The December Wrap-Up

Opening Reception: Friday, December 11, from 4:00-7:00 pm

Where: FPAC Gallery, 300 Summer Street M1 Boston MA 02210

How: Official Website

What/Why: “Paper Chase III is an exhibition of original works on paper made by Fort Point artists. All works are priced at $100 and proceeds from this fundraiser will benefit the Fort Point artists community.”

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Michael Krueger: Meditation is Not What You Think

When: On view through December 31, 2015

Where: Steven Zevitas Gallery, 450 Harrison Ave, Boston, MA 02118

How: Official Website

What/Why: “Since the early 2000s, Krueger has become increasingly well known for his idiosyncratic works on paper that address topics of art history, hippie culture, contemporary politics and the mythology of the West. Meditation is Not What You Think marks an unabashed departure for Krueger both in terms of the form and content of his work. The exhibition features eleven new paintings that deal with the material and immaterial, images and non-images, each seeking moments of mediation. The paintings on view are created without brushes, using stencils, rollers, screen-printing, airbrush and sometimes-shaped canvases and 3-dimensional projections. They are pristine and otherworldly, while flat and persistent of object-ness, small but less than intimate, familiar but unknown, awkward and comfortable.

Krueger finds covert inspiration, form, humor and sensation in the struggle to unburden the mind, and clarity in the images that well up as one tries to meditate everything away. He embraces images that flicker off and on, repeat and refresh unfiltered. For Krueger:The charge for artists like me is to embed an idea in material. And in doing so create something that exists beyond language, in a non-linear, paradoxical realm where several things can be true at the same time. To create a work of art that can be seen with the eyes and the mind and transcends the material origins. In this way art is alchemical, it is not direct or tangible but rather mystical, prophetic and psychic.”

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For the Birds

When: On view through January 2, 2016

Opening Reception: Thursday, December 3rd, 5 – 7 pm

Where: 249 A Street, Boston, MA 02210

How: Official Website

What/Why: 

“In order to see birds it is necessary to become a part of the silence.”

-Robert Lloyd

For the Birds, a group  show of painting, printmaking, drawing, and photography as well as birds on ceramic vessels, curated by artist Bonnie Mineo.

Birds grace our world with their unique attributes that capture our imagination. Some birds are important cultural icons all over the world – depicting both good and evil, delight and intrigue.

Participating Artists: Laura Davidson, Becky Dwyer, Ian Kennelly, Lisa Knox, Bonnie Mineo, Miklos Pogany, Bruce Rogovin, Gabrielle Schaffner“

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Vernon Street Open Studios

When: December 5th and 6th, 2015, 12:00-6:00PM

Where: Vernon Street Studios, 6 & 20 Vernon Street, Somerville, MA

How: Official Website

What/Why: “On December 5 & 6, Vernon Street Studios will host their annual open studios (which has become a much anticipated annual event). Each year, the artists of 6 & 20 Vernon Street welcome the public into their work spaces, a community well known throughout the area for the quality of their work. During this showcase for the arts, mid-career and emerging artists working across a broad spectrum of fine art styles and craft media – including painting, photography, print-making, sculpture, glass, fiber, jewelry, furniture, and ceramics – will exhibit and sell their work ….just in time for the holiday season.

Located in an historic 19th century brick industrial building, Vernon Street was one of the first group of artists in the Greater Boston area to open their studios to the public in 1974. The Open Studios event allows attendees to learn about the creative process, interact with artists in the spaces where they create, purchase original artwork, and discover new talent.

The studios are located in the Rogers Foam facility, which is comprised of two buildings on the corner of Central and Vernon Streets. Parking is available in the large lot behind the buildings.”

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Viewing the Institution

When: On view through January 17th, 2016

Opening Reception: Thursday, December 3rd, from 5:30 to 8:30.

Where: The Open Aperture Art Gallery, 13 Touro Street, Newport, RI

How: Official Website

What/Why: “The Open Aperture Art Gallery is excited to present the work of Jodie Goodnough in the space’s first solo show. Currently an adjunct professor of photography at Salve Regina University, the Providence based artist earned her MFA in Visual Art from the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston and Tufts University in 2013. She has exhibited in solo and group shows across New England, New York, the Midwest, and the West Coast, most recently including the Dorchester Art Project in Boston, GRIN in Providence, and the curator-driven Spring/Break Art Fair in New York City. Viewing the Institution is the first opportunity to see excerpts from her 2014 series A Curious Dance, alongside selections from Prospect, her most recent body of work.”

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Curator’s Choice Workshops

When: Thursday, December 10, 6:30 – 8:30pm

Where: BCA Mills Gallery, 551 Tremont Street, Boston 02116

How: Official Website

What/Why: “Join Samantha Fields and Corey Corcoran for a friendly, fun, and interesting exploration of drawing through weaving and animation. 

Samantha will turn part of the Mills Gallery into a loom while Corey and guests (that’s you!) create an impromptu short animation during these hands on workshops. 

This event is free and open to all ages! “

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Like Another

When: On view through January 9th, 2016

Opening Reception: Reception December 4, 5 – 9pm

Where: How’s Howard? (exhibitions), 450 Harrison Avenue Suite 309c, Boston, MA 02118

How: Official Website

What/Why: “Like Another” – Select works by Keiko Narahashi, Anthony Palocci Jr., Mark Puchala, Parsley Steinweiss, and Brad Tucker”

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Winter Works

When: On view December 2nd-December 20th, 2015

Opening Reception: Friday December 4th, 6-8:30PM

Where: Bromfield Gallery, 450 Harrison Ave, Boston, MA

How: Official Website

What/Why: Annual juried show of small works, $100-$1,000

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Andrea Thompson: Bent Meridian: Stories of Unlikely Journeys 

When: On view through December 13, 2015

Where: Boston Sculptors Gallery, Harrison Ave, Boston, MA 02118

How: Official Website

What/Why: “The Boston Sculptors Gallery presents Bent Meridian: Stories of Unlikely Journeys by new member Andrea Thompson. The collection of works are inspired by stories of travels, both historic and imaginary, in which landscapes are shifting and subjective, and where travelers must let go of terra cognita in favor of intuition, improvisation, and luck.The materials are as varied as the stories they represent. In Mapping Mars, an expanse of rusted steel becomes a detailed Martian landscape, inspired by the diligent – but ultimately misguided – 19th century astronomer Percival Lowell who spent a lifetime mapping Mars features that existed only in his wishful thinking (see detail image above). Sailcloth, thread, and oak and brass fittings trace the Voyage of the Gjøa, Arctic explorer Roald Amundsen’s sturdy fishing boat, with which he crossed through a featureless sea of ice to discover the Northwest Passage in 1906. Other journeys are purely imagined or conceptual. In the series A Live Oak Dreams of Going to Sea, totems of salvaged ship timbers are stamped with images of the places they might have visited but never reached. The stained, charred, and gold-gilded cypress panels of Three Days in the Ground are both a spiritual reference and a journal of emotional turmoil. A fleet of carved cedar boat forms, floating and serene, stand ready for future travels.”

Nancy Winship Milliken: Postcards from the Field: Contemporary Pastorialism

What/Why: “The Boston Sculptors Gallery presents Nancy Winship Milliken’s Postcards from the Field: Contemporary Pastoralism, a sampling of her work to date of trading studio for farm. Milliken creates work in collaboration with farmers, the animals, materials, and landscapes of our small homestead farms that explores and reinvents our ideas of the pastoral. Pasture Print, a silk and earthen wall hanging was made while working at Blue Star Equiculture a working horse rescue and sanctuary in Palmer, MA. Milliken collaborated with the large draft horses using their massive weight to imprint the muddy pasture. The pasture for Milliken, is the intersection where man and humans meet. Along with installing her work in New England and New Zealand farmland, Milliken has shown in solo and select group shows, including Boston Sculptors Gallery, Artstrand Gallery, the Christian Science Plaza in Boston, Qorikancha Museum, Peru, Provincetown Art Association Museum, University Museum of Contemporary Art, Chesterwood, Heritage Museum and Brattleboro Museum. She incorporates her sculptures into set design for Double Edge Theatre in Ashfield, Massachusetts.”

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Your Ticket Out

When: On view December 7 – January 30

Opening Reception: Friday December 11, 7 – 9 PM

Where: Distillery Gallery, 516 E 2nd St, Boston, Massachusetts 02127

How: Official Website

What/Why: “Your ticket out. It’s with you during rush hour in the back of your head, pulsing just loud enough to be audible over that new Drake song. At the movie theatre when the screen takes over your vision and fills your ears with the sounds of a story that keeps you awake the whole night. Since that afternoon you spent reading Cat’s Cradle and laughed out loud at a book for the first time. In the sounds that stick with you from that song you heard in the record store that you just had to bother the clerk about. Ever since you spent the weekend at your friend’s apartment in the city and saw so much more of the world in a single day than you had in your entire life; except you didn’t want to cash in on it. You hid it behind a safer career path, a savings account built for the inevitable, suburban practicality, Netflix and chill, a keen interest in fine beers; but it’s there. Sitting in the front left pocket of your favorite pair of blue jeans, crumpled and bent, playing neighbor to a ball of indigo lint, your ticket out.

Featuring:

Kari Byron
Thomas Dupere
Kyle Falzone
Eben Haines
Rory Hamovit
Elizabeth Harper
Ryan de la Hoz
TJ Kelley III
Simon Kercz
Mariel Kon
Paige Mulhern
Russ Pope
Skye Schirmer
Andrew Scripter
Chelsea Teta
Kristin Texeira
Paul Urich
Devonshire Yaw“

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Sydney Licht

When: On view through December 2015

Opening Reception: December 4th, 2015 6-8PM

Where: Chase Young Gallery, 450 Harrison Ave, Boston, MA 02118

How: Official Website

What/Why: “I am interested in updating the conventions of still life by picturing items that reflect the way we currently live. Remnants of our consumer culture have found their way into the work. Traditionally, still life paintings have portrayed items from the realm of the domestic….food, utensils, dishes, flowers and other elements that celebrate the table. These days, however, our food often arrives at the table packaged up, sealed and sanitized. Table tops become resting places for boxes and other detritus waiting to be sorted or discarded. Boxes are piled high in precarious arrangements to make room for more clutter. An expanded color palette of both vivid hues and more subdued tones enables me to better articulate this aspect of my visual culture. “

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Ronnie Rysz | Drawings and Collage

When: On view through December 20, 2015

Opening Reception: Friday, December 11th 6:00 pm – 8:30 pm

Where: EBK Gallery, 218 Pearl Street, Hartford, CT

How: Official Website 

What/Why: “The characters are developed from a mix of music lyrics, movie references, news banter, and print ad campaigns, and are titled with hot-button phrases or popular keyword terms. Each figure is portrayed in an amplified fashion and
all are competitively seeking the attention of an audience.The volume is turned
up to the highest contrast.” -Ronnie Rysz

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How to Feel Real

When: On view through December 27, 2015

Opening Reception: Friday, December 4, 2015, 5:30-8:00 pm

Where: Kingston Gallery, 450 Harrison Ave. #43, Boston, MA 02118

How: Official Website 

What/Why: “How to Feel Real is a a group exhibition about authenticity in a virtual age including work by Stacey Alickman, Kellie Bornhoft, Linda Leslie Brown, and Hilary Tolan, curated by Shana Dumont Garr. Simple, essential things such as dirt, trees, animals, and other human beings become astonishing in the context of increased amounts of time spent looking at screens. Visual art helps us scrutinize who we are becoming a full generation into the existence of the internet and the common ownership of smartphones. The artists use a range of media, including painting, sculpture, video, and kinetic installation, to talk about sincerity and to point out the rituals and systems that either keep us from feeling human or bring us back.”

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All At Once Upon a Time

When: Friday, December 11, 2015 at 7:30pm, Saturday, December 12 at 4 pm and 8 pm and Sunday, December, 13 at 4 pm.

Where: Gardner-Pingree House, 128 Essex Street, Salem, MA

How: Official Website

Cost: Members $20, nonmembers $35, students $10

What/Why: “All at Once Upon a Time…(or Variations on the Theme of Disappearing) is a live performance that blends elements of theatre, installation, and happening.

Taking place over 3 floors of PEM’s Gardner-Pingree House, this intimate event offers a unique perspective into an architectural treasure and challenges us to explore the way we see our environment, ourselves, and each other.

Art lovers hoping for a small dose of daring and wonder are welcome.  Must be willing to climb creaky stairs, unplug for the duration of the performance, and enjoy the company of strangers.”

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Did I leave anything out?