the prettiest star x letting my guard down x the beauty of tyranny x hello hell
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FERTILE SOLITUDE: THE FINAL WEEK(S) ™
WHEN: On view through December 18, 2016
WHERE: Mills Gallery at Boston Center for the Arts, 539 Tremont St, Boston, MA 02116
HOW: OFFICIAL WEBSITE
PARTICIPATING ARTISTS: Piper Brett, Caleb Cole, Emily Eveleth, Dana Filibert, Cig Harvey, Kyle Hittmeier, Annette Lemieux, Megan and Murray McMillan, Noritaka Minami, Hao Ni, Steven Pestana, Shelley Reed, Erin M. Riley and Sarah Wentworth
WHAT/WHY: “In the rush of everyday life, we occasionally need to hit pause (and reset), but even a moment’s peace can be hard to come by. This frenzy is often furthered by our mutually enabling relationship with technology and a self-inflicted state of constant connectivity. Unwilling to put down our phones to see a sunset, sharing our daily comings and goings with the ghosts in the machine, we self-sabotage our peaceful pursuits and further separate ourselves from ourselves.
Fertile Solitude hopes to offer a reprieve from the madding crowd, an oasis that coaxes us to look inward and take steps towards overcoming our widespread aversion to introspection.
Within the physical framework of a maze, exhibition visitors are left to go their own ways. Their journeys will take them through the works of 15 artists whose histories and visual languages tell their own stories. The exhibition has no singular origin. Rather, its narrative is a compilation of external observations of human behavior, the curator’s ongoing personal quest to achieve homeostasis, the notebooks of French philosopher Albert Camus, the musings of British psychoanalytical writer Adam Phillips, and even a recent study finding that, to an overwhelming degree, people would rather shock themselves with an electrical current than sit in quiet contemplation for even 15 minutes.
With an emphasis on the individual, Fertile Solitude presents art in an unexpected environment that encourages wanderlust, rewards curiosity and contemplates the restorative properties of simply being alone with your own thoughts.”
Curated by me. For you.
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Vernon Street Open Studios
When: December 3rd and 4th, 2016 Noon – 6pm
Where: 6 & 20 Vernon Street, Somerville, MA
How: Official Website
What/Why: “Vernon Street Studios is a community well known throughout the area for the quality of work produced by artists with established reputations as well as exciting newcomers. Located in an historic 19th-century brick industrial building, Vernon Street housed the first group of artists in Somerville to open their studios to the public in 1975. Open Studios allows attendees to learn about the creative process, interact with artists in the spaces where they create, purchase original artwork, and discover new talent.
Artists at Vernon Street Studios welcome the public into their workspaces at 6 & 20 Vernon Street at two different times each year: in the Fall for Vernon Street Open Studios, and in the Spring (during the first weekend of May) as one of many participating venues as part of Somerville Open Studios.“
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Winter Group Show
When: On view through December 2016
Opening Reception: Friday December 2nd, 2016
Where: Chase Young Gallery, 450 Harrison Ave, No. 57, Boston, MA 02118
How: Official Website
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ABC/123
When: On view through December 31, 2016
Where: Steven Zevitas Gallery,450 Harrison Avenue #47 | Boston, MA 02118
How: Official Website
What/Why: “Featuring: Suzan Frecon, Xylor Jane, David X. Levine, Jonathan Lasker, Chris Martin, Andrew Masullo, James Siena, Cary Smith, Richard Tuttle, Dan Walsh and Chuck Webster”
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Robert Freeman: New Works
When: On view through December 18, 2016
Where: Adelson Gallery, 520 Harrison Ave, Boston, MA 02118
How: Official Website
What/Why: Learn more about the exhibition here
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Plenty
When: On view through January 14, 2017
Where: 13 Forest Gallery, 167A Massachusetts Ave, Arlington, MA
How: Official Website
What/Why:“As another year closes, we have Plenty to be thankful for!
13FOREST Gallery is pleased to present Plenty 2016, our ninth annual holiday exhibition. Opening just in time for Thanksgiving, Plenty celebrates the work of 49 New England artists, a number of whom are exhibiting with us for the first time. Not only does Plenty recognize a multitude of makers, but it also celebrates artistic media of all kinds – painting, drawing, printmaking, photography and sculpture are all represented. Take part in this visual feast as we celebrate the best of 2016 and ring in the new year!
Most works featured in Plenty are modest in size and budget and make great holiday gifts. As you’ll see, we’ve also been busy stocking up on our unique collection of handmade ceramics, jewelry and glasswork as well as holiday ornaments, cards and toys for young and old.
Preview the exhibition with the slide show, below, and be sure to join us on Saturday, November 19, as we mark the opening of Plenty with a reception from 4-6 pm.”
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Sally Fine | SeaChange
When: On view through December 18, 2016
Where: Boston Sculptors Gallery, 486 Harrison Ave, Boston, MA, 02118
How: Official Website
What/Why:“Sally S. Fine’s solo exhibition of new sculpture, SeaChange, will be on view at Boston Sculptors Gallery November 16 through December 18, 2016. SeaChange explores the impact of climate change, pollution and overfishing on sea creatures. Embracing a wide range of materials and processes, Fine’s work includes carved wood, cast and slumped glass, riveted metal, and electroluminescent wire. Her sculptural shipwrecks are hybrids—part fish, part ship, part sea— while the sea creatures she depicts are both realistic and visionary. Fine focuses attention not only on those creatures whose survival is in danger, but also on species that are adapting to climate change. Fine also examines symbiotic relationships and the balance between predator and prey. The work is inspired by historical, fictional, and scientific sources. Melville’s Moby Dick and Verne’s 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea provide a dramatic context, while the artist’s experience as a scuba
diver also informs the work.”
Also on view..
Leslie Wilcox | LEEPS: Leap of Faith Forward
What/Why: Learn more about the exhibition here!
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In Place- Painting sculpture and photography by Mia Cross and Cory Munro Shea
When: On view through December 18, 2016
Where: Fountain Street Fine Art, 59 Fountain Street, Framingham MA 01702
How: Official Website
What/Why:“Starting on November 17, Fountain Street Gallery in Framingham opens a new exhibit: “In Place,” featuring the work of two Boston-area artists, both Framingham natives, Cory Munro Shea and Mia Cross.
Cory Munro Shea is a working artist and arts administrator residing in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Her artwork has appeared in several galleries in the New England area. Shea’s work explores the idea of expectation crashing into reality, most often through mix-media photography. In this particular exhibition, Shea also branches into 3D installation work.
Mia Cross is a Framingham native who graduated from Boston University in 2014 with a double major in painting and sculpture. Since graduating Cross has shown in many Boston-area spaces, including the Danforth Museum of Art, the Attleboro Arts Museum, and several galleries in Boston’s South End. Cross explores the figure through oil painting and life-size sculpture. She currently works out of her studio in Framingham.”
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Concerning the Spiritual
When: On view through December 31, 2016
Where: Matter & Light, 63 Thayer Street, Boston, MA 02116
How: Official Website
What/Why: “Concerning the Spiritual in Abstract Art.”
A group exhibition featuring work from Willem de Kooning, John Walker, Bill Jensen, Natalie Edgar and many more, on view from Nov. 18 – Dec. 31
Pre-reception musical performance at 6:30 pm from Chimera New Music
Spiritual ambition in art is nothing new. From the myriad, worldwide traditions of sacred art to Hegel’s assertion that the true content of art is “the Divine, the deepest interests of mankind, and the most comprehensive truths of the spirit,” many artists have understood their vocation as that of mediator between spirit and matter. Historically, most visual art has been in some degree mimetic, and sacred art is no exception.
However, beginning with Wassily Kandinsky’s pioneering work in pure abstraction and his theorizing about “The Spiritual in Art,” many of the most spiritually ambitious visual artists of the modern age have found that their ambitions are best served by the stripped down, elemental language of abstraction. This type of ambition motivated many of the Abstract Expressionist painters who rose to prominence in mid-century New York, and it motivates many visual artists working in 2016.
The question is: why? Why might an artwork of abstracted color, texture, shape, etc. be a better vehicle for the exploration of spiritual realities than a picture of a real-world thing? To explore this question, Matter & Light is hosting a broad-ranging group show of established and emerging artists whose spiritual concerns have motivated them to work in an abstract vein.”
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Jamie O’Neill: Heavy Metal
When: On view through January 6th, 2017
Where: Lot F Gallery, 145 Pearl St, Boston, MA 02110
How: Official Website
What/Why: “Later this November, Jamie O’Neill will be debuting his new series of realistic paintings at Lot F Gallery. ”Heavy Metal” opens on Friday, November 18th, in what will be the artists fourth solo exhibition with the Boston gallery. Honing in on his signature blue collar aesthetic, the artist finds beauty in the slowly decaying world around us.
Well known for his freight trains, cars, boats and cityscapes, many of the artist’s works pop off the canvas, appearing to be three dimensional. Using mostly oil paints, he brings images inspired by growing up in New England and his fondness for graffiti, to life. Sometimes he will top off a piece with a spray-painted tag right before calling it finished. ”Heavy Metal” demonstrates Jamie’s technical skill and keen eye for compositions as a painter.
Raised on Nantucket and the South Shore, Jamie O’Neill moved to Jamaica Plain in 1998. Spending the next ten years there, he earned his BFA from the Art Institute of Boston, and has shown at various locations around the city. After leaving Boston in 2008 he lived in San Francisco and then Brooklyn. Jamie now resides in Gloucester with his wife and son.”
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Fatma Bucak: And Men Turned Their Faces From There
When: On view through February 05, 2017
Where: David Winton Bell Gallery, 64 College St, Providence, RI 02912
How: Official Website
What/Why:“A conversation on the Turkish-Armenian border, a performance in a minefield surrounding a refugee camp, a cultivation of flowers brought from Syria to the United States: Fatma Bucak’s video performances, photographs, and installations grapple with the poetics, pragmatics, and human consequences of borders. This exhibition presents a selection of Bucak’s recent video performances alongside new works addressing media censorship, state violence, and mass migration.
Often filmed as static shots in single takes, Bucak’s video performances appear as durational photographs, exploring the beauty and otherness of borderlands and the fluidity and contingency of borders themselves. In Obligatory togetherness (2016), she appears locked in a Sisyphean dance with the trunk of a felled palm tree. She struggles to keep the looming figure upright amidst a minefield surrounding the Dakhla refugee camp in Western Sahara, a remnant of the forty-year-long conflict between the government of Morocco and the Sahrawi people.
Bucak regularly collaborates with communities on her projects. Both I see the path (2015) and When I have to cross the bar (2015) result from her work with migrants in southern Texas who crossed the Mexican-U.S. border. Developing from conversations into shared actions, works such as these are efforts towards collaborative self-determination. In the artist’s words, “this is where we create our own order.”
Bucak’s new works address the Kurdish conflict in Turkey and the Turkish-Syrian border near where she was born. Frames containing painted glass obscure landscapes of destruction. Eighty-four photographs and a video performance document the washing of twelve weeks of Turkish newspapers by Bucak and two other women. A paragraph written in ink made from the ashes of a book testifies to the burning of a Kurdish independent publisher’s warehouse; while a lithograph records the cumulative oblivion resulting from carving names of hundreds of victims of enforced disappearances—one over the next—on a broken lithography stone. Finally, a bed of earth cultivates, hopefully, cuttings of Damask roses brought from Damascus, Syria to the United States. The flowers strive to survive and put down roots after a grueling journey and displacement.
The works included in And men turned their faces from there are at once both meticulous and perplexing invitations to reconsider how we negotiate borders—physically, ideologically, conceptually, ethically—and to question definitions and perceptions of nationalism, ethnicity, religion, and gender. Bucak’s new works, in particular, are prompts to reflect on shared experiences of political violence, oppression, and suppression throughout the world. ”
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Solidarity with Standing Rock
When: Saturday December 3rd, 6 PM – 2 AM
Where: Distillery Gallery, 516 E 2nd St, Boston, MA 02127
How: Official Website
What/Why: “BOSTON MA- Dec. 3 2016, Distillery Gallery is hosting an art auction benefitting the frontline, indigenous led resistance to the Dakota Access Pipeline. Boston based curators Olivia Ives-Flores, Oliver Mak, and Silvi Naci are selecting a wide array of works from local and national artists to be auctioned at the event.
An after party event will also be hosted at Firebrand Saints with DJs Big Bear and Yvng Pavl CLLCTV Boston. All sales of Notch Beer will be donated to #NODAPL Resources.
The art auction is Dec. 3rd 6-9pm at the Distillery (516 E2nd St. South Boston). This event is free, 21 plus. Featured Artists include Matt Zaremba, Raul Gonzalez, Heather McGrath, Alex Sewell, Ana Karina DaCosta, SarahCronin, Autumn Ahn, Ellen Murphy, Thomas Chung, Shane Butler, Elaine Bay, Nick Zaremba, Josh Falk, Maria Molteni, Greg Burdett, Kevin Redstar, Henry Kunkel, Erin Shaw, Damion Silver, Loretta Park, Zachary Naylor, Brian Hart, Pat Falco, Scott Chasse, Andrew Jacob, Farrell Mason, Cyrille Conan, Marka27, Jesse Hernandez, Marisa Malik, Jay Lacouture, Ryan Lombardi, Kristin Texeria, TJ Kelley III, Percy Fortini-Wright and more. DJ Emerson (White Animal Sound) and Creaturos will perform. Antidesigns will be live silkscreening at the event.”
(Bonus image c/o Nabeela Vega, because I can.)
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Brett Angell – Other Voices
Edie Bresler – We Sold A Winner
Yorgos Efthymiadis – Letting My Guard Down
Frank Armstrong – Trees
When: On view through January 14, 2017
Opening Reception: Friday December 2nd, 5:30 – 8:00pm
Where: Gallery Kayafas, 450 Harrison Avenue #37 Boston, MA 02118
How: Official Website
What/Why: Brett Angell – Other Voices”We are pleased to be exhibiting Brett Angell’s newest paintings, Other Voices. After seven years of making collage/paintings, Angell is now creating gouache paintings which reference his surroundings in Chelsea. Traveling daily from Chelsea to his place of work – the Museum of Fine Arts, Angell became fascinated with the environs – light, weather, ships, as they are transformed by the Chelsea River. These beautiful works are displayed in vintage boxes, drawers, and other found wooden pieces. Their contained mysteries seem simple and perfect,
“The paintings are intended to slow life down. Extended concentration and healthy viewing times are suggested here to get the most out of the paintings. There is just enough information in the work to guide but also enough space for personal exploration and reflection. They are delicate without being precious. They are distractions for our hectic and full lives. The paintings are contemporary but celebrate the hand-made rather than the polished minimal devices that have become such a part of our lives. Domestic scale is celebrated here rather than the gigantic institutional works we are so used to in our museums and galleries. Intimate size and one-on-one viewing is what these paintings call for. So put down your phone and disconnect for a while.” Brett Angell, 2016″
Edie Bresler – We Sold A Winner
This is Edie Bresler’s first exhibit at Gallery Kayafas. We Sold A Winner is a series of color photographs depicting the people and places of the small, family-run convenience and liquor stores that sell lottery tickets across the country; specifically, those places which have sold a $1,000,000 or more winning ticket. Interested also in the actual paper talisman, Bresler has created one-of-a-kind collages using letters from the discarded losing lottery tickets, as in “If I won I wouldn’t have to struggle”… The viewer is privy to the inner workings of the small places and the structure of the system that provides the lottery players with their hopes and opportunity to be the next big winner.
“With the help of Google alert, I follow this trail of winning jackpots ($1 million to $529 million) back to the small family stores where the ticket was sold. Road trips wind across many states, lasting one or two months, allowing multiple days at each location. I have witnessed first hand the hometown banter and fellowship that is the backbone of customer loyalty. Shop owners, managers and clerks are well versed in the names and relationships of everyone who walks through their door. Regulars come for conversation, counsel and the comfort that accompanies familiarity. “When they leave they feel like someone and have a good feeling about the store.” On the walls, in between lottery tickets and signage, are family mementos and photographs along with flags from many countries. Owners and clerks represent working America: some are immigrants, making their way in a foreign land, while others are the second, third and even fourth generation to live and work in the neighborhood.
Small family-run convenience and liquor stores are the largest retailers of lottery tickets across the country. Rather than raise taxes on those at the top, legislators in forty-four states depend on lottery revenue to prop up shrinking state budgets. When I hear people call lottery players stupid or reference the lottery as a tax on the poor, I think about the many hard working Americans I’ve met, caught up in the conundrum that “you can’t win if you don’t play” and “the house always wins.” I seek to evoke greater empathy for the resilient, yet often invisible workers at the heart of lottery America.” Edie Bresler, 2016
Yorgos Efthymiadis – Letting My Guard Down
Yorgos Efthymiadis is a fine art and architectural photographer. Originally from Greece, he is currently living in Somerville. Efthymiadis’ love of architecture and shapes of buildings is evident in the color images, Letting My Guard Down, a project he began in 2014 and continues today. These photographs show us the “scapes” Efthymiadis is attracted to when he travels, where he feels comfortable when is away from home. There is a meditative aspect to his compositions, a balance, a sense of peace and safety… the viewer accompanies Efthymiadis on his journey which is a window to his identity.
“It took me over a year of collecting pieces from different countries that I’ve visited to come to the realization that no matter the place, I will always find myself drawn to serene and solitary scapes. Surrounded by buildings and overwhelming skylines, feeling lost in the chaos that public life creates, I’m continuously on the move to catch up with the frenetic rhythms of reality; yet again, I remain static. I’m constantly in search of an escape, trying to free myself from holding on to the past, to an idea, a person or a thought and yet I’m constrained, bound. These images are a mirror of myself, not a window to the world outside. These solitary subjects are nothing but self-portraits, scattered glimmers of my soul; a wry representation of the weight that I carry, the anchor that holds me down.” Yorgos Efthymiadis, 2016
Efthymiadis is the founder of “The Curated Fridge” a project to celebrate fine art photography and connect photographers around the world – (http://lenscratch.com/2016/09/the-curated-fridge/) Exhibits are on his refrigerator in his home!
Frank Armstrong – Trees
Frank Armstrong’s forte is the landscape. Photographing for over 50 years, Armstrong began his career as a photojournalist working at the University of Texas. This past summer, he drove for months from Massachusetts to Alaska, photographing as he travelled. His work is truthful and direct, framed with an intimation of what lies beyond the simple edges. We are exhibiting six of his black and white photographs of Trees, which span several years. There is a quietness in his work – and a rewarding rich description and celebration of looking.
Armstrong’s work is in many permanent collections, including: National Museum of American Art, Washington, D.C.; Museum of Modern Art, NY; Amon Carter Museum, Forth Worth Texan, New Orleans Museum of Art, New Orleans, Louisiana; and University of Michigan Museum of Art. Armstrong lives in West Boylston and teaches at Clark University in Worcester.
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Thomas Jackson: Emergent Behavior
When: On view through December 23,2016
Opening Reception: Friday December 2, 5-8PM
Where: Miller Yezerski Gallery, 460 Harrison Ave, Boston, MA, 02118
How: Official Website
Also on view..
Kay Ruane: Two Drawings
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The Salon Show
(Samson, Benjamin Flythe)
When: On view through January 29, 2017
Opening Reception: Friday, December 2, 5-8 pm
Where: Abigail Ogilvy Gallery, 460 Harrison Ave, C7, Boston, MA 02118
How: Official Website
What/Why: “ELISA ADAMS
ADRIA ARCH
KEENAN DERBY
NINA DINE
BENJAMIN FLYTHE
LISA A. FOSTER
WILLIAM VAUGHN GRIFFIN
HOLLY HARRISON
NICOLE PATEL
JULIA S. POWELL
JENNY SWANSON
CARON TABB
MARK TORTORELLA
KATIE WILD
NATALIA WRÓBEL”
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Members’ Holiday Exhibition
When: On view through December 30, 2016
Opening Reception: December 2, 6-8pm
Where: Galatea Fine Art, 460 Harrison Ave, Boston, MA 02118
How: Official Website
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Leftovers
When: On view through December 2nd, 2016
Where: Montserrat College of Art, 23 Essex Street, Beverly, MA, 01915
How: Official Website
What/Why: “LEFTOVERS is a senior thesis exhibition featuring the work of six artists of various concentrations.
LiAnn Natter’s contemporary paintings focus on the flesh and female form, and explore themes of identity, social beauty standards, and dysmorphia within the female mind and body. She uses a variety of different languages to discuss these issues, such as print, collage, and embroidery techniques.
Ricky Molander’s paintings use the grid as a starting point; he creates geometric abstractions with some illusion, focusing on color relationships.
Ryan Kumicz’s text-based works often represent humanist official culture within a wealthy, Atlantic beach town. It is meant to represent the authentic, “real” east end of Long Island, NY, depicted through books, signature, and paper works.
Devon Unwin is a graphic designer who likes to solve problems through clean and simple design. Her work focuses on creating media mainly through algorithms that show the chaotic yet structured bases of 2D and 3D fractal design.
Tori Cossette’s installations consist of paint, wood and digital projection; the materials coexist as assemblages which rely on each other to create one unified image. Her work focuses on the fragmented memories of places once occupied, and function as deconstructed paintings.
Charlie Morse is a printmaker who works primarily in monoprints that are made to extend beyond the flat plane of the wall; his work focuses on humankind’s relationship with the universe.”
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Measuring the Well
work by Charlie Crowell & Markel Uriu
When: On view through December 2016
Opening Reception: Friday December 2nd 2016, 6:00 – 8:30PM
Where: Lens Gallery,524 Harrison Ave, Boston, MA
How: Official Website
What/Why: “Two artists explore contrasts: private versus public, interior versus the outdoors, memory or dream. With fine drawing skills and clear understanding of sculptural form and negative space, Charlie Crowell and Markel Uriu both examine the poetry of material, texture, and physical space.”
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Becoming Real or Loved Off?
When: On view through January 7, 2017
Opening Reception: Saturday, December 3, 6PM – 9PM
Where: Yellow Peril Gallery, 60 Valley St, Providence, RI 02909
How: Official Website
What/Why: “Generally, by the time you are Real, most of your hair has been loved off, and your eyes drop out and you get loose in the joints and very shabby. But these things don’t matter at all, because once you are Real you can’t be ugly, except to people who don’t understand.” ― Margery Williams, The Velveteen Rabbit
FEATURED ARTISTS: Sarah Dager Evoker Ivy Haldeman Mary Kudlak Sandy McDonald Rebekah Major Mara Trachtenberg Kylie Why
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Michel Delacroix
When: On view through December 2016
Where: mfinearts, 61 Thayer Street, Boston, MA
How: Official Website
What/Why: “We are pleased to present a remarkable collection of new paintings by Michel Delacroix, celebrated master of the Naïf tradition and self styled “painter of dreams and of the poetic past.” Internationally acclaimed for his nostalgic visions of the city of light, Delacroix has devoted over six decades to painting what he calls “the Paris of then,” the dream-like place the city became during the 1940’s. From sweeping skylines of the Eiffel Tower and Notre Dame Cathedral to quiet, snow covered Parisian streets, these works filled with beauty and romance are sure to sweep you back to a city of by-gone years and innocent splendors.”
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The Beauty of Tyranny
When: On view through December 31, 2016
Where: Worcester Art Museum, 55 Salisbury St, Worcester, MA 01609
How: Official Website
What/Why: “YOUNG-HAE CHANG HEAVY INDUSTRIES’ provocative multimedia installation, THE BEAUTY OF TYRANNY, is a contemporary reconsideration of Alfred Stieglitz’s The Steerage. Stieglitz’s iconic photogravure depicts impoverished steerage passengers, some of whom were rejected by U.S. immigration officers, on a ship leaving New York bound for Europe. Considered a canonical work of early American photography, The Steerage has also become synonymous with the immigrant experience at the turn of the 20th century when waves of Jewish and Eastern European immigrants arrived in the U.S. to avoid war and persecution.”
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ALEX WEBB: La Calle
When: On view through December 23, 2016
Where: Robert Klein Gallery, 38 Newbury St, Boston, MA 02116
How: Official Website
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Margo Margolis: Paintings & Works on Paper
When: On view through January 14, 2017
Where: Beth Urdang Gallery, 460 Harrison Ave, Boston, MA 02118
How: Official Website
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HOT PINK, SOFT PINK, RUSTY ORANGE, WHITE
A solo exhibition by Liza Bingham
When: On view through December 11, 2016
Where: How’s Howard, 450 Harrison Ave, Suite 309c, Boston, MA 02118
How: Official Website
What/Why: “How’s Howard? is pleased to present a solo exhibition by Liza Bingham. “Hot Pink, Soft Pink, Rusty Orange, White” consists of paintings completed with sculptural intent. Under muslin surfaces, Bingham’s shaped panels incorporate raised surfaces and curved edges that droop as though time and gravity have played a critical role in their formation.
For this project, a series of four works emphasize Bingham’s use of repetition while exploring semiotics and highlighting what is missing in our current conversation.
Each painting addresses the same composition, layered step-by-step and completed in one sitting. Viewed all together, these works change from one to the next, yet are anchored by the use of a template, giving evidence of the artist’s process. A vaguely familiar shape defined by one continuous brush stroke hugs the confines of each panel. These gestural shapes look symbolic, fashioned after a puzzle piece or state border. With color being the only variant, a limited sense of self-expression or preconceived notion of individuality becomes evident.
Although Bingham’s work appears as non-objective abstraction, these bulky, odd objects take over the space as if they are restless visitors entering into an urgent conversation. “
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Constructing Place
Elaine Alibrandi and Frank Poor
When: On view through December 15, 2016
Where: Trustman Gallery, Simmons College, 300 Fenway, Boston, MA 02115
How: Official Website
What/Why: “Simmons College presents Constructing Place, an exhibition of photographs by Elaine Alibrandi and sculptures by Frank Poor from November 14-December 15 at the Trustman Art Gallery, located on the fourth floor, Main College Building, 300 The Fenway in Boston. A reception will be held on Thursday, November 17 from 5-7 P.M. with an artists’ talk at 5:45. Closed November 23-25.
Humans construct narratives with the ways they use space and architecture. Elaine Alibrandi’s photographs examine how people on their daily commute inhabit a space – that although often grimy or lonesome – has its own language. Frank Poor’s sculptural evocations of rural and small town architecture play with scale, perspective and historical nuance.
In her series Undertow, Alibrandi focuses on the desolate state of the Boston MBTA. We see architecture, stations and trains amid her close examination of surface textures, lighting and unusual viewpoints. In Distortion, an all-over barrier of white Ben-Day dots blocks our access to the layered imagery beyond, of lights and architectural components. The veteran T rider will recognize many of the locations, but they are transformed through Alibrandi’s lens, from a bustling hive of humanity to places where we feel like interlopers. Alibrandi is a graduate of Massachusetts College of Art and Design and recently returned from a residency in San Menaio, Italy.
Frank Poor creates hybrid images/sculptures. His pieces skew our thinking about architecture by leaving the underlying structure of the buildings visible in several places. The works on view arose from a residency in Columbia, South Carolina. Through his process, he evokes a historical view of buildings that speak about place. In Cotton Depot – Bishopville, SC, Poor suggests both a work-a-day atmosphere and a sense of verdant growth overwhelming the abandoned building. Poor is a RISD graduate and a recipient of two Rhode Island State Council Merit awards. The works include multiple perspectives that haunt us with their vulnerability.
The photographs and constructions of Alibrandi and Poor catch us; we see ordinary venues telling evocative tales of human habitation.”
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Allison Bianco: Atlantic Time
When: On view December 1, 2016–February 22, 2017
Opening Reception: Thursday December 1, 5:30-8:30PM
Where: Weil Gallery, Watson Fine Arts, Wheaton College, Norton, MA
How: Official Website
What/Why: “Printmaker Allison Bianco mines her experiences on New England waterways to create a series of vibrant, evocative prints that speak about nostalgia—that longing for a certain place and time that may no longer exist as we remember it.”
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Sarah Wentworth | The Fishline Creature
When: December 09, 2016- January 13, 2017
Opening Reception: Wednesday December 07, 5:30-7:00PM
Where: St. Botolph Club, 199 Commonwealth Ave, Boston, MA
How: Official Website
What/Why: “Sarah Wentworth (MFA Tufts/Museum School, BFA MassArt) is a Cambridge artist whose work has been exhibited at the Mills Gallery, Trustman Gallery, Danforth Museum, Brattleboro Museum, and has been included in The Curated Fridge and White Columns’ Artist Registry. She is best known for her Postcard Project: Surreptitious Installations, in which she appropriated the use of museum shops as exhibition space to humorously subvert the sequence of art marketing in the creation of artists’ reputations. Recent projects include Passport Pictures and Tourist Pictures which used performed photos of the artist as various personae, exploring image and identity.
Untitled (fishline) is a series of performed photos centered on a costume made of knit fishing line. The fishline creature is an ‘unknown being’ reminiscent of the mythological selkie, a creature living along the water’s edge, having emerged from the ocean. The fishline creature may also have come from the sea, spawned from trashed plastics swirling in the ocean – as if abandoned fishing nets came to life as they washed ashore. Like other wild creatures, the fishline creature appears fleetingly at the periphery of human habitation, often at dawn or dusk.
Costume (as disguise) may seem at odds with the revelatory tradition of self-portraiture, but in this project it serves as a neutralizer by presenting the artist as a naïf in the natural landscape. The photos, made on Deer Isle, Maine, also celebrate the exquisite light and changing weather that formed the artist’s visual memories growing up along Penobscot Bay.”
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O’DAY
When: On view through January 15, 2017
Opening Reception: Friday December 2nd, 5-9PM
Where: Kevin Day Studio // Gallery, 460B Harrison Avenue, Unit B-17, Boston
How: Official Website
What/Why: “Featuring new work from O’Day’s Cityscapes and Structures series
Kevin Day is proud to host Adam O’Day’s new oil paintings for the holiday season.
The show O’DAY sums up the two main series that the artist has been working on for the past few years. The Cityscapes theme explores direct visuals and surroundings, while the Structures series creates mind-scapes of the soul.
Often depicting local scenes with a gritty flair, O’Day’s work drips with color. In his pieces, red and blue clouds hang behind Kenmore, pastels reflect the city’s skyline in the Charles River, and the brownstones of Newbury Street dress themselves in tie-dye. O’Day’s depictions of Boston go beyond what is there, beyond what he actually sees. They place emotion above reality. They represent what he feels. “I think it’s important to get down to the nitty gritty of a place and express that through color,” O’Day said. “It’s a more interesting vibe.”-Ariana Igneri, BDCwire
Adam O’Day is one of Boston’s brightest and most prolific young artists to emerge on the arts scene in a long time. His work is both timeless and brand new at the same as he combines fine art disciplines, nu-contemporary lines and bits of modern street art to create a painting style all his own. -Future Arts, Boston Children’s Charity”
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The Prettiest Star
When: On view through December 2016
Opening Reception: Friday December 2nd, 6-10P
Where: VERY, 59 Wareham Street, Boston, MA
How: Official Website
What/Why: “The Prettiest Star is the new group show at VERY! Featuring John Axon, Juliann Cydylo, Pat Falco, Arthur Henderson, Isabel Riley, Phil Knoll, and Ellen Rich. Please stop by for the opening. This show is big and juicy and could cause orgasm! Just sayin. VERY will be open on Saturdays from 12-5 throughout December and by appointment.”
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Raúl Gonzalez: Forbidden Frontera
When: On view through December 21, 2016
Where: Carroll and Sons Gallery, 450 Harrison Ave, Boston, MA 02118
How: Official Website
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Music and Math | Dennis Miller and Hubert Ho
When: Thursday December 08, 2016 7-8PM
Where: Bartos Theatre MIT List Visual Arts Center, Cambridge, MA
How: Official Website
What/Why: “What is the nature of knowledge? Where does music lead the mind? Dennis Miller andHubert Ho think about these big questions through the particular lens of music. Music relates to many other fields – to visual art, moving images, to mathematics. In a formal sense they both embrace music composition as a problem solving challenge – aiming to create a unified whole which communicates to the audience. On the one hand a composition defines its own authority. But broader concepts, spanning disciplines, such as form, pattern-recognition, symmetry, and recursion can be identified through music.
Both Miller and Ho address the relationship between mathematics and music, looking at their art form through the lens of another discipline. Incorporating mathematical insights, however, does not preclude the necessity, possibility, or desirability of a spiritual or emotional connection to music. Does mathematics have a role in what they experience internally as composers, and in listeners’ experiences of resulting musical compositions?”
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Caitlin Duennebier: Hello Hell
When: Saturday December 03, 2016 7:00-9:00PM
Where: High Five Arts, 250 Jackson Street, Lowell, MA
How: Official Website
What/Why: “Working in painting, drawing, and sculpture, Caitlin Duennebier (b. 1987) uses her signature illustrative style to translate everyday encounters into playful scenes tinged with dark humor. She renders the characters—most often bemused men, fierce-looking women, and strange, half-breed creatures—who populate these environments in deceptively simple lines and minimal detail, lending them a cartoon-like quality.
Maintaining an air of humor and innocence, her most recent bodies of work offer a contemporary take on art historicalscenes of horror and evil to address the more violent tendencies of humankind. Referencing the visual imagery of Hieronymus Bosch, Pieter Bruegel the Elder, and Paolo Uccello, Duennebier adapts these male-dominated scenes to address gender stereotypes, inserting women into the roles traditionally occupied by male figures. Both male and female characters are depicted in various states of undress, in order to, as the artist explains, “play with the idea of women and men being equal—both sexes being topless.”
Hello Hell presents a similar cast of characters as they experience torment and anguish in the afterlife. The interior of a life-size wooden coffin, handmade by the artist, houses tableaus of individuals as they experience its hellscape, while the exterior panels feature figures suspended in Limbo. Each of the tortured souls is further explored in a series of small paper sculptures that accompany the larger diorama.”
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FLUX. HOLIDAY CORNER
Making spirits bright*~*~*~*~…
Jenny Brown Art Pop Up and Art Sale
When: Saturday December 3, 12 PM – 4 PM
Where: West Elm (Providence, RI), 179 Wayland Avenue, Providence, Rhode Island 02906
How: Official Website
What/Why: “I am excited to host a pre-holiday pop at the beautiful West Elm in Wayland Square, Providence! I’ll have originals in a variety of sizes (framed and unframed) along with a selection of limited edition prints. Please stop by and say hello!”
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East Boston Artists Group Open House & Art Sale
When: Saturday December 3, 12 PM – 6 PM
Where: 80 Border St, Boston, MA 02128-1946, United States
How: Official Website
What/Why: “Members will open their studios for the one day event, Saturday, Dec 3, 12 -6pm. See sample work at www.eastbostonartistsgroup.org”
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2016 Winter Holiday Party
When: December 8th, 2016, 6-9PM
Where: Cambridge Art Association, 25 Lowell St, Cambridge, MA 02138
How: Official Website
What/Why: “In partnership with the New School of Music, 25 Lowell street invites you to join us in a celebration of winter holidays on Thursday, December 8th from 6-9pm.
Come dressed in your festive attire and get ready for amazing live performances and art! We’ll be hosting a live concert and small work exhibition and sale, featuring over 75 pieces of original artwork priced at $100!!”
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Art 100 Boston
When: Friday December 2nd, 6-9PM
Where: Piano Craft Gallery, 793 Tremont Street, Boston, MA 02118
How: Official Website
What/Why: “An accessible contemporary art market, each work $100.”
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Holiday Art Sale!
When: December 2nd,Friday at 6 PM – 9 PM
Where: Frame Center Norwood, 258 Dean St, Norwood, Massachusetts 02062
How: Official Website
What/Why: “Join us at Frame Center for a night of art, framing, and holiday cheer! We will have local artists selling artwork and will be taking in orders on custom framing. Come get your holiday gift shopping done early, or treat yourself to something special and unique to hang on your wall. Refreshments will be served!”
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Christmas Craft Fair
When: December 3rd, 9:30AM – 3:30PM
Where: Old South Church, 645 Boylston St, Boston, MA 02116
How: Official Website
What/Why: “Thirty New England artists will vend their unique offerings in pottery, knits, photography, fine art, jewelry, blown glass, beeswax candles, turned wood, and more! Don’t miss this perennial favorite complete with Christmas greens and the scent of hot mulled cider in the air!”
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The Small Works Show
When: Weekends in December 2016
Where: Harmon Gallery,95 Commercial Street, Wellfleet, MA 02667
How: Official Website
What/Why: “Artist/proprietor Vincent Amicosante and artist/founder Traci Harmon-Hay created a gallery space with an urban flair that showcases local and nationally recognized artists. In it’s sixteenth season the gallery has a reputation for the unusual, with large-scale paintings, figurative ceramics and three-dimensional works.”
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Winter Works
When: On view through December 18, 2016
Opening Reception: Friday December 02, Friday, Dec 2nd, 6-830 pm
Where: Bromfield Gallery, 450 Harrison Ave, Boston, MA, 02118
How: Official Website
What/Why: “Dozens of New England artists, including Bromfield gallery artists, display a wide variety of artwork, including prints, paintings, collages and photographs. All three galleries are hung salon-style with scores of original pieces.
Ideal for holiday gift-giving, the artwork ranges in price from $100 to $1000.”
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Let me know of other holiday happenings this month!
Enjoy your weekend, more from me soon. ♥
