The artist’s concept includes instructions pertaining to presentation and often an understanding as to predetermined duration. On ...Balwin Lee: Black & White
[caption id="attachment_4255" align="alignnone" width="200"] Vicksburg, Mississippi[/caption] PHOTOGRAPHS FROM THE AMERICAN SOUTH For six years in the 1980s, Baldwin Lee, an Asian-American man from New York, accompanied by “an antique-looking wooden camera and tripod,” explored the impoverished areas of the Deep South with the goal of taking portraits of everyday life, following the inspiration of Walker Evans. When he’d arrive in a town, he’d go to the local police station, tell them his intentions, they’d show him a map and “redline” ...Capsule Previews
Al Miner, assistant curator of contemporary art at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, reviewed almost 800 images before selecting the 75 pieces on view in the South Shore Art Center’s “Works on Paper” exhibition. Oviedo, Florida’s Kevin Haran (for “UFO 3,” which Miner wrote shows that “No computer graphics program can replace the strength and elegance of great draftsmanship”); Bedford, New Hampshire’s Patricia Schappler (whose “Mary,” a charming portrait of a young woman, “beautifully and sensitively captures her simultaneous ...