Making Artwork More Accessible at Smith
by John Paul Stapleton
Northampton, Mass. – From the new Whitney Museum of American Art building in New York City to our semi-local Peabody Essex Museum expansion project, renovations seemed to be the hot decision for 2015. The Smith College Museum of Art joined this league with their four-year renovation project that was of officially completed this past fall.
Margi Caplan, the museum’s membership and marketing director, showed me around the museum to point out what has changed in their two-phase project. In addition to updated lighting and the removal of the main exhibition gallery’s staircase, the whole observer experience has changed.
“We thought about museum methodology and pedagogy,” Caplan said. “The museum’s collection works well, but wasn’t up to date. As a teaching museum, what we wanted to do was make the work accessible.”
Caplan described the method as “chronothematic.” Each oor is organized into time periods, but then works are grouped thematically to give the visiter background and provoke critical thinking.
For example, upon walking into the gallery on the top oor, the words “Traditions and Transformations” are the initial guide. This is the museum’s collection of art made after 1800 from Africa, America and Europe. Beyond comparing recent and familiar styles, this gallery explores the words “tradition” and “transformation” themselves.
One of their new mobile display cabinets showcases wartime prints by Percy John Delf-Smith. This traditional idea of depicting battles gets a macabre spin that effectively communicates the apocalyptic sentiments held during World War I. In terms of transformation, a Seurat study from “A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte” shows how his original depiction of the woman with the monkey in the forefront developed into the full piece.
Downstairs, you’ll nd the pre-1800 art gallery with work from America, Europe and the ancient world. Religious iconography from all periods is in conversation here with a “Sacred and Secular” theme. An addition from the renovation that I greatly appreciated here was the “Encounters: Art in Conversation” space at the far end of the oor. The top oor offers this as well, but a Greco-Roman mosaic oor segment titled “Personi cation of the River Pyramos” dominates this space. Although it weighs tons, it has been hoisted up above eye level to catch all the light from the windows around it.
The first floor holds the main exhibition gallery. This is the least permanent space, and during my visit it was showing “Woman’s Work: Feminist Art from the Collection.” Second- wave feminist art seems to be abundant, as shown by the cohesive exhibit curated without loans. Themes such as “The Body” and “Gender and Performativity” are exempli ed by a dynamic array of work.
“Red Flag” by Judy Chicago is a great surprise for viewers who are drawn in by the beautiful composition of the image,
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Put Me In, Coach
HIGH-FLYING MURALS AT NEW ART CENTER
by James Foritano
Newton, Mass. – January and February are ordinarily months of cabin fever, when walls close in — unless, of course, you’re the kind of athlete who sees sport in snow and ice. For enthusiasts of the “great indoors,” as more and more I count myself, there are always walls begging to be inscribed, emblazoned with intuitions of the heart and soul.
Skeptical? Suffering under the illusion that art is for artists and walls are no place to be leaving the untutored effusions of an amateur?
Relax. You have The New Art Center in Newton’s Holzwasser Gallery — a modest space of about 300 square feet with walls that soar to an 18-foot- high ceiling — and the sanction of a young program that encourages anyone and everyone with a yen to team up with like-minded participants and, under expert but gentle coaching, make your mark in a unique series of interactive mural projects.
A word about the coaches: their experience and styles should bolster your con dence enough so that you, too, could cover a wall with a mural that, though maybe not on a par with Leonardo da Vinci’s “The Last Supper,” will nevertheless be something to chew on for both actors and audience.
Marlon Forrester, January’s mural coach, has been a team player since he rst received a hand-off that allowed him to take ight and tip a spinning basketball into a hoop at a young age. The lessons of competition — winning, losing, giving and asking for help — led Forrester off the court and away from the rituals of basketball and onto the equally tortuous courts of academia.
Given the volatility of our contem- porary art world, Forrester needed every bit of his athletic ability and team smarts to stay on his path to discern the “real hoop” from a questionable one, and to judge in a split second which player’s fidelity had suddenly switched from friend to foe, from teammate to prankster.
Forrester still says “Yes!” to the rituals and rounds of basketball, but now, as both player and coach, it’s “Yes, and …” You’ll walk onto the “court” of The New Art Center’s Holzwasser Gallery, choose your materials — in this case different widths and hues of self-sticking, non-runny black tape — then, in loose- fitting athletic garb, proceed to your station and do the warm-up exercises fit for your position.
Finally, observing carefully the various boundary lines of an artfully drawn down-sized basketball court, you’ll begin to make your mark in close proximity to, but never rudely crossing over, the paths that other players choose. Liberty and constraint, freedom and discipline will guide your movements in this most private, most public dance of self with others.
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Tea For Two
LAU AND LEDBETTER AT KNIZNICK
by James Foritano
Waltham, Mass. – As a critic, I have no trouble recom- mending the exhibit currently at the Kniznick Gallery in Brandeis University’s Women’s Studies Research Center. The art, craft and vision, as well as the curatorial presentation, are all top-notch.
It’s only on the personal level, which is a big “only,” that I can’t guarantee the integrity of either the pitch, the come-on or the content which, though all perfectly innocent-looking, are only partially so — on purpose, I suspect.
Take Heidi Lau’s ceramic sculptures. They pitch themselves as objects we can walk around, take in and, most impor- tantly, assign a place vis-à-vis ourselves – as in “here” and “there.” But try as I might, I could never resist the feeling that I’d missed something a closer look would have revealed — and by leaning in, I’d lose my objectivity.
Blame this seductive push/pull on Lau’s feeling for organic construction. As in those creatures that grow along the tide-lines of our continent and haven’t yet decided to be sh or fowl, so do her columnar gures — both fragile and strong, fuzzy and slick, open and closed — seem not indecisive but still breeding momentous questions.
Our questions seem importunate, even premature in the face of such bubbling, buzzing founts of potentiality. And it wasn’t easy for me to say that, even to myself, because I’m used to asking questions and getting answers.
I lost my composure just as I passed a particularly portentous column about the breadth of a giant’s thigh and, noticing that it was hollow, leaned in and whispered “Umbrella stand?” as though I were just thinking aloud.
Of course I didn’t get any satisfaction from a composure eons older than mine but, for my trouble, I did get sassed by an eyeball, opening amid a brew of organic shapes and staring right at me. It was elegant, witty, endlessly allusive, and maybe just sour grapes from a guy who got no unambiguous answers, even though answers seemed as close as touch, deeply duplicitous.
Just to get away, I wandered over to the one piece of text in the exhibition and, sure enough, I had the conspiracy theory to
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IN CELEBRATION OF THE PENCIL
Leaving a Mark at D’Amour
by Marguerite Serkin
Springfield, Mass. – Graphite occurs naturally in many forms, and its appli- cation for modern inscription has a history dating back to sheep marking in 16th-century England. Formerly referred to as “Plumbago,” graphite was used as a paint base in Neolithic times by the Marita culture of the Danube to decorate ceramic pottery. Versatile, easily manipulated, and widely found in nature, graphite serves as an accessible and functionally effective tool in both art and science. It is used in nuclear technology, batteries and brake linings. And, of course, in pencils.
“Leaving Our Mark: In Celebration of the Pencil,” on view through March 27 at the D’Amour Museum of Fine Arts in Spring eld, offers a unique perspective on “pencil art.” Organized by New England artist Steve Wilda and curated by Spring eld Museums curator Julia Courtney, the exhibit illus- trates a wide range of stylistic approaches to pencil drawing, charcoal and silverpoint, and features compelling works constructed from pencils themselves by Dalton Ghetti and Jennifer Maestre.
Originally inspired by sea urchins, Maestre’s pencil sculptures are created using one-inch pencils drilled into beads, which are sharpened and stitched together to form undulating, spiny pieces of unexpected variety. There is a continuity offset by whimsy in Maestre’s pieces, which are intelligently scattered throughout the exhibition.
Ghetti’s tiny pencil sculptures defy common artistic approach in their fastidious and excruciatingly detailed construction. Ghetti, whose mother was a seamstress, spends months to years using a sewing needle to shave down a single pencil into a form so minute and refined it captures the discreet nature of all things small.
The drawings in “Leaving Our Mark” clearly illustrate the versatility of graphite in creating a full range of textures: from blurred and smoky to highly de ned and precise. In the rst gallery, Terry Miller’s “In The Midday Heat” conveys an ethereal context beyond the con nes of its architectural detail. Lisa Henry’s “Ablution” expresses the literal simplicity of the artist’s memory of her grand- father washing his aging hands in an emblematic image at once poignant and familiar. Both pieces combine precision in stroke and content with the fluid movement of light, implying a presence that is greater than the subjects themselves. “My goal when installing the show,” said curator Julia Courtney, “was to allow the works to speak to each other as if the artists were in the room discussing their styles, similarities and differences. Although disparate, each work reveals common threads whether in the quality of line, subject, form or composition.”
Elizabeth Kostojohn has drawn upon life experience to inform the compel- ling series “Hurt & Damage.” The series portrays fragile pieces of fruit that have been ruptured by pointed and blunt objects. In one, an upright pear is pierced by a black-handled screwdriver; in another, a partially deconstructed pear is held in a vice grip. The unusual applica- tion of graphite on Mylar in these works creates a tension between object and background, in keeping with their implied social commentary.
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Bruce Rosenbaum – The Expansion of Steampunk
By Shem Tane
Sharon, Mass. – I recently traveled to Sharon, Mass. to visit Steampunk House, the home of ModVic, a Steampunk art and design company owned by Bruce and Melanie Rosenbaum.
At first I thought I had the wrong house and had stumbled onto a historic landmark. I was welcomed in and felt like I had traveled not only back in time but also to a different dimension. Bruce gave me the grand tour and I was fascinated by the re-purposed furniture that took on new life in the house — each room had a story attached with it and each piece of antique furniture had a role to play — before we sat down to discuss Steampunk and its role in today’s art world.
Bruce Rosenbaum explained how he came across Steampunk and the effect it had on his life: “It began with the kitchen when the stove had to be replaced. I found an old 1890s wood fire cooking stove and converted it into a modern stove and it wasn’t till later, when people were looking at the house around 2009 and said that I was Steampunking.”
He described his discovery of the term Steampunk as a weird and wonderful experience.
The idea of Steampunk is the combination of old and new technology — specifically steam powered devices. Rosenbaum sees the term in a wider range with the creation of kinetic installations, but added that Steampunk can be its own art style and inspire future artist to blend old with new influences.
Rosenbaum then went into detail about the mental approach that comes with Steampunk: “The main thought process would be Janusian thinking, the idea of opposite thinking or divergent thinking. Steampunk falls right into this process with form and function, art and science and even human and machine.”
At its core, Steampunk offers an array of ideas and how it works in different ways in life. Rosenbaum takes it as more of a philosophy than just an art style.
For more information on Bruce Rosenbaum’s work and upcoming projects, visit http://modvic.com/.