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Artscope Magazine | January/February 2021

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visual art

WELL WORTH REVISITING: FAMILIAR LANDMARKS AND STYLES AT WHISTLER HOUSE

// Current Issue, Issue Articles, January/February 2020

by Flavia Cigliano

Juried exhibitions are a mainstay for art associations, galleries and museums, and with good reason. Everyone seems to benefit from them. Artists enter for the recognition, validation and exposure to possible buyers and to the critical eye of their fellow artists. Gallery owners are able to seek out emerging talent as well as established artists for possible representation. Art aficionados and casual visitors alike can follow and compare artists’ work. Often times, little noted at these shows is the extraordinary effort of the jurors in selecting works for the exhibitions. Not only are they required to winnow down the entries to a fraction of those submitted, but they are regularly required to evaluate works in every possible medium. It’s a highly subjective process. Jurors are experts in their own fields with varying experiences, predilections and prejudices. Often, they are most … [Read more...] about WELL WORTH REVISITING: FAMILIAR LANDMARKS AND STYLES AT WHISTLER HOUSE

ENVIRONMENTALLY SOUND: BLAKEMAN MESMERIZED BY WIDE OPEN SPACES

// Current Issue, Issue Articles, January/February 2020

by Linda Chestney

“We shall not cease from exploration, and the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time.” — T.S. Eliot. What is it about human behavior that compels us so very often to return to our roots? Maybe not geographically back to our beginnings, but in some representative aspect of our beginnings, we return. That is the case for artist Marcia Blakeman of Bedford, New Hampshire. Blakeman grew up in Wyoming and summered in Colorado, eventually settling with her family in New Hampshire. Earning her degree in advertising design from Metropolitan State College in Denver, she worked in that arena for some time. Later, upon having children, she picked up the paint brush and took her creative endeavors in a different direction. Greatly influenced by her environment as a youth, she’s mesmerized by wide open spaces, the mountains, and most … [Read more...] about ENVIRONMENTALLY SOUND: BLAKEMAN MESMERIZED BY WIDE OPEN SPACES

Jeannie Motherwell: Pour. Push. Layer. at Rafius Fane Gallery

// Exhibits, Featured, Visual Arts

By James Foritano https://youtu.be/KJAkFb9NwNM Boston, MASS. -- Jeannie Motherwell’s, fluid, shape-shifting exhibition, “Pour. Push. Layer.” at the Rafius Fane Gallery through October 22, stands in piquant juxtaposition to its, solid, four-square surroundings at 460 Harrison Ave. The gallery is located in the eastern end of a long, grey, brawny stone building in the very heart of Boston’s SoWa district. Like its mate, 450 Harrison Ave., which sits just across a wide pedestrian alley filled with art watchers and people watchers, it is, block by block, dedicated to a Victorian love of heavy lifting and solid foundations. One can almost hear the grunts of the workmen as they unload railroad cars bearing laboriously quarried granite from near and far when it was first built; you almost sense the satisfaction of architect/engineers dusting off their hands to pronounce: “Well, that’s … [Read more...] about Jeannie Motherwell: Pour. Push. Layer. at Rafius Fane Gallery

Seo Hye Han in Karole Armitage’s Bitches Brew by Liza Voll, courtesy of Boston Ballet; Costume by Peter Speliopoulos.

The Boston Ballet’s Mirrors at the Boston Opera House

// Theatre

By James Foritano Sometimes, it seems to me that classical ballet is bending over backwards, awkwardly, to demonstrate to modern audiences that it can be contemporary and convey a modern, democratic spirit with a blueprint conceived for the royal courts of Europe. In their final production of the season, “Mirrors,” the Boston Ballet has indeed seasoned its repertory with more than a whiff of modernity, a crackle of contemporary challenge and even a soupcon of angst. Four edgy ballets, two of which, “Smoke and Mirrors” and “Bitches Brew,” are specially commissioned world premiers, close out this season along with a concurrently running production of the traditionally classical “Swan Lake.” I was entertained by the elegance and spirit of three of the four ballets comprising “Mirrors,” but I was especially enthralled and intrigued by the fourth and final piece of this four-course … [Read more...] about The Boston Ballet’s Mirrors at the Boston Opera House