Brian Goslow Welcome to our final issue of 2016, an issue in which we look at a wide array of group exhibitions showcasing New England artists, and once again prepare to celebrate those artists as an official exhibitor at Art Basel Miami Beach, where you will find our issue in the magazine collective booth. At the same time, Artscope’s J. Fatima Martins will be on-hand in a reporting capacity throughout the week, checking in on our Instagram, Facebook and Twitter ...

Printmakers Tackle the Issues Linda Chestney Why is it that certain facets of our life become bigger than life? Why do some issues eat at the core of who and what we are — and cause us to passionately focus on it — to make change? When we grasp the gravity of why “this” (whatever it maybe) is important to us, why do we tenaciously persevere to make a difference? Quite simply — “because it matters.” Those passions, those drives, ...

An Illusionary Soul Comes to Life J. Fatima Martins Plastic is a devilish, enchanting and repulsive substance. It is the source material for much of today’s contemporary art. It’s a dichotomous and polarizing material, conjured up by Belgian-American chemist Leo Henricus Baekeland, the inventor of Bakelite. Synthetic objects are troublesome because they can be extraordinarily beautiful and useful, yet fraught with betrayal because they’ve replaced and displaced beloved warm-blooded materials. Appearing magical and alchemical, appreciated for its versatility, cheap egalitarianism, ...

British Marine Art at Yale Suzanne Volmer The recently refurbished setting of the Yale Center for British Art (YCBA), a building designed by Louis I. Kahn that opened in 1977, elegantly and minimally frames its “Spreading Canvas: Eighteenth-Century British Marine Painting” and “Yinka Shonibare MBE (RA)” exhibitions, on view through early December. The YCBA collection contains many works of art, books and manuscripts from across Great Britain’s rich history, including contemporary works that relate directly to Shonibare’s exhibition in terms ...

DeCordova's NE Biennial Elizabeth Michelman Spacious, spare and well ordered, this year’s deCordova New England Biennial — assembled by Jennifer Gross, chief curator and deputy director of curatorial affairs and Sarah Montross, associate curator — glows with conceptual clarity. The 16 artists hail from across the region and bring together aesthetics as varied as their ages, genders, races and national origins. While painting is the favored medium, the featured disciplines include poetry, dance, public art, sculpture, sound and video installation, ...

Jerzyk and McCabe at Derryfield Greg Morell How is it that the strange, provocative and cryptic images of Manchester, New Hampshire photographer Karen Jerzyk have found themselves on the walls of a posh New England private school? Was it the intercession of a curator, an art director or a faculty administrator who first discovered the photographer? No, it was a student, a high school junior who brought the work of this remarkable image-maker to the attention of the faculty and ...

Coming Together in Tiverton Suzanne Volmer “ab•stracts & art•i•facts,” the current exhibition at Gallery 4 in Tiverton, Rhode Island, blends artworks by eight contemporary artists with ancient and classic artifacts. The gallery occupies the main floor of a yellow clapboard building at the town’s historic main intersection. Tiverton is an off-thebeaten-path kind of place situated between Boston and Newport on the map, and getting there by land involves driving along some idyllic scenic byways. It’s a seaside town that rambles, ...

Communication Through Texile J. Fatima Martins Traditionally, to evoke the gods, the Iban and Dayak women of Malaysia’s Sarawak and Indonesia’s West Kalimantan region wove “power” textiles called “pua kumbu” and “kain kebat.” These women were revered as important “bards” and teachers. To place these cultures into a context, the Iban and Dayak are located on the island we know as Borneo, one of the places known for ancient ritual “headhunting.” The ceremonial cloth depicts mighty spirit guides and religious ...

Embracing Imperfection at Fairfield Kristin Nord Jeffrey Horvitz was already known as a major collector of French Old Master paintings and Chinese cinnabar lacquerware when his wife, Carol, came upon a stunning assemblage of contemporary Japanese ceramics in a Manhattan gallery window. She was astounded, and her visceral response set her off on more than a decade of serious collecting, amassing what is now considered to be the most important collection of its kind in the United States. Working closely ...

Seeking Fertile Solitude at Mills Elizabeth Michelman “Fertile Solitude,” an exhibition of installation and video art, photography, painting and sculpture at the Mills Gallery, is hidden in a warren of makeshift rooms and corners behind latticework and green hedge panels. Guest curator Elizabeth Devlin’s layout seeks to apply to artists a theory by psychoanalyst Adam Phillips about developing young adults: unconsciously they need solitude — in the potential presence of another — in which to “endanger” their bodies and “experiment ...

The Renaissance, 19th Century and Robert Frank Eric J. Taubert The recently renovated Bowdoin College Museum of Art in Brunswick, Maine — which is open to the public at no charge — has scheduled a diverse array of exhibitions through the winter (and beyond) that can be perused together during a single visit. “When people look at my pictures I want them to feel the way they do when they want to read the line of a poem twice.” — ...

Poster Art at Thorne-Sagendorph Marguerite Serkin At a time when political animosity and cultural mistrust are being tolerated and even encouraged by the ignorant and powerful, artistic cooperation and mutual respect hold an ever-more important role in our global social fabric. “The Seattle-Havana-Tehran Poster Show,” currently on exhibit at the Thorne-Sagendorph Art Gallery in Keene, New Hampshire, is exemplary in demonstrating the communality and shared purpose of poster artists from three major international cities: Seattle, Havana and Tehran. In 2007, ...

Ganz and Tibbs Make It Their Own Suzanne Volmer “No Man’s Land” at Chazan Gallery features photographic collage works by Theresa Ganz and Millee Tibbs. Each artist blends contemporary perspectives with conventions of 19th century American landscape photography. It is a period reference that marks a nascent moment when landscape photography went mainstream in America; a time when the use of the medium was male-driven and aligned with westward expansion and ideas about Manifest Destiny. Balking at the sense of ...

Light and Dark at Thompson James Foritano “Charlie Nevad — Light and Dark” is the first exhibition of four on this theme, so fertile and painterly, to occupy the lively walls of the Cambridge School of Weston’s Thompson Gallery. For such a complicated place name, it’s an easy and quick place to find. This Cantabridgian literally scooted down Route 128 South to Exit 27B, then took a quick left onto West Street and, going straight for a bit, was soon ...

Portraits Explore Identity Franklin W. Liu In a duly jubilant celebration of the Tufts University Art Gallery’s reaching its 25th Anniversary of organizing seminal art exhibitions to enrich both students and the community alike, 91 artworks from 49 artists are presented; 20 art patrons generously offered a total of 40 artworks, with the remaining 51 culled directly from Tufts University’s own significant, permanent collection. “Mortal Things — Portraits Look Back and Forth” is a diverse exhibition curated to spark dialogue ...

It's All Natural At Fountain Street Meredith Cutler Not 48 hours after an editorial obituary for the Great Barrier Reef sent viral waves of indignation through social media, I found myself staring into the flat depths of artist Mary Spencer’s imaginary oceans. The news story turned out to be an exaggeration; the Great Barrier Reef is not quite dead — just “almost” dead. But the damage was done. Visions of over a thousand miles of bleached coral left a collective ...

Larger Than Life at Colo Colo Don Wilkinson The South Coast, a vaguely defined geographical area running from the left side of the Cape to the right side of Fall River, has a vibrant arts community. But make no mistake about it — it isn’t Brooklyn or Los Angeles, where a new painter pops up every week, either through arrival from another locale, or birth, or by stroke of luck. The South Coast is tight and familial and small. And ...

Catherine Gibson at Studio M J. Fatima Martins In all her work, Catherine Gibson is profoundly moved and inspired by fluidity. Whether it be the aesthetics of water, buoyant and layered, the translucence of shifting light, or the unseen but felt energy between people, she internalizes and then physically resonates out, capturing in her art life’s vulnerable fluctuations. An intuitive creative, she’s talented and skilled in a variety of mediums — painting, drawing and sculpture. Processing visual material in a ...

Expect the Unexpected Brian Goslow Nick Capasso, director of the Fitchburg Art Museum, has juried dozens of exhibitions, including shows at the Cambridge Art Association, Attleboro Arts Museum, Worcester State University, ArtsWorcester, 119 Gallery (Lowell) and Newton Media Center, as well as New American Paintings magazine. One suspects his willingness to serve in this role for so many different organizations is part of his endless search for the best possible artwork for his museum, as well as to make sure ...

Emberley's Ode to Joy Molly Hamill Ed Emberley is a natural-born storyteller. From the moment I walked into the 300-year-old house that sits along the Ipswich River, where he lives and works with his wife, Barbara, Emberley began weaving narratives of his life into a colorful picture of the journey he’s taken to become one of the nation’s most prolific and respected illustrators of children’s literature of the last 60 years. On November 16, the Worcester Art Museum opens the ...

Inventive and Inspired Taryn Plumb It’s 7 p.m. You’re out for a night on the town. You grow a little wary when you reach your destination — a waterfront warehouse that you enter along with 19 other guests through an old rusted door. Your hosts guide you to an uncomfortably small, harshly-lit room where impersonal Muzak is playing. You make awkward conversation — and wait. Suddenly, your hosts dramatically lift the ceiling and push down one of the walls of ...

Society of Arts + Crafts' New Digs James Foritano Boston’s own Society of Arts + Crafts has moved, with the blessing of the Boston Redevelopment Association (BRA), from its Newbury Street store of 40 years to a new domain down by the Institute of Contemporary Art in Boston’s vigorously, even vertiginously, expanding waterfront. A second floor perch of 9,000 square feet guarantees the Society a presence in a competition for presence as living and office spaces vie for a distinguished ...

You Say You Want a Revolution Nancy Nesvet Art Basel Miami Beach, the United States edition of Art Basel, the world’s biggest art fair, will be held at the Miami Beach Convention Center from December 1 through 4, with invitationonly “First Choice” and “Preview” viewings on November 30. For the second year, Artscope will be returning to Art Basel Miami Beach as an official exhibitor. Join us on our Facebook, Instagram and Twitter pages as Artscope brings Art Basel Miami ...

Brian Goslow It’s a priority for Robert Freeman to introduce himself as an African American artist, one who is best known regionally for his 1981 work, “Black Tie,” now part of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston’s permanent collection and originally part of a series that explored his personal experiences settling into middle-class life after the racial tensions that enveloped the United States in the 1960s and ‘70s. Three and a half decades later, he’s revisiting themes of race and ...