walking the earth x a map home x evolving in isolation x light my fire
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Solo 2016
When: On view January 6th – 31st, 2016
Opening Reception: Friday, Jan 8 6-830 pm
Where: Bromfield Gallery, 450 Harrison Ave, Boston, MA
How: Official Website
What/Why: “Andrea Greitzer, Camilo Ramirez, SOLO 2016 awards two solo exhibitions, all gallery expenses paid, to two New England artists who have not previously had a solo show in a commercial gallery.
Juror: Ruth Erickson, Assistant Curator at the Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston.“
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Wolftits: Totem
When: January 8th through February 26th, 2016
Opening Reception: Friday January 8th, 7-11PM
Where: Lot F Gallery, 145 Pearl Street, #4, Boston MA 02110
How: Official Website
What/Why: “You’ve seen her in the streets – now your favorite girl is coming indoors. Lot F is pleased to introduce “Totem”, Wolftits’ highly anticipated and first solo exhibition with the gallery. Taking over the space entirely, the artist will create a sculpture-heavy environment that symbolizes and praises mother wolf ‘s power. Opening Friday, January 8th, 2016 the interactive exhibition will feature a remarkable display with a large amount of functional art pieces, and installations.
In a honest world she is loved by all. In this world she loves all.
Her pleasures are instinct, her body you envy and her spirit lifts yours.
These reliquaries hold physical gifts she has to give. They are totems of great power.
But prayer without sacrifice is just words.
You must pay, to play – Wolftits
With her simple, cartoon-like style, friendly pose and an emphasis on her breasts you’ve probably seen her around, on walls and other surfaces. The artist’s gallery work embodies this character into a more physical representation. Metal bars, most of which were salvaged from a prison re-model, are welded together, heated and twisted into shape.
Two weeks after spontaneously moving to Colorado to live on a school bus, the artist discovered Mission Wolf – a sanctuary for Wolves born in captivity. Wolftits lived among the wolves for the following three years before moving to Massachusetts. Having grown up in upstate NY, the artist went to Alfred University for art, focusing on sculpture. Currently the artist works out of a studio in Hope Valley, RI and is a “great fan of hardware store miss tints and clearance shelves.”
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Rob Chamberlin: Light My Fire
When: On view January 8th-February 9th, 2016
Opening Reception: January 8th, 2016 6-9PM
Where: Miller Yezerski Gallery, 460 Harrison Ave, Boston, MA 02118
How: Official Website
Also on view..
Karl Baden: Rising
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Sandy Litchfield: Filter Space
When: On view January 8th through February 27th, 2016
Opening Reception: Wednesday January 27th, 5:30-7:30PM
Where: Carroll and Sons, 450 Harrison Ave, Boston, MA 02118
How: Official Website
Also on view..
Tseng Kwong Chi: Ambiguous Ambassador 1979 – 1989
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Spilt Milk
When: Friday January 8th, 7 PM – 11 PM
Where: Thomas Young Gallery, 516 E 2nd St, Boston, Massachusetts 02127
How: Official Website
What/Why: “‘Spilt Milk’ is a one night performance exhibition taking place at the Thomas Young Gallery. The event will feature the work of five Petrichor Performance Collective members — Elaine Thap, Helina Metaferia, Kledia Spiro and Nathaniel Wyrick, all recent alumni and friends of the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston and Massachusetts College of Art and Design.
‘Spilt Milk’ will include a compilation of diverse performative works that visually articulate themes of ephemerality and time through installation and action. Each of the five solo performances will converse with each other and the common issues of memory, identity and belonging. The event will include three hours of performances (some durational and some short form) and a half hour audience participatory pre-event discussion on the role of performance based practices in the gallery context.
Pre-event discussion will begin at 7:00 pm.
Performances will begin at 8:00 pm and conclude at 11:00 pm. A more detailed schedule will be released closer to the exhibition date.”
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Boston Sculptors Gallery with Guest Artists | “Twice As Good”
When: On view through February 17th, 2016
Where: Boston Sculptors Gallery, 486 Harrison Avenue, Boston, MA 02118
How: Official Website
What/Why: “Boston Sculptors’ Holiday Offerings are TWICE AS GOOD – Sculptors team up with guest artists to exhibit new work.”
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Maurice Freedman: Time and Place
When: On view through January 12th, 2016
Where: ACME Fine Art, 450 Harrison Ave, Boston, MA 02118
How: Official Website
What/Why: “An exhibition of paintings by 20th Century Expressionist master Maurice Freedman will open at ACME Fine Art on Friday, 6 November 2015. A reception in conjunction with First Friday festivities will be held from 5:00 to 8:00 that evening. The thirteen canvases selected from the artist’s estate for the exhibition by Gallery Director David Cowan demonstrate the broad range of subject matter, vibrant palette and spatially complex compositions that are hallmarks of Freedman’s best work. The group includes Landscapes, Seascapes, Cityscapes, Still Lives and Interiors that were painted between 1947 and 1969. They hang together harmoniously—conveying the sense of a specific locale while capturing a particular moment in time—thanks to the consistent clarity of vision and articulate expression of the artist. “
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Winter Group Show
When: On view through January 31st, 2016
Opening Reception: January 8th, 6-8PM
Where: Chase Young Gallery, 450 Harrison Ave, Boston 02118
How: Official Website
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Angela Alés: Archetypes
Rachel Shatil: Walking the Earth
Richard Alan Cohen: Objectives of Desire
When: January 2-31, 2016
Opening Reception: January 8, 2016, 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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Horst P Horst: Color
When: On view January 8 – February 20, 2016
Opening Reception: Saturday, January 9, 2 – 5 PM
Where: Robert Klein Gallery, 38 Newbury St, Boston, MA 02116
How: Official Website
What/Why: “Horst P. Horst was born Horst Paul Albert Bohrmann in 1906 in the German town of Weissenfels-an-der-Salle. Growing up in a middle-class family, Horst vacationed with his in Weimar, where he became acquainted with students of the Bauhaus School. After a yearlong bout with lung disease in the late 1920s and a half-hearted attempt at a clerical job and the study of Chinese, Horst took up a career in carpentry and furniture-making while at the Kunstgewerbeschule in Hamburg. Horst soon excelled at these trades and in 1930 moved to Paris to work with esteemed architect Le Corbusier. Several years later, disillusioned with the monetary aspect of the architecture and the impersonal nature of creating for “the masses,” Horst began assisting celebrated Vogue photographer Baron George Hoyningen-Huene in his studio.
Horst soon was offered a position with American Vogue and moved to the United States. In 1942, Horst became a naturalized citizen. In the next thirty years, he was published Photographs of a Decade, Patterns of Nature, Vogue’s Book of Houses, Gardens, People and Salute to the Thirties. For the great part of the 1970s, Horst worked photographing for House and Garden. During the 1980s, Horst worked for Vogue and Vanity Fair in Italy, Spain, England, America and France. Among his most famous photographic subjects are Lisa Fonssagrives, Natasha Paley, Cole Porter, Elsa Schiaparelli, Katherine Hepburn, George Cukor, Salvador Dali, Andy Warhol, Marlene Dietrich, the Duke and Duchess of Windsor and President Harry S. Truman. Horst P. Horst died in Palm Beach Gardens, Florida, in November of 1999.”
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Gohar Dashti – Stateless
When: January 8 – February 20, 2016
First Friday: Friday, January 8, 5:30 – 7:30 PM
Where: Robert Klein Gallery @ Ars Libri, 500 Harrison Ave, Boston, MA 02116
How: Official Website
What/Why: “Born in 1980 in Ahvaz, Iran, Gohar Dashti received her MA in Photography from the Fine Art University of Tehran in 2005. Dashti has developed a practice concerning social issues with particular references to history and culture in modern society. She creates artwork using different media, including photography and video. She has been exhibited internationally in Tokyo, Rio de Janeiro, Toronto, Paris, Berlin, Boston, and Milan.”
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Equal Dimensions
When: On view through January 30, 2016
Where: Barbara Krakow Gallery, 10 Newbury Street, Boston, MA 02116
How: Official Website
What/Why: “Josef Albers, Richard Artschwager, Robert Barry, Mel Bochner, Peter Downsbrough, Erwin Heerich,
Donald Judd, Sol LeWitt, Allan McCollum, Giulio Paolini, Liliana Porter, Stephen Prina, Kay Rosen,
Robert Ryman and Fred Sandback”
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On Exactitude in Science
When: January 28-March 6, 2016
Opening Reception: January 28, 5–7 pm
Where: School of the Museum of Fine Arts, 230 The Fenway, Boston, MA
How: Official Website
What/Why: “January 28–March 6, 2016, the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (SMFA), will present “On Exactitude in Science,” an exhibition featuring four international artists—Jennifer Bornstein, Aslı Çavuşoğlu, Jumana Manna, Elizabeth McAlpine—who address questions of representation through tactile approaches to material surfaces in image and object making. Guest curated by Dina Deitsch.”
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MLK Open House
When: January 18th, 2016, 10am – 4:45PM
Where: Museum of Fine Arts, 465 Huntington Ave, Boston, MA 02115
How: Official Website
What/Why: “The Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (MFA), celebrates Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Day on January 18 (10 am-4:45 pm) with a day of art, culture and community. Free admission includes an array of vibrant programs and activities for all ages. The Open House also marks the last day to see the landmark exhibition, Class Distinctions: Dutch Painting in the Age of Rembrandt and Vermeer. For a behind-the-scenes look at Class Distinctions, a special lecture on January 13 with exhibition curator Ronni Baer offers a glimpse into how this acclaimed exhibition was brought to life.
Free admission includes an array of vibrant programs and activities for all ages. The Open House also marks the last day to see the landmark exhibition, Class Distinctions: Dutch Painting in the Age of Rembrandt and Vermeer. For a behind-the-scenes look at Class Distinctions, a special lecture on January 13 with exhibition curator Ronni Baer offers a glimpse into how this acclaimed exhibition was brought to life.”
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Resonances
When: On view through January 16th, 2016
Where: Gallery Kayafas, 450 Harrison Avenue #37 Boston, MA 02118
How: Official Website
What/Why: “Drawn from 150 years of photographic works, this exhibition groups images that have a sympathetic relationship, sometimes as simple as subject matter or formal issues, which amplify, reveal, and resonate with each other, enriching the experience and, perhaps, offering insight…
Resonances includes photographs by Aaron Siskind, Harry Callahan, Nicholas Nixon, Andrew Young, Martin Schoeller, Greg Kahn, James Nasmyth, Wendy Snyder MacNeil, Harold Edgerton, Susan Derges, and others.”
Also on view..
Brett Angell – Vengeance
S.Gayle Stevens – Wideness
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Construct, Belief and Nostalgia
When: On view January 16th through March 9th, 2016
Opening Reception: January 16th, 2016 4-6PM
Where: 13Forest Gallery, 167A Massachusetts Avenue, Arlington, MA 02474
How: Official Website
What/Why:“13FOREST Gallery has a 500 square-foot exhibition space with movable walls that make it versatile. For Construct, Belief and Nostalgia we’re calling playful attention to the gallery environment by setting up the exhibition space as three “rooms” that allow the artists to develop separate themes. While our intention is for the show’s work to be viewed and interpreted alone, in such a small space it’s impossible not to consider it as a whole or within the broader context of work by other artists in the rest of the gallery. It might befit the exhibition to remove the comma from its title to form “construct belief and nostalgia” since viewers will easily form associations and meanings over which the artists have no control.
In addition to our exhibition we are presenting short documentaries on each of the three artists in Construct, Belief and Nostalgia by filmmaker Nick Noyes. The documentaries will explore each artist’s process, personal history and thematic focus within the exhibition. On Saturday, February 27, 4-6 pm, we will host a reception with a special screening of the documentaries and an artist talk starting at 4:30 pm.”
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Director’s Selections
When: On view January 6-31st, 2016
Where: Adelson Gallery, 520 Harrison Ave, Boston, MA 02118
How: Official Website
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30 Below
When: On view January 9 – 29, 2016
Where: Kathryn Schultz Gallery, 25 Lowell St. Cambridge MA 02138
How: Official Website
What/Why: “Juried by Mary M. Tinti, Curator of the Fitchburg Art Museum. Tinti is an art historian and curator specializing in modern and contemporary art, with a focus on public art. Prior to her appointment at FAM she was the Koch Curatorial Fellow at deCordova Sculpture Park and Museum in Lincoln. ‘Ms. Tinti received her bachelor of arts degree in 2000 from Providence College and a Ph.D in 2008 from Rutgers University. Prior to joining the staff at deCordova, she was the first-ever public art fellow at the New England Foundation for the Arts (2010-2011) and the deputy artistic director of WaterFire Providence (2008-2010).”
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List Projects: Ann Hirsch
When: On view January 5th-February 21, 2016
Where: MIT List Visual Arts Center, 20 Ames Street, Bldg. E15, Atrium level, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02139
What/Why: “Ann Hirsch’s work in video and performance considers the effects of technology on popular culture; many of her projects examine how young women are portrayed and present themselves in social media and online. Hirsch—who often characterizes her work as research—has started a YouTube channel for one of her personas which gained a cult following, appeared as a contestant on a reality television show, and created a series of works loosely based on her pre-teen experience in an online chat room in the 1990s. The exhibition at the List Center will include three projects (the artist’s self-described “greatest hits”):Scandalishious (2008-2009), Here for You (Or My Brief Love Affair with Frank Maresca) (2010), and Twelve (2013).”
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A Path: Drills for Flight
When: On view January 5, 2016 through January 30, 2016
Where: New Art Center, 61 Washington Park, Newtonville, MA 02460
How: Official Website
What/Why: “MARLON FORRESTER presents A Path: Drills for Flight. This wall mural functions to both deconstruct and reconstruct the sacred space of ritual found within a basketball court. In it, free throw, three point, and half court lines become axis points, and access routes, for drawing exploration. A conceptual artwork, it requires the collective participation of many activators willing to follow the rules as they create a new path among many.
This project is presented as part of the New Art Center’s 2016 artist-in-residence program. through this program, two artists will activate the Holzwasser Gallery through two large-scale, interactive mural projects that invite visitors of all ages to participate. These projects explore the relationship between resident artists and their collaborators while pushing the boundaries of what is considered a mural.“
Also on view..
You Are Here
When: On view January 15, 2016 to March 26, 2016 in the Main Gallery
How: Official Website
What/Why: A Curatorial Opportunity Program Exhibition curated by Pamela Campanaro
Darek Bittner | Dan DeRosato | Kevin Frances | Mark Hoffmann | Emma Hogarth
You Are Here presents place as both physical and conceptual geographies. The exhibition title references the subjective phrase commonly found on directory maps, used to orient and help navigate people within public places. To pinpoint a specific location on a map is easy, but how we interpret place is an unpredictable variable. The artists exhibiting in You Are Here present place as physical, liminal, or psychological spaces through the mediums of: digital glitching, painting, sculpture, video, and collage.
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Alchemy of the Soul: Maria Magdalena Campos-Pons
When: On view January 9, 2016 to April 3, 2016
Where: Peabody Essex Museum, East India Square (161 Essex St) Salem, Massachusetts 01970
How: Official Website
What/Why: “Alchemy of the Soul: Maria Magdalena Campos-Pons presents the most ambitious collaboration between the Afro-Cuban artist and her husband, musician and composer Neil Leonard. Through large-scale blown glass sculptures, paintings, photographs, and evocative soundscapes, the artist draws on the structural forms found in the abandoned sugar mills and rum factories of her childhood island home. Incorporating the sweet smell of rum, this multi-sensory exhibition creates an intoxicating reconceptualization of the often-brutal history of the Cuban sugar industry, offering a visceral experience that ignites the senses and our emotional awareness of place, memory, identity and labor.
Alchemy of the Soul: Maria Magdalena Campos-Pons is made possible in part by June McCormack and John and Cynthia Reed, and by supporters of PEM’s Present Tense Initiative: Terry and Dick Albright, Dick and Deborah Carlson, Susan and Appy Chandler and Fay Chandler. The East India Marine Associates of the Peabody Essex Museum provided additional support.“
Also on view..
Native Fashion Now
How: Official Website
What/Why: “From vibrant street clothing to exquisite haute couture, this exhibition celebrates the visual range, creative expression and political nuance of Native American fashion. Nearly 100 works spanning the last 50 years explore the vitality of Native fashion designers and artists from pioneering Native style-makers to today’s maverick designers making their mark in today’s world of fashion. Also examined is how non-Native designers adopt and translate traditional Native American design motifs in their own work, including Isaac Mizrahi’s now iconic Totem Pole Dress.
Featuring contemporary garments, accessories and footwear spanning a variety of genres and materials, these designers traverse cross-cultural boundaries between creative expressions and cultural borrowing. From one of Patricia Michaels’ (Taos Pueblo) recent finale ensembles from the reality television series Project Runwayto Jamie Okuma’s (Luiseño/Shoshone-Bannock) dramatically beaded Christian Louboutin boots and innovative works made from mylar, vinyl and stainless steel,Native Fashion Now underscores Native concepts of dress and beauty, which are inextricably bound to identity and tradition in a rapidly changing world.”
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Besides
When: On view January 14th-February 13th, 2016
Opening Reception: January 16th, 2016 6-9PM
Where: GRIN Providence, 60 Valley Street, Unit 3, Providence, RI 02909
How: Official Website
What/Why: “Eddie Villanueva, Keegan Grandboi, Allison Baker, Sandra Erbacher, Jessica Lawrence, EDDIE VILLANUEVA, KEEGAN GRANDBOIS, ALLISON BAKER, SANDRA ERBACHER, JESSICA LAWRENCE
Besides is the second installment of a two-part exhibition focused on subtle, persistent revolt. Through the implementation of pale, muted, and pastel colors the artists reference the mundane aesthetic commonly associated with necktie collections, tupperware parties, office climate or holiday decorations. These interdisciplinary works feel familiar and reveal an underhanded, yet delightful rebellion upon continued investigation. By splitting the exhibition into two parts, curators Corey Oberlander and Lindsey Stapleton are able to explore two separate manifestations: the mental and the physical rejection of domestic urbanity.
The five artist exhibition includes Eddie Villanueva, Keegan Grandbois, Allison Baker, Sandra Erbacher and Jessica Lawrence. Focusing on a tangible rejection, this installation will includeobjects, environments and activities that fail to adhere to their usual responsibilities – finding surprising elements of defiant personality in otherwise stereotypical places. Unagressive, aesthetically pleasing, and slightly ambiguous, the pieces in this exhibition will be presented in an unassuming manner – laid about like a casually furnished living space. The work in the show will sit firmly between the familiar and the rebellious, asking the viewer to reassess their understanding of their place within the artists’ environment. Tonally, expect anti-jokes and anti-art; the lack of punchline becomes the punchline without wavering into either criticism or traditional humor.“
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Predictions
When: On view through January 9, 2016
Where: Nave Gallery Annex, 53 Chester St, Somerville, MA
How: Official Website
What/Why: “With recent predictions for a significant El Niño this season, questions and concerns are raised that investigate the tenuous balance between humanity and the natural environment. Artists inPredictions explore this balance.”
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Islands: Evolving in Isolation
When: On view through March 17, 2017
Where: Harvard Museums of Science & Culture , 26 Oxford Street, Cambridge, Massachusetts
How: Official Website
What/Why: “With bizarre woodpecker-like primates, dwarf humans, and flightless birds over nine feet tall, islands are havens for some of the most unusual creatures on our planet. Why are islands such hotspots of biodiversity and how does evolution work within these isolated pockets of life? Islands: Evolving in Isolation is a new Harvard Museum of Natural History exhibition that unravels the mysteries of island biodiversity and evolution. Packed with examples from around the globe, the exhibition brings together an enormous array of plant and animal specimens, including lizards, giant pitcher plants, hissing cockroaches, Galápagos tortoises, New Guinea birds of paradise, Malagasy lemurs, a remarkable Komodo dragon from the Indonesian islands, and a rare fossil cast of Homo floresiensis, a relative of modern humans. An exhibition full of surprises, Islands: Evolving in Isolation will highlight some of the latest research and discoveries made by Harvard scientists.”
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Instantly Yours: A One of a Kind Exhibition
When: On view January 21 − February 21, 2016
Where: PRC Boston, 832 Commonwealth Ave, Boston, MA
How: Official Website
What/Why: “This will be a unique and exciting exhibition of affordable works made to be sold to benefit the PRC and its programs in honor of its 40th anniversary. From an open call to members and the general public, this show will include instant, Polaroid, Impossible Project, and Instagram images outputted in a consistent physical format. A call for work, logistics, and public preview & party are TBD, with more info coming!
IIn the back gallery: Selections from The Curated Fridge by Yorgos Efthymiadis CALL FOR WORK:We’re thrilled to announce that The Curated Fridge will travel to the PRC during the “Instantly Yours” exhibition. Featured in the PRC’s back gallery, the exhibition will include a selection of images submitted to the past Fridge Shows AND to the forthcoming, third one! This über Fridge Show will be curated by Yorgos Efthymiadis (the fridge-inator of this fun idea & past #PRCJuriedShow alum). That’s why you need to apply to their newest Call for Entrée with your latest postcards, promo pieces, or loose prints (deadline of December 4th): call located here! The refrigecurator for the upcoming December/January show (in its usual venue, Yorgos’s abode) will be Bruce Myren, photographer, educator, and PRC board member. Read more about The Curated Fridge in this terrific feature by Don’t Take Pictures magazine here.”
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Land Ho!
When: On view through January 10th, 2016
Where: Fitchburg Art Museum, 185 Elm St, Fitchburg, MA 01420
How: Official Website
What/Why: “Land Ho! is a group exhibition that celebrates the timeless lure of the landscape in art. From majestic mountains and gently rolling hills to bucolic pastures and dewy, green fields, our landscapes are ever-changing terrains with the power to move, excite, and inspire us. Artists have been spellbound by the beauty and mystery of the landscape for centuries, and it is a rare and wonderful treat when landscape paintings from generations past hang side by side with works by twenty-first century talents. Land Ho! aims to wow FAM visitors with exactly that unique and thrilling art-viewing experience.
Land Ho! features artwork by eight New England contemporary artists –Carrie Crane, Sally Curcio, Leila Daw, Warner Friedman, Michele Lauriat, Sandy Litchfield, Shona Macdonald, and Sue McNally – in direct conversation with over thirty landscape paintings from FAM’s permanent collection. Images by Charles Burchfield, Arthur Goodwin, Edward Hopper, Rockwell Kent, John Twachtman, and others will return to the FAM galleries in a magnificently interspersed, intergenerational, multi-scaled mash-up of landscapes old and new, iconic and fantastic, universal and personal.
Land Ho! is not your typical landscape painting show, but rather an exhibition designed to reboot and refresh more traditional preconceptions of the genre and place the FAM collection squarely in that mix. Land Ho! and its educational programs are funded in part by the Simonds Lecture Fund. This exhibition is organized by Curator Mary M. Tinti and Koch Curatorial Fellow Emily M. Mazzola.“
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Travis Durden | Photography
When: On view through February 21, 2016
Opening Reception: Saturday, January 9 6:00 pm – 8:30 pm
Where: EBK Gallery [small works], 218 Pearl Street, Hartford, CT
How: Official Website
What/Why: “Travis Durden is a pseudonym of the Parisian artist behind this project. Fascinated by the construction of myths & idols, he investigates how we, as humans, determine what will be raised to popular culture or elevated to divine cult, and how history has influenced us in making this choice. Bringing together ancient classical art and modern culture is a way for the latter to contribute to the preservation of the former, it is an invitation to go back and rediscover our ancestors’ work before we, the general public, forget about them.”
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I Will Go On..
Aaron Meyers, It Must Be Nearly Finished, 2012-Ongoing. Installation & Performance view, Lewisburg, PA.
When: On view January 11th through April 2nd, 2016
Where: Montserrat College of Art, Beverly, MA
How: Official Website
What/Why: “Montserrat College of Art is pleased to announce I Will Go On… a group exhibition featuring Liz Jaff (Brooklyn, NY), Jon Kuzmich (San Francisco, CA), Aaron Meyers (Los Angeles, CA), Jenny O’Dell (San Francisco, CA), and Rachel Perry Welty (Gloucester, MA). Curated by Associate Curator of Exhibitions and Programs, Pam Campanaro, I Will Go On… exhibits artists whose practices parallel the characteristics of a marathoner: endurance, repetition, and focus. Each artist on view employs repetitive, laborious acts such as: drilling tiny holes into wood until it breaks, painting with a needlepoint, compulsively collecting, or meticulously hand-cutting paper to demonstrate precise focus.
By bringing to light each artist’s exceptional endurance and devotion to their process, Campanaro reveals the bridge between artist as maker and artist as “marathoner.” Preparing for a marathon requires a specific type of conditioning; a kind of training that syncs the physicality of doing and mental stimulus that tells you to keep pressing on. A runner’s training looks a lot like an artist in their studio: They too devote a substantial amount of time to the physicality of doing or making, while the conceptual or mental facets of the work are equally essential in seeing a project through.
Inspired by a passage from Samuel Beckett’s novel The Unnamable, the exhibition title I Will Go On… references a climactic moment in which the author converses with himself repeating, “You must go on, that’s all I know. You must go on. I can’t go on. You must go on. I’ll go on.” Beckett’s struggle is identical to the physical and psychological battle a runner faces during the final miles of a marathon. In the end, true marathoners repeat the process and fine tune their practice in pursuit of different results. The artists exhibiting in I Will Go On… follow suit in that all of the works on view are continuations or adaptations of ongoing projects “running their course.”
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Pages
When: On view from January 8-31, 2015
Opening Reception: Friday, January 8 from 6-8 PM.
Where: Uforge Gallery, 767 Centre Street, Jamaica Plain, MA
How: Official Website
What/Why: Uforge Gallery presents a special exhibition for the month of January, titled Pages.
The well-worn adage may warn us to not judge books by their covers, but it must be said that strong cover design can make a big difference. Cover illustration helps readers to imagine the characters or setting, with artists envisioning new worlds, evoking mood through typography, capturing a significant moment in the story, or abstractly communicating a certain feeling or experience relevant to the narrative. For this special invitational exhibit, Uforge Gallery asked its members and other Boston area artists to create their own book cover illustrations. Through the generous support of Blick Art Materials, each artist was given a 24×30” wood panel on which to work, but that was the primary limitation, with freedom to employ whatever style, media, and narrative inspiration they wished. Many artists chose to reinterpret classic novels, adding their own take to books like The Picture of Dorian Gray, Jane Eyre, and The Grapes of Wrath. Others looked to nonfiction or short stories. Some artists represent pivotal scenes or characters, others focus on more underrated elements or themes found within the text. Through paint, collage, ink, paper, found objects, and photography, Pages takes viewers on a visual journey through stories new and old, to be read, remembered, and rediscovered.
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BRINK v2
When: January 15-March 26, 2016
Opening Reception: Friday, January 22, 6-8pm
Where: Mills Gallery, 539 Tremont St, Boston, MA 02116
How: Official Website
What/Why: “Boston Center for the Arts (BCA) presents BRINKv2: Space and Intimacy, the second exhibition in the BRINK series, dedicated to introducing trends found in the work of innovative emerging artists based in the Northeast. BRINK v2 is focused on sculptors… or then again, not. It presents a convocation of six artists who are developing their practices in a media-rich and medium-agnostic art world. In the current art climate, the concepts “sculptor” and “emerging” have come to indicate market positions rather than states of being. Though the works being shown are sculptures, these artists are indifferent to traditional sculptural materials and designations. BRINK v2 casts its curatorial eye on how else contemporary physicality in art is coming into being, and what kind of being that might be.
What can be seen to unite these artists is their desire to claim space, using materials to push, pull and layer meaning in space. How the work does this is as important as the component materials. Whether responding to their surroundings, enveloping things or leaning against other things, or extending into the room and receding into the wall again, these works construct platforms for their messages. Using non-traditional sculptural materials and novel production methods, they contemplate current subjects like the politics of housing, adjuncting, religion, painting’s process, measurement, gender binaries and family.
BRINK v2: Space and Intimacy includes the work of Johnny Adimando, Samantha Fields, Coe Lapossy, AJ Liberto, Steven Pestana and J.R. Uretsky.”
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A New Surface
When: January 8 – February 3, 2016
Opening Reception: Friday, January 8th from 5:00 pm – 9:00 pm
Where: Abigail Ogilvy 460 Harrison Ave, #C7, Boston, MA 02118
How: Official Website
What/Why: “A Group Exhibition Featuring: Straw-k and Sara Galkin”
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Paper Bound
When: On view through January, 2016
Opening Reception: Friday January 8th, 2016 6-8PM
Where: Gold Gallery, 460C Harrison Ave, Suite 18, Boston, MA 02118
How: Official Website
What/Why: “Gold Gallery is excited to showcase works on paper by Jason Chase, Joerg Dressler, David Gyscek, Mark Peterson, Jeremy Schilling, and guest artist Ari Hauben. Working in photography, silkscreen, digital print, charcoal and mixed media, this diverse grouping is bound by their matrix, paper.”
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Rachel Perry Welty: What Do You Really Want?
When: On view through June 2016
Where: Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, 25 Evans Way, Boston MA, 02115
How: Official Website
What/Why: “Rachel Perry Welty is the seventh artist-in-residence invited to create a temporary site-specific work for the Museum’s façade. Ms. Welty’s project at the Gardner reflects on life, culture, and consumption in the 21st century.
The artist asks us a very opened ended question. What do you really want? This seemingly simple question was meticulously selected by the artist from the subject line of email spam. “Spam is a daily annoyance,” writes Welty, “but in these words that came to my inbox, I have found something accidentally poetic. I am struck by the sheer possibility suggested by these messages. Taken out of the context for which they were intended and re-inserted into another kind of economy (that of the gallery, and that of the Museum) the words become something hopeful and quite beautiful.”
Using the democratic universal element of language, Welty crushes and forms the sentence out of a single piece of aluminium foil. Then she photographs it against a color very dear to Isabella Stewart Gardner’s heart Bardini Blue. “While I think this phrase speaks to any passerby on the street, or visitor to the Museum, it also holds a meaning in the context of this house with its collection gathered by Mrs. Gardner. We think we knew what she wanted by the arrangement of her objects, and since her death we only have her will for argument. What do any of us really want, anyway?”
There is humor and beauty and hope in the way Welty captures the flow of lived experience in tinsel.”
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Group Exhibition
When: On view through January 2016
Opening Reception: Friday January 8th, 2016 6-8PM
Where: Alpha Gallery, 460C Harrison Avenue, Suite 1, Boston, MA 02118
How: Official Website
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I Know Just What You’re Saying
When: On view through January 31, 2016
Opening Reception: Friday, January 8, 2016, 5:00-8:00 pm
Where: Kingston Gallery, 450 Harrison Ave, No. 43, Boston, MA 02116
How: Official Website
What/Why: “I Know Just What You’re Saying is an all-members group exhibition featuring a conversation conducted only with works of art. In a visual version of the telephone game, each artist presented a work of their own art to one artist member, and that artist responded in kind with a work of their own to another artist. The one-direction exchange following the order of a list made by Gallery Director, Shana Dumont Garr. The results of the uni-directional exchange, conducted via email throughout the fall of 2015, will be displayed in the gallery this January. The artwork will be presented in the same order as the “conversations” took place so that viewers may follow the conversation, and decide for themselves if the artists do, indeed, know just what their colleagues are saying.”
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A Map Home: Artist Residency Program at Boston Children’s Museum
When: On view through March 14, 2016
Opening Reception: Tuesday January 15, 2016, 6-8pm
Drop in workshops for Children: January 18 and February 16, 2016, 12-2pm
Professional Practice Event for Arts Educators: March 12, 2016, 10-1pm
Where: Boston Children’s Museum, 308 Congress Street, Boston, MA 02210
How: Official Website
What/Why: “Current, Boston Children’s Museum’s inaugural artist-in-residence program is inspired by the teaching and learning theories of contemporary artists and arts educators. Each year, an artist will be invited into the Museum to enact for children, families and colleagues, their unique understandings of what it means to teach and learn with art. For 3-4 weeks our featured artist is invited to create work live in a studio space in the Museum in preparation for a site-specific installation and related programming in the Museum Gallery over the course of a two month exhibition.
Current creates a direct channel between contemporary artists and children through the live studio, the site-specific installation, artist-designed learning experiences and child-oriented video interviews. By creating an immersive and durable installation, the project is meant to inspire and broaden a child’s developing notion of what it means to be an artist. In addition, the program is designed to expand and enhance the role Boston Children’s Museum plays in a broader dialogue on arts teaching and learning. It is our hope that by creating a laboratory for artistic research and exploration, this program can assist in the development of more dynamic and challenging understandings of art education.
Current was developed in collaboration with Alter Projects, a Boston-based enterprise dedicated to fostering artistic infrastructure through custom arts programming and consultation.
Eve Ewing, the first artist-in-residence, is a celebrated artist, educator, scholar and writer. Ewing’s project A Map Home is an immersive installation using swaths of canvas, paint and Sharpie markers that explores themes of place, childhood adventure and exploration, and the ways we connect text and image to make meaning in everyday life. Ewing has thought carefully about creating various modes of engagement with textual and imagistic elements designed to be read by viewers of any age, and in any order. Like a paper fortune teller, a children’s search-and-find picture book, or a recurring visit to a familiar neighborhood, A Map Home suggests new points of discovery and new stories to share depending on who is viewing it and when. A Map Home draws inspiration from leading contemporary artists such as Shinique Smith, Wangechi Mutu and Mark Bradford, as well as the street-level images of Ewing’s native Chicago – handwritten cardboard signs, grocery store discount posters, graffiti, tags, and scribbles on bus seats and train windows, newspaper circulars and paintings of food on corner restaurant windows. “
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Sandrine Schaefer | Pace Investigations No. 2
When: Saturday, January 30at 12 PM – 8 PM
Where: Mobius, Inc., 55 Norfolk St, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02139
How: Official Website
What/Why: “Create a performance. Repeatedly cycle through this performance 8 times over 8 hours. Each cycle of the performance loses time. As this occurs, the actions in the performance must shift. Some become unrecognizable from previous cycles through the adjustment of pace. Some become different actions all together. Some actions are abandoned, while others increasingly gain significance.
This is an exercise in identifying the essential within a piece. It is an exercise in surrender. It is an exercise that exposes the impossibility of human body, an exercise designed to fail.”
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What did I forget? ..I’m sure many things since my dog stepped on the keyboard and deleted an entire draft ;*
Happy 2016 .. year of the monkey (cat).
(0:21-0:25 A++)
Now go see art. ♥
