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
Literature
Transformed Volumes at the Hera Gallery
By Newlin Tillotson Wakefield, RI - In “Transformed Volumes” at the Hera Gallery, the work of an artist is juxtaposed with the work of an author. Curated by Paul Forte, the exhibit includes six artists from around the country who work with books as a medium. Forte himself specializes in artist bookworks, and several of his pieces are on display, including “Map of Chaos,” a collage of a shredded atlas on canvas and “John Brown’s Body,” a book on a white pedestal that was unearthed after being buried in the ground for almost a year. Both pieces include details that add context to the work. “Map of Chaos” has jagged red, blue and green lines mixed throughout. Gallery director Dora Szekely said it reminds her of a T.V. gone static. Similarly, “John Brown’s Body” is weathered and worn from the elements; new roots are growing through the cover of the book. “Forte found it … [Read more...] about Transformed Volumes at the Hera Gallery