Article Excerpts: Welcome | What On Earth? | Message In The Madness at Fairfield | I Will Go On... | Beautiful Decay | Performing For The Camera | Wamala at Whistler | Jason Smith's Cultural Assessment | The Occuprint Portfolio | Pictures at an Exhibition | Question Bridge at UMass Amherst | A Woman's Perspective | Looking Good on Paper | A Feast for the Senses | Dancers of the Nightway | Cameron Davis | Laura Evans | Kate Gilbert | Emma Hogarth | Kristin Lamb | Nathan Miner | Beverly Rippel | Gail Smuda | Wen-Ti Tsen | Homer Wells | A Rugged, Resplendent Seacoast | Robert Andrew and Geoffrey Parker | Encouraging the Bloom | 340 Years Young! | Fine Drama in Portland? | Capsule Previews | … [Read more...] about Mar/April 2016 Issue
March/April 2016
Capsule Previews
by Brian Goslow “Deco Japan: Shaping Art and Culture, 1920–1945” remains on view through April 24 at the Middlebury College Museum of Art, Mahaney Center for the Arts, 72 Porter Field Rd. (just off Route 30), Middlebury, Vermont; the show, organized by Art Services International, is built around nearly 200 works drawn from the Levenson Collection, the world’s premier private collection of Japanese art in the Deco and Moderne style, as well as 20th-century examples of metalwork in traditional styles. The five-section show spotlights the “cultural, formal and social aspects of Japanese Deco.” Alicia Dywer’s “Body of Armor” exhibition, on view from March 9 through April 1 at ArtSpace Gallery, 63 Summer St., Maynard, Mass., combines sculpture, painting and drawings that explore how “armor dress can translate into a metaphor of how women protect their bodies/selves in the … [Read more...] about Capsule Previews
Fine Drama in Portland?
That's Good Theater! by Greg Morell As artscope magazine makes its 10th anniversary victory lap, keeping its unique eye on the New England arts scene, I thought it prime time to congratulate and capsule a small arts organization that has made an impressive and substantial impact on the Portland, Maine art scene. My accolades go to Portland’s Good Theater, consistently producing some of the city’s finest drama from its modest headquarters. Good Theater is located in the gentrified historic neighborhood of Munjoy Hill. Their play space of 106 fixed proscenium seats is housed it what was a former church parish house. It is an intimate space of relaxed charm that huddles audiences in a bleacher that looks down upon a wide stage begging for height. Formally known as the Saint Lawrence Arts Center, the development of the theater space and the sinful destruction of its now … [Read more...] about Fine Drama in Portland?
340 Years Young!
The Eliot School's Divine History by James Foritano After exiting Jamaica Plain’s Green Street Station, I channeled the intrepid spirit of the Reverend John Eliot (1604-1690), “Minister to the Indians,” as I wended my way to his eponymous school on foot. 24 Eliot Street was located in a woodsy neighborhood that enfolded a panoply of self-respecting Victorian houses, their curious woodwork decked out in proud and tasteful colors. I entered the Eliot School — which was founded in 1676, endowed an additional 75 acres of land in 1689 and is celebrating its 340th anniversary in 2016 — to find myself across from a roomful of varnished woodworking stations in a small, almost-empty office but for a lone bureaucrat, pecking away at columns on a computer screen and soon morphing into a staff photographer/teacher doing double-duty. I learned, as I leaned on director Abigail … [Read more...] about 340 Years Young!
Encouraging The Bloom
Estey Exuberantly Welcomes Spring by James Foritano We wound our way north from Boston on Interstate 95, through its outlying industrial districts, marshes and bird sanctuaries, before leaving the highway for the twisty lanes of Newburyport’s colonial-era houses until we arrived at 3 Harris Street, home of the Paula Estey Gallery (PEG). The gallery, which celebrates its second anniversary on April 12, is welcoming spring through its “Encouraging the Bloom: Early Signs of Life Through Art” exhibition. Newburyport, says Wikipedia, was settled in 1635, and when it applied for town status a little over a 100 years later, the Massachusetts General Court described its citizenry as chiefly composed of “merchants, traders and artificers” and, in outlying districts, “husbandmen.” This demographic, in the opinion of the general court, was a yeasty enough brew to warrant them a … [Read more...] about Encouraging The Bloom
Robert Andrew and Geoffrey Parker
A Joyfully Lugubrious Family Affair by Kristin Nord Catching up with Robert Andrew Parker and his son Geoffrey proved the perfect antidote to a grey and rainy day not too long ago. Bob was putting the finishing touches on his homage to the British artist Richard Dadd, a man who worked in obscurity from the confines of the London insane asylum St. Mary Bethlehem, and who posthumously was seen as one of the greatest and most original British artists of the 19th century. Geoff had come along for the ride. Parker said Dadd’s meticulous paintings captivated him as a young man, and one can see the influence to this day in Parker’s own attention to detail and his joyful flights of fancy. Parker’s “Dadd Memorial Park” would be the final major installation in the Parker father/son exhibition on view at the Ober Gallery in Kent, in the westernmost part of Litchfield, County, … [Read more...] about Robert Andrew and Geoffrey Parker