Article Excerpts
Welcome September/October 2022: From Brian Goslow
Dear Artscope reader, 100 issues. We’ve reached this landmark issue thanks to you, our longtime loyal readers, many that still like to hold a physical copy of a magazine in their hands and who have subscribed to get their copies delivered by mail or electronically delivered onto their iPads or reading tablets. We can’t thank the artists we’ve covered through our 16 and a half years enough — who’ve been our biggest supporters, telling their fellow artists and friends about ...GREETINGS FROM QUINCY!: THE ARTS HELP BRING RESIDENTS BACK DOWNTOWN
Since its inception in March 2006, Artscope Magazine has been based on Hancock Street in Quincy, Massachusetts, AKA, “The City of Presidents.” Earlier this year, we relocated to the fourth floor of South Shore Health Building alongside QUBIC Labs at 1495 Hancock, after the closing of Solomon’s Collection & Fine Rugs, our longtime home base, a half-mile away. When I last visited the area, pre-COVID, much of the area in front of Quincy City Hall was boarded off for redevelopment ...SOWA DISTRICT REBOUNDS: OPEN STUDIOS SHOWCASE 450 HARRISON ARTISTS
Artists’ studios evolved and changed over time but have always maintained a magnetism that sparks visitors’ curiosity. How is SoWA, Boston’s busiest Art + Design District, and how are artists dealing with the post-pandemic season? Can SoWA ́s Artists Open Studios serve as a continuing model for community revitalization through the arts? The art of revitalizing or the art revitalizing? On my recent visit to Ireland, I was eager to see Francis Bacon’s preserved studio, which has been at Dublin’s ...50 YEARS OF CREATIVE FREEDOM: TRURO CENTER FOR THE ARTS LOOKS TO THE FUTURE
Nature and history are frames for a feast of creativity, as Truro Center for the Arts at Castle Hill celebrates its 50th anniversary, and heads into the next 50 years. There are two sites for the center. The original on Meetinghouse Road hosts the art gallery, art studios and a three-story office in a former windmill tower which looked to the center’s founder, Joyce Johnson, like a castle. Johnson, a Cape icon, an evocative woodblock printer and sculptor in many ...THE HUSH OF HELD BREATH: JOHNSON’S QUIET PAINTINGS RETURN TO CASTLE HILL
“In his mysterious paintings,” writes Leonard Michaels about Edward Hopper, “he makes felt what isn’t there, the nothing, the nothing that isn’t there.” The same ought to be said about Mitchell Johnson’s oeuvre. Not only because Johnson is an artistic descendant of Hopper, both brilliant colorists, and not only because both have made the landscape around Truro come alive in oil, but also because in some ways the statement is even truer in Johnson’s work, especially lately. True partly in the sense of ...A SHARED SPOTLIGHT IN NEWPORT: O’KEEFFE’S THE STAR, BUT DONNAMARIA BRUTON SHINES
Creating art is a puzzle. Interpreting art is also a puzzle — not a crossword type of puzzle, where one and only one word fits the squares across and another word down — art is a puzzle filled with possibilities. Should the huge flower be painted red or orange? And if Georgia O’Keeffe decides “red,” then what color could the background be? Blues and greens? Yes, red flower with blue/green background she decides. Now it is our turn to puzzle ...A RARE OPPORTUNITY: DALÍ’S SURREALISTIC STACKED DECK IN SPRINGFIELD
Games of luck and chance hold their own natural order, outside the rules of measured existence, and into the realm of magical construct. Who better to visually celebrate the random structure of games of chance than Salvador Dalí? During the 1960s, Dalí (Spanish, 1904-1989) worked with the French printing firm Draeger Frères to produce a set of limited-edition playing cards, and created lithographs of the designs shortly after. Eight examples from Dalí’s “Playing Card Suite” are featured in “Card Tricks: Salvador ...GROUNDED IN SPIRITUALITY, ABSTRACTLY: NEW HAMPSHIRE’S EDWARD KINGSBURY III IN BRATTLEBORO
When Edward Kingsbury III was diagnosed with severe Crohn’s Disease in 1997, he had no idea the illness would lead him to creating art that would be shown and appreciated around the world. A college student at the time, he was studying business and engaging in athletics so his limited ability to be active was a shock, and a challenge. Luckily, he was inspired by an artistic friend to consider creating art, especially abstract works. It proved to be a ...“A CRASH COURSE IN POSTWAR L.A. ART”: ON THE EDGE BRINGS QUINN COLLECTION TO ARMENIAN MUSEUM
The rollicking energy of “On The Edge,” an exhibition of mostly Southern California artists of the 1970s through the ‘90s from the Jack and Joan Quinn Family Collection, is only rivaled by the exuberance of its collector, Joan Agajanian Quinn. This vibrant art lover, in partnership with her now-deceased husband, the prominent Los Angeles attorney Jack Quinn, lived and entertained amongst layers and layers of art, art objects and Armenian rugs they amassed over their 56 years of marriage. Architectural ...PUTTING DOWN ROOTS: GROWING NUMBER OF ARTISTS TURNING TO THE BERKSHIRES
There is something, in addition to the mountain air, the beautiful surroundings and the vibrancy of the Berkshires, that attracts artists of all types like moths to a flame. Between the lush and well established areas like Lenox and Williamstown, and the gritty petri-dish of energy like North Adams, the settings for artistic evolution are boundless. Add in the great institutions like The Clark, Mass MoCA and countless others, and the area becomes more and more a destination for artists ...DISTINCTLY UNIQUE LIVES: WALKER & MILLER STILL KICKING THE EDGES AT OGUNQUIT
[caption id="attachment_984074" align="alignnone" width="243"] John Walker (b. 1939), Seal Point Series #V VIII, 2007, oil on bingo card, 7 1/4” x 5 1/2”. © John Walker. Courtesy Alexandre Gallery, New York.[/caption] What does it take to become a celebrated artist? One who kicks the edges, who does it their way. One who accumulates all the credentials and accolades. One who keeps growing, even in their 80s. Well, if that definition fits anyone, it undoubtedly fits the two artists who are ...ART AND MEDICINE: MECLINA & FORD’S HEALING ART AT THE BEACON
Artists are defining new ways to cope and reorganize emotional traumas while strengthening the relationship between health and creative expressions. Can we assume that when it comes to art forms and artists, specific psychological and physical stresses can navigate through artists’ creative process which will work as an antidote for these states and as a gift to viewers? But if artists don’t have to commit to portraying realistic images or responses, can we say that, in this case, the creative ...TERRAIN OF THE MAGICAL: WONDROUS CREATURES BRING MYSTERIES TO OLD FROG POND FARM
When Linda Hoffman moved in 2001 to an old farmhouse on a 25-acre parcel of land in Harvard, Massachusetts, Old Frog Pond Farm was born. While some people’s creative musings never go further than lucid dreams, Hoffman’s vision for her new home was built on a solid philosophical foundation — the interweaving of agriculture, art and community. When people come together for a common purpose, a vibrant community of kindred spirits is often the result. Hoffman, artist, writer and orchardist ...CAN’T LIVE WITHOUT IT: DEFINITION OF GLASS ART STRETCHED IN SANDWICH SHOW
Glass: utilitarian, sensuous and decorative. Glass can be blown, molded, melted, fused, cut, sanded, carved, slumped and polished. We can drink out of it, see through it, wear it — and we couldn’t live modern life without it. Have contemporary glass artists/artisans pushed glass- making technological experimentation so far that their work is no longer “glass art?” This question is raised in the brilliant small exhibit, “Innovations in Glass,” at the Sandwich Glass Museum. Wayne Strattman’s construction, a glass pillar ...BETWEEN THE SPEAKERS: CETILIA BRINGING SOUND AND VISION TO CHAZAN GALLERY
“Pretty Meaningless Things,” a solo exhibition by Providence- based multimedia artist Mark Cetilia, will be presented from September 15 through October 15 at Chazan Gallery at Wheeler. Recently, I had a series of conversations with the artist about artwork for the show and his career. He had finished the 3D graphic modeling for visuals to be included in the exhibition and was in the midst of completing the analog/digital sound compositions he planned to incorporate into the show. Cetilia said ...TEXT MESSAGES AT CCP: A CONVERSATION ON PRINTMAKING WITH KIMBERLY HENRIKSON
Kimberly Henrikson, the executive director of The Center for Contemporary Printmaking (CCP), curated its autumn exhibition “Text Messages,” that opens on September 11 and runs through October 30. I recently spoke with Henrikson about her curatorial choices for this show and the blue chip and emerging artists that reflect today’s text-based trends including Ben Beres, April Bey, Mel Bochner, Robert Cottingham, Lesley Dill, Shepard Fairey, Glenn Ligon, Edie Overturf and Lucas Samaras. Two of the names are of past CCP ...A WELCOMED RETURN: DIVERSE DANFORTH ANNUAL CONTINUES TO BREAK GROUND
An annual tradition upended by a move to a new home on the Framingham Center Common, an April 2018 merger with Framingham State University and a worldwide pandemic, the 2022 return of the Danforth Annual Juried Exhibition is much needed both as a place where artists can show their work and as a place for both artists and art lovers to get out and see each other again. Featuring 72 works by 72 artists, the show was juried by Jessica ...DISPATCH FROM ALASKA: ANCHORAGE MUSEUM GETS INDIGENOUS MESSAGES HEARD
I stand on the traditional homeland of the Eklutna Dena’ina, now known as Anchorage, on a temperate day in mid-June, about to enter the largest museum in the largest state in the United States. The Anchorage Museum is huge. As a point of comparison, at 247,000 square feet, it is almost 30,000 square feet larger than the Whitney Museum of American Art. This museum of art, history, ethnography, ecology and science is in this city of 5,000 only a few generations ago and now nearly 300,000 — 40% of ...