One of only a handful of women painters in Louis K. Meisel’s stable of top Photorealists in the early 1970s,Fran Bull, by the mid-‘80s, had quit the movement, moved to Vermont and turned toward a more nourishing figural and gestural abstraction. In the years since, she has created a distinctive and profound body of work. Bull’s paintings, etchings and relief sculpture have been prominently exhibited in Barcelona, Milan and the Venice Biennale. Now, rather than waiting for the retrospective that is her due, she’s charged ahead with a book that pits her poetry against her two-dimensional work of the past three decades. Voice is at the heart of both Bull’s poetry and her visual form — not surprising for a classically trained singer. Her semi-abstract imagery takes on the female body as a site of reverie, sensations, dreams, relationship and sound. Her fluid marks reveal rudimentary … [Read more...] about RICH IN MEANING AND MESSAGE: BULL’S BOOK OF PAINTING AND POETRY A GROUP EFFORT
book
STAYING CONTEMPORARY: ARTIST PROGRAM MAINTAINS THE GARDNER’S HERITAGE
With a gala air, the Gardner Museum prepares its sparkling Renzo Piano wing for “In the Company of Artists: 25 Years of Artists-in- Residence.” Laura Owens’s giant gold-and-magenta banner winks with a smiley face on the museum’s façade: “ShowTime.” In the Hostetter Gallery, photographers complete their shots of newly installed works by the seven returning resident artists. Lee Mingwei, creator of the museum’s Living Room, hovers near its door in a floor-length robe of charcoal silk, protecting the artists being interviewed within. In the distance, Lee’s “Sonic Blossom” singers are practicing Schubert’s Lieder with which to surprise gallery guests. In the garden, the mobile artist Charmaine Wheatley chats with a guard while sketching his portrait. Pieranna Cavalchini, the Gardner’s curator of contemporary art and director of the residency program, glides along the stairways and … [Read more...] about STAYING CONTEMPORARY: ARTIST PROGRAM MAINTAINS THE GARDNER’S HERITAGE