night of the hunter x disrupt x to be seen x caught in a dream
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#disrupt
When: On view through April 23, 2017.
Where: Friday March 3 from 5 – 8 PM
How: Official Website
What/Why: “Time is our most precious resource. I’m interested in analyzing the tensions between the past and the future and the contradictions they bring. My work examines the tragedy of time’s progression and grapples with questions about the nature of time, how we value it and how we can come to terms with our own futures.
In my #disrupt series, I use images of outdated technology as a visual metaphor for the passage of time.
I like to arrange objects in formal composition, creating heroic portraits of the aristocracy of the past. There aren’y quick snapshots from a cellphone or a Polaroid camera, but instead staged photographs…like old family albums or royal portraits. They are posing for the rightful place in the museum halls of royal posterity, They are both witnesses and agents of change. These paintings strive to do the impossible for their subjects…help them transcend time.
My style reflects time’s eroding nature. It is a visualization of the way realism and form become deconstructed and increasingly abstract thought the passage of time. Time chips away at the present, and what was today becomes just a fuzzy memory. My objects are full of gaps and scuff marks; sometimes they are patched ip with a color that doesn’t match, appearing like a displaced but well-intentioned memory. We live in a cultish age of technology. This is my tribute. –Agnieszka Pilat”
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Found in Collection: Contemporary Photography from the Danforth Art Museum Permanent Collection
When: On view March 9, 2017–March 26, 2017
Opening Reception: Thursday March 9, 6-8 pm
Curator Talk: March 16, 7 pm
Where: Griffin Museum of Photography, 67 Shore Road, Winchester MA 01890
How: Official Website
What/Why: “About the Exhibit: Found In Collection will explore the role of the photograph as recorder of the observed world. Recent photographic acquisitions will be on view in conversation with emblematic works from the Danforth Art permanent collection. Selected works will address established narratives in photographic history and provide context for the collection as a whole.
Looking at contemporary photography through a historic lens, it is clear that the art and science of the medium have always converged. Photography is experimental, thoughtful, conceptual, and depending on narrative and intent, retains an element of verisimilitude. Each photographer’s eye approaches a subject with their own individual narrative—by evoking personal and familial memories, translating nature and mapping the landscape, or discovering the extraordinary in the vernacular. Found in Collection will be presented in two parts, with both paintings and photographs, including work by John Brook, William Clift, Nicholas Dean, Elizabeth Ellenwood, Bill Franson, Jaclyn Kain, Molly Lamb, Sarah Pollman, and Ruth Thorne-Thomsen, among others.”
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Charles Movalli: Cape Ann & Beyond
When: March 4, 2017 — May 21, 2017
Opening Reception: Saturday, March 5 from 3:00 to 5:00 p.m.
How: Official Website
What/Why: “Please join us for the opening reception of Charles Movalli: Cape Ann & Beyond. This exhibition explores the work of Charles Movalli (1945-2016), a pillar of Cape Ann’s year-round art community, a distinguished landscape and marine painter, a prolific writer and advocate for the arts, and a widely respected teacher. The exhibition is drawn from private collections throughout the region.”
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Art After Dark: Beyond Architecture
When: Thursday, March 9, 2017 5 – 9 pm
How: Official Website
What/Why: “The Newport Art Museum’s sparkling monthly late night affair Art After Dark is back next month on Thursday, March 9, from 5 – 9 pm. Each Art After Dark has unique programming for the whole family. This event joins the ranks of the many events and educational programs the Museum currently offers in its galleries at 76 Bellevue Avenue, Newport. And the best news. Admission is free or by donation! So, reacquaint yourself with the Newport Art Museum. Details are available at NewportArtMuseum.org.
From a documentary on the inspired life and work of famed architect Vincent Scully, to exceptional sculptural objects, to imaginative live Toy Theater performances, this Art After Dark will go Beyond Architecture!
Begin the night at 5:30pm with a live Toy Theater performance of Last Snow, Spring Love. Newport artists Rupert Nesbitt and Rebecca Kelly will perform their original toy theater production on the half hour in the Library. Toy theater is a form of miniature theater that was a popular Victorian parlor entertainment. Constructed of cardboard with paper sets and actors these small stages were the perfect tiny settings to reenact the most popular theatricals and operas of the period. Newport artists Rupert Nesbitt and Rebecca Kelly hope to inspire interest in this lost form of performance art. The theatrical division of their company, The Junkyard Studios, will perform an original production called Last Snow, Spring Love.
At 6 pm, join us for a gallery talk with exhibiting artist Jay Lacouture in the Wright Gallery. His exhibition Looking Forward, Looking Back showcases two distinct bodies of work: one assembled from pieces made over the course of his career that explore the teapot idiom, and another brings together works from the past several years reflecting the artist’s visits to China.
Film Screening of Vincent Scully: An Art Historian Among Architects
At 6:30 pm, join us for a screening of the Checkerboard Film Foundation’s documentary on Vincent Scully, likely the best-known living art historian in the United States today. Long time professor of the history of art and architecture at his alma mater, Yale University, Scully’s deep engagement with the subject and his passionate presentation style deeply inspired students. Scully’s insights are eye-opening and have championed the work of such modern architects as Frank Lloyd Wright, Louis Kahn, Robert Venturi, and Aldo Rossi. He has focused on topics ranging from the American Shingle Style of the late 19th Century, which he identified and named, to a reassessment of Greek temples and their response to the surrounding landscape. The breadth and depth of his knowledge, which includes a close familiarity with literature as well as with the visual arts, lends a special richness to his historical interpretations.
Join us for a post film discussion led by Ross Cann, Founding Chairman of the Newport Architectural Forum.
ROSS CANN will moderate a post-film conversation on Vincent’s Scully role in bringing Newport Architecture to a broader light, his impact on teaching at Yale University and his larger effect on architectural education nationally. He is a graduate of Yale University, Founding Chairman of the Newport Architectural Forum and founder and Managing Director of A4 Architecture.
Art After Dark is free or admission by donation. Tickets to the film are $10 per person and are available online at newportartmuseum.org or at the door. Seating is limited.”
There is something for everyone at Art After Dark – music filling the galleries, scavenger hunts for the little (and not so little) ones, and Gallery Games to keep you puzzling. Bring your friends, bring a date, grab a drink, and and enjoy a lively night of inspired conversation and artful adventure!
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Active Tranquility
When: On view through March 31, 2017
Opening Reception: Friday March 03, 2017 5-8PM
Where: Chase Young Gallery, 450 Harrison Ave, No. 57, Boston, MA 02118
How: Official Website
What/Why: “a group exhibition featuring: Yo Ahn Han, Nathalie Guarracino, Kathy Moss, Leslie Stoner”
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James Sterling Pitt: Points East
When: On view through March 25, 2017
Where: Steven Zevitas Gallery,450 Harrison Avenue #47 | Boston, MA 02118
How: Official Website
What/Why: “Points East presents twenty-nine new sculptural works that Pitt produced in 2016. The works are drawn from a larger group of sixty-two sculptures that Pitt made for a recent solo exhibition at the College of Marin’s Fine Arts Gallery. As with the Marin exhibition, Point East is organized as a table installation.
Pitt’s sculptures arrive from a rigorous drawing practice in which he distills dozens of potential formal directions. The results of this distillation process are complex sculptures, made of carved wood and acrylic paint, that seem to have arrived by their own internal necessity, yet teasingly point to sources beyond themselves. While Pitt’s previous works poignantly spoke about memory, time and place, his recent works are more direct in their impact and intent.
Pitt received a BFA from the University of New Mexico, Albuquerque in 2000, and an MFA from Mills College in 2003. His work has been the focus of several solo exhibitions in recent years, including shows at: Eli Ridgway, Et al. and Romer Young Gallery, all in San Francisco, and Richard Levy Gallery in Albuquerque, NM. Pitt had a one-man exhibition at the Fine Arts Gallery of the College of Marin in 2016. This is the artist’s second exhibition at Steven Zevitas Gallery.”
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COREY ESCOTO: A Routine Pattern of Troubling Behaviour
When: On view through April 1, 2017
Where: Samson Projects, 450 Harrison Ave, Boston, MA 02118
How: Official Website
What/Why: “I started making resin castings of mushrooms after foraging for them in the forest. During the time that I spent searching for them and admiring their quiet and curious structures, I would find clarity and wonder. Fungi have been found to be a conduit through which a dense forest may exchange resources, and I hoped that the text that I’d draw on the underside of these shelf mushrooms, in the tradition inscribing scenic images on artist conk mushrooms (Ganoderma Applanatum) would initiate some kind of interspecies communication where these messages might resonate through to the branches and leaves. During this time, I found myself routinely walking among fireflies, and overcoming the fear of being alone in the deep rural darkness that makes for such beautiful displays of light — be it firefly or distant star. So these nightlight sculptures, pursue the direct and crude expressiveness of painting, drawing, or journaling, while dialoguing with artists like Turrell or Flavin whose work is centered in light and space, but instead hone in on the internal light of one’s fear, of hope, and of disorientation, a turn toward and re-acquaintance what it means to feel, not so much think. — Corey Escoto (Jan. 2017)”
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Group Exhibition: A Selection of Gallery Artists
When: On view through March 26, 2017
Where: Adelson Gallery, 520 Harrison Ave, Boston, MA 02118
How: Official Website
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Marilu Swett and Susan Lyman
When: On view through April 2, 2017
Opening Reception: Friday March 03, 2017
Where: Boston Sculptors Gallery, 486 Harrison Avenue, Boston, MA 02118
How: Official Website
What/Why: Learn more about the exhibitions here.
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Political Discourse
When: On view February 21, 2017 through April 15, 2017
Where: U Mass Boston, University Hall Gallery, 100 Morrissey Blvd. Boston, MA 02125
How: Official Website
What/Why: “A group exhibition of political art and art made political by its context, with works by: Ryan Arthurs, Elaine Bay, Chitra Ganesh, Mariam Ghani, Raúl Gonzalez III & IV, Jenny Holzer, Steve Locke, Joiri Minaya, Toyin Odutola, Dread Scott, Lorna Simpson, and William Villalongo”
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Carol McMahon: Specimentos
When: On view through March 26, 2017
Opening Reception: Friday March 03, 2017 6-830 pm
Where: Bromfield Gallery, 450 Harrison Ave, Boston, MA, 02118
How: Official Website
What/Why: “I began this new body of work—small paintings on chunks of canvas and paper, acrylic gel pours into plastic containers, and constructions made with wood, found objects and paint—by reexamining some of my old work and looking at things I’ve collected over the years.
I started by cutting out pieces I liked from my larger works and setting aside the rest. On this new foundation of saved pieces, I built layers of things: some buried under paint, some on the surface, some just barely perceived. Besides adding color, I employed surfaces that were matt, shiny, or crusty, as well as irregular edges—playing them all with and against each other.
As I worked, I recognized that the saved pieces are mementos, reminders of the past. And that both the paintings and constructions had become active in a new way, becoming new specimens…specimentos of things known and unknown.”
Also on view..
Barbara Burgess Maier: Time Being
What/Why: “Outer noticings and inner musings occupy my time being. They become the visual manifestation of my response to being a sentient and reflective being.
This exhibition includes mixed media paintings on canvas and drawings and prints on paper… from 8′ x 6′ to 14″ square. Whether responding to the complexities of our natural world, or those inside ourselves and others, all is stored and cultivated in my artist’s heart long enough to emerge as time compressions and pure outpourings of my creative sensibilities.
The essential elements embedded in the process of these visual translations are to remain open, honest, and vulnerable while staying alert and responsive to the evolving formal and emotional aspects of the work. Marks and strokes make their way out and into my work in the most honest creative moment I can make possible while keeping my balance over the edge of knowing and not knowing.
That balancing requires both discipline and risk-taking and is fueled by the energy and excitement of the process itself.”
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Sage Sohier: Witness to Beauty
When: On view through April 01, 2017
Where: Carroll and Sons, Harrison Ave, Boston, MA, 02118
How: Official Website
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Lavaughan Jenkins: Reflections of Power
When: On view through April 02, 2017
Opening Reception: Friday, March 3, 2017, 5:00-7:30 pm
Where: Kingston Gallery, 450 Harrison Ave, No. 43, Boston, MA 02118
How: Official Website
What/Why: “Utilizing a wide range of tools, including brushes, palette knives, and even syringes, Jenkins delves into the materiality of paint in his Reflections of Power series, creating diverse mark-making with pigment and wax. The figures in this series emerge from a surface built up, scraped, and added to, simultaneously concealing and revealing, that which is substantial. With a nod to art historical and literary influences, themes of memory and personal history, solitude and intimacy are intertwined throughout his work, allowing figures and emotions to merge with or rub roughly against the world beyond the paintings. Lavaughan Jenkins is the Kingston Gallery 2016 Emerging Artist.”
Also on view..
Linda Leslie Brown: Wall Holes
What/Why: “These sculptures, created with a wide range of materials including wood, plastic, metal, plaster, glass, concrete, rubber, shell and stone, allude to the human form while presenting themselves as both bold and vulnerable. Wall Holes draws upon the transformative exchanges between nature, objects and viewers’ creative perception. These works are rife with allusions to the body. At the same time they suggest the plastic, provisional, and uncertain world of a new and transgenic nature, where corporeal and mechanical entities recombine. And because they are small (no larger than a human head) they invite viewers to engage in an intimate examination that is both delightful and disturbing. Each sculpture employs a language of breaking and mending that reaches for and then deliberately misses any resolved finish or any fixed form.”
Also also…
Susan Alport: Exactly What I Want
What/Why: “Exactly What I Want is an uncommon exhibition illuminating the process of creating art by displaying work actively in development. Through traditional silver gelatin photographic prints, enlarged images, and contact sheets Alport shows her path as she explores on-site various combinations of image and text. Of her work she says, “I’m presenting these pieces to show how I actually see my own work, as both a continual process and on-going search for that one perfect piece. I’m using this exhibit as a temporary stopping place to find, along with the viewer, points of interconnectedness to move the work forward.” The environment Alport builds in the gallery illustrates her way of seeing, allowing viewers to experience for themselves how one visual artist proceeds.”
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The WOW® World of WearableArt (TM)
When: On view through June 11, 2017
Where: Peabody Essex Museum, 161 Essex Street, Salem, MA
How: Official Website
What/Why: “For the last 25 years, New Zealand has hosted an annual design competition that challenges sculptors, costume designers, textile artists and makers of all stripes to explore the boundary between fashion and art, and to “get art off the walls and onto the body.” The WOW® World of WearableArtTM competition is the country’s largest art event and each year it culminates in a live runway show for winners in front of an audience of 50,000.
WOW® World of WearableArtTM — the exhibition — presents 32 ensembles the competition’s most unique, spectacular and outlandish wearable artworks. Expertly crafted in a range of materials, from wood and aluminum to fiberglass and taxidermy, these creations celebrate lavish creativity and push the limits of wearability. PEM is the exclusive U.S. east coast venue for this interactive and theatrical exhibition.
WOW® World of WearableArtTM is presented in partnership with the New Zealand government. Carolyn and Peter S. Lynch and The Lynch Foundation provided generous support. The East India Marine Associates of the Peabody Essex Museum also provided support.”
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Caleb Cole: To Be Seen
When: On view through April 8, 2017
Opening Reception: Friday March 3rd 5:30-8:00 & Friday April 7th 5:30-8:00
Where: Gallery Kayafas, 450 Harrison Avenue #37 Boston, MA 02118
How: Official Website
What/Why:“Caleb Cole’s To Be Seen, a collection of photographs, collages, small sculptures, installations, and mixed media pieces explores the difference, the sameness, and the overlapping meanings of masculine and feminine. If one is masculine, the implication is that one cannot be vulnerable. Men and women, by adhering to a narrow definition of their masculinity or femininity are limited in emotions and experiences…to say someone plays like a girl is demeaning, implies a less than value. To Be Seen encourages the viewer to embrace a full range of emotions and not shut off to feelings or characteristics because of their labels, but to accept and welcome them as human.
The work in To Be Seen questions men’s and my own relationship with femininity, as well as the ways that beauty is gendered and which bodies have access to it. When femininity’s value is dismissed, characterized as frivolous, artificial, weak, manipulative, and irrational, not only does this serve to disempower women, but everyone suffers. By denying their own feminine inclinations, men lose out on the full range of emotions and experiences available to them, which can result in isolation, shame, and rage. To Be Seen is not only about this loss, but about drawing from the strength of femmes of all genders across history and seeking to retain the joy in queerness, transness, and femininity. Caleb Cole
We must rightly recognize that feminine expression is strong, daring, and brave […] In a world awash in antifeminine sentiment, we understand that embracing and empowering femininity can potentially be one of the most transformative and revolutionary acts imaginable. -Julia Serano, Whipping Girl”
Ria Brodell : Butch Heroes
What/Why: “We are pleased to exhibiting Ria Brodell’s series, Butch Heroes. Brodell, an artist based in Boston, self-described as “culturally Catholic” creates work which addresses issues of gender, sexuality, and religion throughout history and in contemporary culture. An earlier series, Handsome and Holy, were self-portraits and vignettes which explored the “ideal man” representing an unfulfilled and fanciful version of self. The Butch Heroes project, begun in 2010, traces these gender issues in a different era…beginning in the middle ages.
How did queer people live in the past? How did they present themselves? How did they navigate societal norms? We can find the answers to these questions in the 21 exquisitely rendered gouache paintings which document the lives of people “who were assigned female at birth, who had documented relationships with women, and whose gender presentation was more masculine than feminine.” Brodell selected people of diverse backgrounds from various geographical parts of the world and used their narratives to establish their place in the project…all subjects were born before or around the turn of the 20th century.
Brodell did extensive research to insure that every visual detail was historically accurate: architecture, tools, clothing, etc., layering each portrait with the symbolism and history of the period. The proportions of the drawings are the same format of the Catholic Holy Card, “a format that is a perfect (subversive) way to present the lives of people who were long forgotten and abused during their life time, especially because so many of them were accused of ‘mocking God and His order’ or deceiving their fellow Christians.”
Brodell chose “the term Butch because of its dual nature: it has been slung as an insult and used as a congratulatory recognition of strength. It has a history within the LGBTQI community and is familiar to the cisgender, heterosexual community. In addition to the traditional associations of being masculine in appearance or actions, I choose to use Butch Heroes to indicate people who were strong or brave in the way they lived their lives and challenged their societies strict gender roles.” All quotes are those of Ria Brodell”
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Sam Cady: Parts of the Whole
When: On view through March 14, 2017
Where: Miller Yezerski Gallery, 460 Harrison Ave, Boston, MA, 02118
How: Official Website
Also on view..
Karl Baden: Thermographs 1976
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Fuse
When: On view through April 1, 2017
Where: Abigail Ogilvy Gallery, 460 Harrison Ave, C7, Boston, MA 02118
How: Official Website
What/Why: “Abigail Ogilvy Gallery is proud to present Fuse, an exhibition of artists Cassandra C. Jones and Alfred Steiner, curated by artist and professor at Brandeis University, Todd Pavlisko. Fuse is a coalescence of images that intersect politics and pop culture within the lascivious American backdrop. Sociopolitical messages are interwoven in a cleverly composited miscellany, layering the erotic and whimsical, the beautiful and grotesque.
Overlapped, Cassandra C. Jones and Alfred Steiner’s work present an abundance of images that force the viewer to consider every component with focused attention in order to process its content. Each piece unfolds a complex cluster of social messages that infiltrate our cursory habits of perception and comprehension.”
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Jane Paradise, Vanessa Thompson, Francis Domec
When: On view through March 29, 2017
Opening Reception: Friday March 03, 6-8PM
Where: Galatea Fine Art, 460 Harrison Ave, Boston, MA 02118
How: Official Website
What/Why: Learn more about the exhibitions here.
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Daniela Rivera: The Andes Inverted
When: On view March 4, 2017 – September 17, 2017
Where: Museum of Fine Arts, Avenue of the Arts, 465 Huntington Avenue, Boston, Massachusetts 02115
How: Official Website
What/Why: “Daniela Rivera’s museum installations often focus on uncanny spatial and material dislocations. Breaking from the traditional mold of painting, she creates immersive experiences that draw from her personal history. Her 2015 Traveling Fellowship from the School of the Museum of Fine Arts at Tufts University inspired this ambitious transformation of Gallery 268 with materials, images, and sounds gathered from a landmark in her home country: Chile’s Chuquicamata copper mine.
Like an inversion of the naturally soaring Andes, Chile’s massive copper mines are machine-shaped canyons, a symbol of national pride and a driver of the Chilean economy, yet at a cost. Inhabited for generations, an employee town at Chuquicamata’s edge provided a world-class hospital, schools, theaters, sports fields, and homes for over 30,000 people. By 2008, new mining methods and increasing pollution forced the community to relocate; since evacuated, expanded digging has buried the site.
“The Andes Inverted” aims to explore the mine’s disruptive impacts—at once environmental, political, cultural, and psychological—and evokes the paradox faced by Chuquicamata miners, many of whom described the jobs and joy provided by the same mine that consumed their homes, memories, and landscape. Rivera explains the miners’ situation is not black-and-white but grey: “Their labor is both productive and destructive, the self-sabotage is the complexity of the place.”
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I Dread to Think..
When: On view through March 19, 2017
Where: Mills Gallery, Boston Center for the Arts, 539 Tremont St, Boston, MA 02116
How: Official Website
What/Why: “In the new Mills Gallery exhibition I Dread To Think…, curator Liz Blum integrates varied reflections on the ambiguous, multifarious emotions and feelings surrounding the state of fear, highlighting aspects of inner paranoia and anxiety as well as pointing to external influences—from political inducements, erosions of privacy and the persuasive media loop that seems to nurture our feeling of being unsafe.”
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Spoonful of Sugar
When: Thursday, March 9 at 6:30 PM – 8 PM
Where: New Bedford Art Museum, 608 Pleasant St, New Bedford, Massachusetts 02740
How: Official Website
What/Why: “Spoonful of Sugar: Navigating Heartbreak with Humor
Artist panel discussion with Regions’ Gallery Artist Pat Falco and Vault Gallery Artist Brooke Erin Goldstein.”
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Eli Alperowicz: Politics Life and Death
When: On view through March 27, 2017
Opening Reception: Friday March 03, 6-8PM
Where: 249 A Street, Boston, MA 02210
How: Official Website
What/Why:“In response to the disturbing political campaign which culminated in the election of the current ” president “ that remind me more than anything of the political campaigns of dictators current and past, the images I created in the last two years seems to be all coming together pointing to the direction the Donald is taking the country.
Using paper as preferred surface or cardboard or unframed canvases was my way of conveying a message not of beauty, but of concern and alarm.” -Eli Alperowicz
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Andrew Haines: Distracted Driving
When: On view through April 1, 2017
Reception: Saturday, March 4th 4:30 – 7:00
What/Why: “Andrew Haines paints brilliant depictions of the mundane and ordinary. His buildings, parking lots, construction sites, and neighborhoods offer dramatic compositional elements bathed in a strong angular light. Andrew has contemplated the landscape since his childhood in rural southern New Jersey. An important American painter living in Boston, he has been the recipient of a Painting Fellowship from the Massachusetts Cultural Council, and other fellowships that assist artists in mid-career. His work is represented in many private as well as public collections including, the Boston Athenaeum, the Zimmerli Museum at Rutgers University, Wellington Management, and the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. Mr. Haines has worked with the frame collection at the MFA Boston for many years, where he holds the title: Associate Conservator Furniture and Frame Conservation”
Members Prize Show
When: On view through March 25, 2017
Where: University Place Gallery | 124 Mount Auburn Street, Cambridge MA 02138
How: Official Website
What/Why: “Juried by Randi Hopkins, Director of Visual Arts at the Boston Center of the Arts. More information here.”
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Legacy
(The Three Cent Memory, 2014, hand made book, vintage family photos. by Lorraine Sullivan, photo credit: Timothy Wilson)
When: On view through April 09, 2017
Artist Talk: March 19, 2-4 pm
Workshops: March 19, 11 am-1 pm: Fiber Arts with Kelly Knight, Sketchbook Arts with Anne Plaisance.
Where: South Shore Art Center, 119 Ripley Rd, Cohasset, Massachusetts 02025
How: Official Website
What/Why: “”What you leave behind is not what is engraved in stone, but what is woven into the lives of others” Pericles
We are all shaped by our unique history and genetic makeup. This legacy forms our very character, accounts for our bodies and contributes to our children’s inheritance. Our lives are stories lived, discovered, remembered, imagined and woven together.
In Legacy, four women share their personal stories using tools and crafts associated with women’s work and objects associated with home, children, motherhood. Each artist, in her own way, makes art that dignifies lives lived and promotes curiosity, empathy and love. They offer their personal stories hoping the viewer finds a shared universal inheritance.
Featuring: Susan Denniston, Kelly Knight, Anne Plaisance (curator), Lorraine Sullivan
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I Dread to Think..
When: On view through March 19, 2017
Where: Mills Gallery, Boston Center for the Arts, 539 Tremont St, Boston, MA 02116
How: Official Website
What/Why: “In the new Mills Gallery exhibition I Dread To Think…, curator Liz Blum integrates varied reflections on the ambiguous, multifarious emotions and feelings surrounding the state of fear, highlighting aspects of inner paranoia and anxiety as well as pointing to external influences—from political inducements, erosions of privacy and the persuasive media loop that seems to nurture our feeling of being unsafe.”
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True Colors
When: On view through March 26, 2017.
Opening Reception: Friday March 3, 5:30-8pm.
Where: Laconia Gallery, 433 Harrison Ave, Boston, MA
How: Official Website
What/Why: “Laconia Gallery is pleased to present True Colors, new works by Dan Roy. Dan’s work concentrates on placing animals in surreal settings. The paintings encapsulate both the real and fantastic with his vivid use of color and expressive strokes. It’s the exaggerated skies and soft rolling hillsides that personify the otherwise simplified forms. His process of layering glazes creates depth of color and emotion within the landscape. Recently, Dan has experimented with adding meticulous repetitive marks in the background of his paintings that attribute a graphic, whimsical quality to his works. The Blue Sheep series is displayed in this show alongside new additional pieces inspired by his trip to Bhutan in 2014.
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Mary Cassatt
When: On view through April 02, 2017
Where: Worcester Art Museum, 55 Salisbury St, Worcester, MA 01609
How: Official Website
What/Why: “Mary Cassatt’s 1901 pastel Simone in a White Bonnet, on loan from a private collection, will be on view at the Worcester Art Museum as part of a small, focused installation. As this work reveals, the medium of pastel was exceptionally well suited to Cassatt’s Impressionist predilections for indistinct outlines and luminous color. Paired with Reine Lefebvre Holding a Nude Baby—the Museum’s celebrated Cassatt from the same period—this installation highlights the artist’s mastery of different mediums, as she shifted between oil painting and pastel toward the end of her career.”
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Pairings
When: On view through April 30, 2017
Where: 555 Gallery, 555 E 2nd St, Boston, MA 02127
How: Official Website
What/Why: “555 Gallery is pleased to present Parings in collaboration with Ouimillie and Camden Hydes
This exhibition features fine arts photography and contemporary furniture paired in a curated gallery installation. Art and interior design will intersect on Saturday, Feb. 11, at the preview of Pairings at 555 Gallery in South Boston. Attendees will be the first to view selections of the gallery’s collection of contemporary fine art photography paired with French and Danish furnishings from Beacon Hill’s Ouimillie boutique.
Gallery owner, Susan Nalband, and Ouimillie founder, Millicent Cutler, are creating vignettes that will inspire ideas for showcasing art and design in one’s most personal environment: the home. “The fun thing is, it all works together,” said Nalband regarding the artists’ and designers’ pieces highlighted in the show. They’re connecting two distinct neighborhoods, as well. Nalband noted, “People love the idea of collaborations and we’re bringing together two different parts of town.”
Both Nalband and Cutler tend to shun the predictable, evident in the art and furnishings they host. Pairings is another example of going beyond the expected, as it will be an opportunity to view home interiors in a gallery setting. Cutler enthused, “What’s really cool is the playfulness of the combinations.”
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Transition of Power
When: On view through March 11, 2017
Where: 13FOREST, 167 Massachusetts Ave, Arlington, Massachusetts 02474
How: Official Website
What/Why: “13FOREST Gallery is pleased to present Transition of Power: 2017, an exhibition dedicated to artistic voices in response to the current state of American politics.
In an increasingly polarized nation, we often look to artists to make sense of the world around us. Transition of Power: 2017 features eBay, John Campbell, Asia Kepka, Mark Luiggi, Ted Ollier, Dimel Rivas, Sarah Rushford and Jason Wallace. Working in a range of media, from photography to sculpture, printmaking to painting, each of these Boston-area artists offers unique commentary on the nature of our (dis)union. Read More: http://13forest.com/
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Caught in a Dream
When: On view through March 26, 2017
Where: Dorchester Art Project, 1486 Dorchester Avenue, Dorchester MA
How: Official Website
What/Why:“Caught in a Dream transforms the gallery into an inviting, inspiring space that encourages viewers to explore the ways in which artists weave ambitions, memories and desires into their work. Evoking the Surrealist Movement of the 1920s, when artists created dream-influenced work with the goal of liberating themselves from rational and restrictive thought, Caught in a Dream celebrates the artists’ desire to investigate new possibilities within their practice and to reimagine their world unrestricted by present-day realities. In reflecting upon the boundaries between craft and fine art, the culture of consumption, the prevalence of technology, crises of capitalism, and the role of identity, the artists engage in meditative processes and radical acts of dreaming. By these acts they question their present state and generate new possibilities in order to manifest alternate outcomes.
Samantha Fields, Kawandeep Virdee, and Emily Brodrick find creative meaning through innovation, play and experimentation. While working on ambitious processed-based work, Fields, Virdee and Brodrick push the boundaries of their chosen media, creating surreal large-scale pieces that prompt viewers to engage with art in new ways. Isshoni Delva, Joetta Maue, and Emily Manning-Mingle mine their personal histories and memories in order to tell stories about their emotional states and roles within society. Using fiber as inspiration, material and metaphor, Delva, Maue and Manning-Mingle grant access into their intimate living spaces and psychological states. Melanie Bernier, Dory Dinoto and Danielle Freiman create art about and as part of their personal activism. Expanding upon their participation in cultural and political movements, they question social norms, muse about utopian ideas, and envision alternative ways of living.
In dreaming, the artists can connect seemingly disconnected elements and ideas, and explore their deepest desires and fears. Dreams, when embraced, pave the way for creative breakthroughs, intimate expressions of identity, and new realities. Caught in a Dream creates a perpetually active space in which the viewer is invited to join the artists in the process of dreaming.
“A dream you dream alone is only a dream, a dream you dream together is a reality.”
– John Lennon”
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LINES, SPHERES, AND GLYPHS: Fontana, Giacomelli, Haas, Kepes, Siskind
When: On view through March 25, 2017
Where: Robert Klein Gallery, 38 Newbury St, Boston, MA 02116
How: Official Website
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American Modernism: 1912 – 1945
When: On view through March 04, 2017
Reception: March 3, 6 – 8 PM
Where: Beth Urdang, 460 Harrison Ave, Boston, MA 02118
How: Official Website
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Projects in Process
When: Saturday March 04, 2017 2 PM – 4:30 PM
Where: Boston Public Library, 700 Boylston St, Boston, Massachusetts 02116
How: Official Website
What/Why: “On Saturday, March 4, 2017, 2:00-4:30 PM, Mayor Martin J. Walsh, the Mayor’s Office of Arts and Culture, Boston Centers for Youth & Families (BCYF), and the Boston Art Commission invite you for a first look at the exciting, socially engaged, civic practice projects currently under development by this year’s ten Boston Artists-in-Residence (AIR). This free event includes artist presentations, the first screening of short documentaries about Boston AIR’s first-year projects, and opportunities for feedback from audience members on ways socially engaged Boston artists and community members can reimagine our city.
Boston AIR: Projects in Process will take place in Rabb Lecture Hall at the Boston Public Library’s Central Library in Copley Square. Julie Burros, Chief of Arts and Culture, and William Morales, Commissioner of BCYF will be in attendance.”
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Darker Than Blue
When: On view March 09 through April 30, 2017
Opening: Thursday March 09, 6-9PM
Where: Leica Gallery Boston, Park Plaza, Boston, Massachusetts 02116
How: Official Website
What/Why: Learn more about the exhibition and RSVP for the opening here.
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Night of the Hunter
When: On view through March 2017
Opening Reception: Friday March 03, 6 PM – 8:30 PM
Where: Lens Gallery, 524 Harrison Ave, Boston, MA 02118
How: Official Website
What/Why:“Night of the Hunter — work by Hilary Irons and Adam Eddy”
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Steven Holmes | Photography
When: On view through March 28, 2017
Reception: Saturday March 4th 6 – 8:30 pm
Where: EBK Gallery [small works], 218 Pearl St., Hartford, CT
How: Official Website
What/Why: “One of my earliest memories is of playing with an empty camera.
I recall walking around our backyard with it, framing something, and clicking the shutter. The click was soothing, and feeling the vibration of the shutter in my fingertips was calming. Later, in college, with no money for film, I would also walk around with an empty camera. I was vaguely aware that I was not reacting to something I was seeing, but was pressing the shutter as a result of something I was feeling, moments of fleeting connectedness to where I was. Moments of feeling like I was part of something secret and immense. For obvious reasons, these were intensely private moments, since without film in the camera, the images could only be known to me. I still remember some of them.
In the early 1990’s, I found a way to describe these experiences in language borrowed from theology and religion. For a brief time it helped me justify or explain what the images “were about.” I showed them a little, first in Cambridge, then in Halifax and Toronto.
But despite and because of this justification, I had made a gross error. My error was that I had begun to make a project out of these ‘connections’, and had gone out seeking them. I had put the cart before the horse, looking for images that would make me feel something. I had become confused, and had begun thinking that moments of connectedness appear as a result of seeking them. It was as if those moments of connection were out there, waiting for me to discover them, and all I had to do was go and look for them. I had confused seeking with being. The images I was seeking were nowhere to be seen, because they didn’t exist. Those images would exist only after I had stopped looking for them. But I didn’t know that then. So by 1996, I stopped making art altogether. I literally packed it away.
As the years passed, I would occasionally try and pick it up again. I’d carry a camera for a few days but would get frustrated that I couldn’t seem to start any new body of work. I kept returning to those same landscapes again and again. Sometimes I would succeed in getting a picture that had something of the “connected” moment in it, but I came to realize that those images were not likely to mean anything to anyone else. If they did, it was only ever going to be accidental. So, after a day or two I would feel embarrassed and disappointed and would just put the camera back.
Then in the fall of 2004, I spent an afternoon with Sol LeWitt. We had spent some time in his studio and looking at the work of some of the many artists whose work Sol had acquired over the years. We were talking about our daughters, mostly, when he abruptly switched the conversation. He knew I had gone to the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design, and so he asked me if I was still making work. I told him I had stopped a while ago and could not get restarted. I said that I didn’t seem able to do anything other than return to an early body of work – that I seemed to be able to do only one thing. It was then that he interrupted me. Closing his eyes as he spoke, he leaned back and said “Steve – just make the work you make. Don’t worry about it. It’s a good sign. It’s a good thing you can’t leave that work alone. It’s the way it should be. It means that it is actually yours.”
A lot of time has gone by since that conversation. In that time, I have finally come to terms with the fact that that the only art I can make is the art that I have only ever been able to make – records of very specific, fleeting moments of connectedness – sometimes in the most banal and sterile places. More importantly, I now realize that there is no hope of making the images I need to make unless I can first learn how to first ‘be’. I have to be, before I can hope to see.
There are ten images in this exhibition. Nine of them come from the period 1988-1996. One of them was taken two months ago.
I am deeply grateful to have been given the chance to show them. S.A.H.
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Joo Lee Kang: VictoriaANimals
When: On view through March 25, 2017
Opening Reception: Friday March 03, 2017 6-8PM
Where: Gallery NAGA, 67 Newbury St, Boston, Massachusetts 02116
How: Official Website
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Chris Jordan: Message from the Gyre
When: On view through March 24, 2017
Opening Reception: Friday, March 3, 2017 6:00PM
The Plastic Ocean – 2:45pm, Saturday, March 4, 2017
Blackstone Park Shoreline Cleanup – 12:00pm, Saturday, March 18, 2017
Where: David Winton Bell Gallery, 64 College St, Providence, RI 02912
How: Official Website
What/Why: “For more than a decade Chris Jordan has focused his and our attention on the consequences of mass consumerism—photographing mountains of discarded electronics in landfills and, more recently, the decomposing carcasses of Laysan albatross that have died from ingesting plastic. The latter images, exhibited here, present a shocking reality, difficult but important to view. Translating inconceivable statistics — 299 million tons of plastics produced a year; 5.25 trillion pieces of plastic debris in the ocean; a million sea birds and 100,000 marine mammals killed annually from plastic in our oceans — into intimate images of life and death, Jordan confronts us with the consequences of our lifestyle and calls on us to take action toward change.
Jordan’s images were taken on Midway Atoll. This small ring of volcanic islands, recognized as the site of an important battle in WWII, is now, tragically, better known for an ongoing ecological struggle. Located 2000 miles from any major landmass, Midway is home to millions of birds and is the breeding ground of the world’s largest Laysan albatross colony. It also lies in proximity to the North Pacific Gyre, alternately know as the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. Circulated by ocean currents, plastics and other debris gather in the gyre where they float on the surface or break down into smaller and smaller pieces that eventually come to rest on the ocean floor.
Skimming the ocean’s surface for food, albatross pick up plastic refuse and feed both to their young chicks. Over time, the chicks’ bodies become clogged with plastic and they die — of starvation, suffocation, or injuries to their internal organs. More than 200 pieces of plastic have been found in a single albatross carcass, and it is estimated that one-third of chicks born each year suffer premature death from plastic ingestion.”
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STAND UP: Women* You Should Know
When: Thursday March 09, 2017 6:30-8:00PM
Where: Boston Center for the Arts, 539 Tremont Street, Boston, MA
How: Official Website
What/Why: “STAND UP: Women* You Should Know
Salon conversation hosted by Silvi Naçi with Furen Dai
We continue the third season of Gertrude’s Artists Salon with a conversation on the topic: “STAND UP: Women* You Should Know” hosted by Silvi Naçi in conversation with video performance artist, sculptor and linguist Furen Dai. Join us as we explore the interdependent themes of language and cultural politics and class, as they relate to economic conditions and performance art, through the work of Furen Dai.
Women*: open to anyone who identifies with this word.
The artist lounge and lab at the Mills is the site of informal, artist-generated/artist-hosted conversations. Join us for idle conversation, heated exchange and the sporadic, sometimes-thematic exploration of ideas that grow out of and into art. “
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“We do not escape into philosophy, psychology, and art—we go there to restore our shattered selves into whole ones.”
–Anaïs Nin, In Favor of the Sensitive Man and Other Essays ♥
