“We’ll see.” That’s how several of the artists featured in this issue of Artscope Magazine responded to the question of what’s next in their careers and work projects. It’s a reflection of how life has been, not only around the arts community, but our country and world, a time of uncertainty, aware of the challenges that lay ahead. In putting together this issue, I looked for exhibitions in which artists put their feelings into their work, not only how this ...

Sometimes we love what artists create because of its aesthetic beauty, sometimes its abstractions intrigue us with their ambiguity or sometimes its concepts message us, sometimes it catches hold of atime, place or memory. Other art, like Frances Bacon’s paintings, or the works of Egon Schiele or social realists like Bernece Berkman examine the human condition. Though she categorizes herself as a figurative expressionist, Laura Shabott’s work blends a bit of all these templates. Shabott herself is a life force and that ...

“Into the Abstract,” now on view at the Southern Vermont Arts Center, is aptly named because it offers an entrée into minimalist-inspired abstraction. Visitors are invited to explore the parallels and contrasts between the works of Neha Vedpathak — an artist in her 40s, and Paul Gruhler, an artist in his 80s. Their art is installed separately in two galleries of the Center’s Elizabeth de C. Wilson Museum, as if the two galleries are in conversation with each other. Gruhler’s ...

The Yale Center for British Art in New Haven, Connecticut is currently presenting “Hew Locke: Passages,” a comprehensive survey of the British Guyanese artist's career spanning over 30 years. Located on the museum's second floor, the exhibition includes nearly 50 works showcasing Locke’s evolving visual language across media. From his earliest charcoal sketches to recent immersive pieces made from found and repurposed materials, “Passages” explores themes of storytelling, symbolism and history. The artist’s presence during the press review added valuable ...

DaNice D. Marshall never intended to become a painter. For most of her life, she was a writer, a woman who lived within language, shaping stories with rhythm, cadence and the intimacy of thought. Writing had always been her home, her compass, her way of mapping both the inner and outer worlds. Then silence arrived. A severe vascular disease altered the course of her life completely, gradually eroding her hearing and, with it, her ability to concentrate long enough to ...

There is kinetic energy that arises when two artists join in a many-faceted relationship. In the case of William Hays and Nina Rossi of Turners Falls, Massachusetts, it is both cosmic and pedestrian. The artists have been married for five years, and the interchange and self-knowledge attained through a wholistic partnership is almost indulgent; it is a precious balance of domestic collaboration and individual art practice that forges the day forward, rising tides of inspiration from the other and respect ...

Unless doctored, a photograph records without bias. Unlike a painting or a novel, the unfavorable cannot be hidden away: what is captured is evident. Whole systems of operation can be gleaned, if one is willing to look honestly. Through January 8, at Brandeis University’s Kniznick Gallery in the Women’s Studies Research Center, a showing of photographs by C. Rose Smith weaves a story of what cannot be hidden. “A Silent Rage” is comprised of 12 photographs, in which Smith — ...

“If there is no struggle, there is no progress,” said Frederick Douglass, a former slave turned prominent American abolitionist from the mid-1800s. What is life without struggle? No one escapes it. We just experience it differently and in varying degrees. Success? Failure? Try again? Hopefully resilience eventually pays off, and we learn the lesson that transformation is born in struggle. The struggle builds character, which helps us to grow and change, and become better people. My pastor was 22 when ...

Installation day for “REMIX” was like a family reunion for the artists of Fountain Street Gallery. “When we dropped off the work for the show, a couple of the artists [brought] a picnic lunch and [ate] outside to see each other for the first time in a long time,” said Fountain Street Gallery owner and director Rebecca Skinner. “REMIX” marks the return of Fountain Street Gallery to a physical space 17 months after the April 2024 closure of its Thayer ...

After his parents gave him a single-lens reflex camera as a college graduation present, Gary Duehr “dove” into taking pictures in Central Illinois, inspired by photographers like Harry Callahan, to the extent that after a year of teaching high school English, he enrolled in a Bachelor of Arts Photography program in Southern Illinois, where he studied with second generation Bauhaus artists. He came to Boston in 1984 after earning an MFA in poetry from the Iowa Writers Workshop. This November, ...

Art abounds in Concord this fall — there’s much to see and experience in the town’s galleries, art centers and historic monuments, all within a pleasant walk of each other. On Main Street, Three Stones Gallery presents Elisa Adams’s mixed media, Tarot-inspired work. The series of sculptures, titled “Formed by the Fates: A Journey through the Major Arcana,” interprets the mystical symbolism of the deck’s 22 main cards, inviting viewers to embark on a meditative and introspective experience of a ...

The two different natures of contemporary American crafts are beautifully represented at the Fuller Craft Museum. Crafts fashioned as art-objects are exhibited in the museum members’ Biennial Exhibit. Crafts made as utilitarian-objects are displayed in the Museum’s Gift Shop. The concept of non-utilitarian contemporary craft art is relatively new in the art world and I’m sure someone is working on a PhD thesis on the topic as I write. An example of non-utilitarian craft, Mo Kelman’s “On Thin Ice,” uses ...

“Truth Unveiled: Art as Reality, Illusion, and Insight” is a call-for-entries exhibition under the auspices of Art League Rhode Island (ALRI) that aims to provoke conversation about art as both a vehicle for, and as a challenger of truth. The show features 56 artworks by 47 artists from across the country as well as one accepted artwork from China. It’s being held at the ALRI headquarters in Pawtucket, Rhode Island through December 6. ALRI invited Conor Moynihan, Interim Department Head ...

Curated by Deborah Davidson and Audrey Goldstein, the recently opened “The Long View: Women Artists in the Studio” exhibition at Suffolk University Gallery recognizes the work of several long-standing artists in Boston’s art community. Scheduled to be displayed in three parts over a six-month period, the first collection of works by Ellen Rich, Maggie Stark, Julia Shepley and Deborah Barlow are on display through November 21. The timeline of these artists' works is comparable to international artists who have continued ...

Although artists Lynne Adams and Matthew Simons were neighbors at Easthampton’s Cottage Street Studios in Western Massachusetts, it was adversity and last year’s advocacy campaign to keep studio rents affordable that inevitably brought the two together. “None of us [at Cottage Street] really knew each other well,” Adams explained, “but once we started organizing against incoming extreme rent increases, relationships were built around a common goal. A year after the campaign, a handful of us who stayed at Cottage Street ...

We Will Not Be Silenced Once news hit of last year’s election results, it seemed as though the world went into a state of panic, stress and anger. Since then, theatre venues have changed board members, ICE has been given free reign and censorship has come to huge media networks. But in this uncertain environment, many do not sit still. These are the times when artists express themselves the most. Galatea Fine Art, a co-operative gallery in Boston’s SoWa Arts ...

Looking for a new fall destination? The recently opened Westerly Museum of American Impressionism, 79 Watch Hill Road, Westerly, Rhode Island, features 11 galleries dedicated to American Impressionist art from the 1880s to 1920s. “The collection includes works by celebrated artists such as Childe Hassam, John Singer Sargent, Edmund Tarbell, Jane Peterson and Lilla Cabot Perry, alongside exceptional works by lesser-known artists whose contributions merit greater recognition.” Longtime Westerly residents Dr. Thomas and Cynthia Sculco collected the approximately 150 paintings ...