Art New England Magazine

15/06/2024

TODAY!

Gallery Sitka/Newport Announces “Summer Lights” Exhibit Featuring 3 New York Artists and Fine Jewelry Launch

4:30-6:30pm

Newport, RI – Gallery Sitka, celebrating their ten year anniversary, announces “Summer Lights” exhibit featuring New York artists Beth Barry, Barbara Groh, Shira Toren and a fine jewelry launch by New York City jewelry designer, Always, A. The opening reception is Saturday, June 15 from 4:30-6:30pm at Gallery Sitka on the corner of Spring and Franklin Streets. The artists will be in attendance at the reception, which is free and open to the public. The show will be displayed through July 15.

Art New England magazine will be at the exhibit opening reception (and bearing cake) to celebrate their 45 year anniversary. Publisher Rita Fucillo stated, “Art New England is so happy to celebrate its 45th in Newport with Tamar and Gallery Sitka. A summer birthday pop-up amidst the gorgeous work of Beth, Barbara and Shira is quite special. Please join us as we toast the next 45!”

Seen here: Barbara Groh, “The River”, Acrylic and lapanam on canvas.

27/05/2024

Celebrating The Net Works! Don’t miss the final day- it’s amazing

I'm honored to be featured in the Art New England Magazine. Thank you for this wonderful write-up, Kelly!

'The Net Works' final days are underway, with time slots from 4:30-7:30 PM available through Monday, May 27th. Book your visit here: https://bit.ly/4bK1zLn

01/03/2024

As we plunge bravely into March, it's time for the Emerging Artists issue!

Art New England is thrilled to reveal our cover artist Sophie Cangelosi of Rockland, Maine. Nominator Jackson Tupper shared about her work, "I found myself drawn to Sophie’s loosely brushed, yet tightly composed intimate paintings that weave both figurative subjects and abstracted environments with vibrant color, beauty, and whimsy."

Look for your issue to arrive, visit your favorite bookstore or subscribe today.

04/02/2024

Loren King takes a deep dive into the new frontier of AI and the role technology played in the SAG-AFRTA strike. This threat goes beyond writers and actors. "If you write greeting cards; if you make jewelry; anything that is your artistic creation...I think has an interest in preserving the integrity of your property. If people can reproduce that, we get less innovation and freedom." –Professor Thomas Doherty of Brandeis University.

Image courtesy of Bill Mootos.

02/01/2024

Art New England’s Jan/Feb ‘24 issue features a powerful painting from Nayana LaFond’s “Portraits in Red: Missing & Murdered Indigenous People Painting Project.” The piece corresponds with an article by Jennifer Mancuso on ShowUp with gallery owner, Christine O’Donnell in Boston.

Nayana LaFond, Woman of The White Buffalo, 2022, acrylic on canvas, 24 x 36”. Originally painted as part of a call for art for the documentary Woman of The White Buffalo.

Also featured inside: a studio visit with Tesse Greene O’Brien in Maine as well as Peter Schumann of Bread and Puppet in Vermont, a profile on Terry Ekasala, the incredible “american/woman” project by Betsy Miller, “Exploding Native Inevitable” an exhibition at Bates Collage by Carl Little, Afrofuturism in Maine, part II by Shanta Lee, a feature on AI and its affects on the creative arts by Loren King, and so much more.





shanta_lee

20/12/2023

Celebrating love at the holidays…

Ruth Mordecai - The Kiss 6, 2022, acrylic, oil and collage 41 x 40”. Photo by Charlie Carroll.

29/11/2023

A great event with Dan Welden!

Printmaking Demo and Artist Talk Thursday Nov. 30, 5 - 7 PM! Master printer Dan Welden, in conjunction with his 100th Solo exhibition, will be in the gallery with his own press and a solar plate ready to print. Preceding the demo at 3:30 is a viewing of Welden's documentary, Lasting Impressions. All are welcome to this free event.
(Image: Welden, Panda Haircut, 2014, solarplate etching and screen print, 46" x 39".
https://mitchellgiddingsfinearts.com/dan-welden-solo-100-2/

24/11/2023

Check out this new gallery in Brandon, Vermont! Welcome to ConantSquareGallery, Works on view by Sandy Mayo, Fran Bull and Warren Kimble, on view through November 30, 2023

"Using diminutive Barbie brooms, Mayo painstakingly painted large canvases with nature themes, several inspired by Caleb Kenna’s drone photographs of recent floods. Rain and Water is a tour de force of gesture and color, and gives the viewer a sense of being in the midst of the elements that motivated it." – B. Amore

Image: Sandy Mayo, Rain and Water, 2023, acrylic on canvas, 12 x 12".

21/11/2023

This looks incredible!

We are thrilled to announce the opening of our newest exhibition, in the Grossman Family Gallery and Barbara and Edward Netter Foundation Gallery. Tracing Lineage: Abstraction and its Aftermath addresses key art-historical movements including Abstract Expressionism and its various permutations—from Action Painting and Color Field to Minimalism and Postminimalism—while also showcasing work by contemporary artists whose investigations of color, form, and material elucidate the ongoing legacies of painterly abstraction. Drawn from the Bruce Museum’s holdings and augmented by key loans from private collections, Tracing Lineage brings together nearly twenty-five paintings, sculptures, and mixed-media works by artists working from the late 1950s to the present day. This intergenerational narrative is a testament to the ongoing urgency and vital possibilities of abstraction today.

https://brucemuseum.org/whats-on/tracing-lineage-abstraction-and-its-aftermath/

19/11/2023

Strong Women in Renaissance Italy
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, MA • Through January 7, 2024

Writer Julianna Thibodeaux asks some frank yet difficult questions in her review of this exhibition "Does it offer 'new perspectives on female creativity, power and agency?' What are those new perspectives?" Thibodeaux peers around corners, hoping there are more traces of women artists in Renaissance history and more.

1) Plate depicting the story of Perseus and Andromeda from the Isabella d’Este service, Nicola da Urbino, about 1524. 2) Lavina Fontana, Virgin Adoring the Sleeping Christ Child, about 1605-10. 3) Artemisia Gentileschi, The Sleeping Christ Child, 1630-32. Courtesy of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.

17/11/2023

Amy Lilly shares her conversation with legendary artist Dan Welden on the occasion of his 100th solo show - now on view at Mitchell • Giddings in Brattleboro, Vermont.

Why would a New York artist choose Vermont for his 100th exhibition? Welden said, simply, “I like that gallery. I just happened to stop in one day. I’d heard it was one of the best galleries in New England.

For her part, Mitchell • Giddings co-owner Petria Mitchell is thrilled. “This is the blockbuster show that we’ve been wanting to do for a long time,” she said. “Dan is such a star in the printmaking world.”

"Dan Welden: Solo 100 is a selection of two dozen recent works, most of which were completed between 2015 and 2022. They include zinc etchings, Welden’s signature solarplate etchings and mixed-media paintings. Another 30 works are collaborations he has produced with famous artists and others over the years..." – Amy Lilly

The artist will be at the gallery for a demonstration on November 30 - see their website for details.

Panda Haircut, 2016, solarplate etching, screen print, 46 x 39". 2)Graphite Sheep, 2022, zinc etching, mixed media, 39.5 x 36". Courtesy of the artist.

Mitchell • Giddings Fine Arts

17/11/2023

Opening Saturday: “Africa Fashion” makes its only West Coast stop. The acclaimed exhibition from the Victoria and Albert Museum honors the irresistible creativity, ingenuity, and unstoppable global impact of contemporary African fashions.

Garments and textiles dating from the mid-twentieth century to the present day, contextualized by a range of cultural touchstones, celebrate the transformative and liberatory power of self-fashioning.

Plan your visit → https://bit.ly/469RuUt

Please note the museum is closing at 4 p.m. on Saturday.
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📷 Models holding hands, Lagos, Nigeria, 2019 by Stephen Tayo. Courtesy Lagos Fashion Week

[ID: 5 models wearing vibrant patterned garments in pinks, greens, blues holding hands against a blue wall.]

16/11/2023

Raven Halfmoon: Flags of Our Mothers
on view at The Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum, Ridgefield, CT

Check out this arresting solo exhibition by artist and Caddo Nation member Raven Halfmoon, on view through January 7, 2024.

"At once confrontational and contemplative, the exhibition does indeed have a spirit of insistence that—in addition to its palette—is communicated through the repetition and twinning of bodies and visages, the figures’ larger-than-life scale and forthright body language, and Halfmoon’s coil-method process, which is athletically logged in the clay through hundreds of deep impressions made by the artist’s fingers." – Terri C Smith

16/11/2023

Here is a thoughtful profile in Art New England Magazine of my show with Peter Noonan at Colby-Sawyer College. If you are in the New Hampshire Upper Valley area, please visit the show in the William H. & Sonja Carlson Davidow Fine Art Gallery. It is showing through December 7th, 2023.

https://artnewengland.com/the-brush-and-the-pixel/

14/11/2023

Conflux: Lloyd Martin + Stephen Niccols
A guest curatorship by Jessica Hagen Dryden Gallery /
Providence Picture Frame, North Providence, RI Through December 2, 2023

This exhibit, reviewed by Emily Randolph in the November/December, includes forty-plus paintings, many large scale, and is presented by guest curator Jessica Hagen of Jessica Hagen Fine Art + Design Newport, RI.

“To my eye, their paintings are a natural pairing,” says Hagen. “Both artists are highly skilled colorists creating compelling non-representational compositions. Martin’s work employs the use of straight lines to wrangle, define and convey areas of color, while Niccolls makes use of curvilinear shapes to do the same. The juxtaposition of these two stylistic approaches is exciting, uplifting, and energizing for the viewer.” – Jessica Hagen

09/11/2023

Stroll through the new November/December issue, and take in Gary Koeppel's exhibition: Skyline

"Seeing Koeppel’s series does indeed conjure those feelings of distance and isolation that came with the 2020 shutdown. And yet, there is also a deep appreciation and love for the city that is made clear in the care he shows bringing it to life." – Autumn Duke

On view at Inner Space Fine Arts, North Reading, MA • through December 16, 2023

Images: Gary Koeppel, January 14, 2022, 5:47 p.m. and December 30, 2022, 5:46 p.m. oil on board, 12 x 26″. Courtesy of the artist.

07/11/2023

The Brooklyn Public Library is an amazing place to visit - and a great way to ring in 50 years of Hip Hop by viewing the Jay-Z exhibition! Sharing an inside look at the multi-media installation...

In New York City, you can find the unlikely pairing of two Brooklyn icons. At the Brooklyn Public Library, one of the largest library systems in the country, a new exhibition highlights the work of hip-hop’s elder statesman, Jay-Z. Special correspondent Christopher Booker reports on the timely sho...

06/11/2023

Sculptfest 23
Carving Studio and Sculpture Center, West Rutland, VT • Through November 15, 2023

Take in a wonderful sculpture exhibition on a brand new trail. Sculptfest 23 has the reputation to never disappoint. This year's theme is Communing with Nature. B. Amore reviews her experience in the November/December issue, "The entire sculpture trail is a generous invitation to view both sculpture and nature in a new way."

“How does the natural affect your work, and how can you, in turn, converse with it?” – Gabe Strader-Brown, Carving Studio Manager

Photos: Florian Okwu, Isna, 2023, oak log, 6 x 1 x 1'. Isa Dray, Skin of Stone, 2023, Vermont marble, 8 x 4 x 2.5'. Photos: CSSC staff.

05/11/2023

Wonderful to see the history of this painting…

03/11/2023

Sneak preview: 60 Years of Bread and Puppet exhibition at the Karma Bird House. Behind the scenes at the Karma Bird House creative juggernaut with founders Giovanna and Michael Jager, insights from the curators of both organizations, and thoughts on bringing community together through performance.⠀
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"The collaboration of curators from Burlington and Bread and Puppet completes a story of social justice. Art always brings culture." – Kelly Holt⠀
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Subscribe today. Watch the mail for your new issue. Enjoy with a warm beverage. Thank you to the teams from Bread and Puppet and the Karma Bird House for their generosity.⠀
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Photos: Outdoor performance at Karma Bird House by Eli Atticus Jager; Horse Head sculpture - Peter Schumann, exhibition photo by Kelly Holt, Garbagemen and Washer Woman performance photo by Shawn Dumont

01/11/2023

As the world alights into November, the magazine cover celebrates emotion experienced through the purity of paint and gesture.

In this new issue, Julianna Thibodeaux visits artist Ruth Mordecai in her Cape Ann studio."Even in “The Kiss” series, which marks a return of sorts to her origins, she harnesses light and contrast with what appears to be a spare palette of red, black, and white. “I tend to work that way, from a lot of information into simplified minimal,” – Mordecai

The artist's latest series, on view at Matthew Swift Gallery in Gloucester, MA through November 27, "captures the essence of it all: the fluidity of gesture Mordecai has honed over years of questioning and experimentation reflects a clear and consistent voice that is uniquely her own." – Julianna Thibodeaux

Ruth Mordecai, The Kiss 7, 2022, acrylic, 37 x 35". Photo: Charlie Carroll.

Julianna Thibodeaux

31/10/2023

A Golden Record for a New Age

By Shanta Lee

For the original Voyager Golden Record launched into space in 1977 and for this moment that might require a new one.

The deep belly cry laugh,
the squeals of My cheeks hurt,
and the joke that made it so

That’s going to be us,
belongingto voices talking about their
rocking-chair-on-the-porch years

The traces of audacity in the throat of the
church-going-god-fearing Aunt who tells
her niece and answers her why with,

I was gonna be a truck driver cuz I could
The sounds Africa splitting from itself, the
oceans and volcanoes gurgling warnings,

and all the other sounds of daring…
the hands making contact with skin,
the long kisses, the embraces,

and all who refused nothing
less than to love as it felt like
the world was coming apart

A random group of youngins speaking
in fluent war, one of them asks, What
can we birth in this dumpster fire?

Another says Let's create a world
without fires. The snippets of an adult
life of a once inner city kid whose breath

is attached to an awe birthed by simple
things as she repeats to a friend, I didn’t
know water could be that blue, I thought

it was a television trick! All the variations
of grunts, screams, Yasssssss!…all the ways
we told each other dreams were possible

The quiet of a secret being held
because we needed our Courageous
Keepers and Shadow Shamans

The first Mama who refuses to shush the
howl of her new babe as she joins in
then says, No need to hush baby, let it out

And the images and sounds of the
way her permission, that invitationt
o our own hearts carried into our bones

along with the other dare that started
as an instruction from 3.7 billion miles
away to turn around and look at us

one more time. See not the Pale Blue
Dot but that star, a star that was so brazen
it chose to shine regardless of how dark it got

27/10/2023

Our hearts are heavy as we think of our friends in Maine - in Lewiston and beyond. Thinking of those who have been lost to senseless gun violence and all who mourn them. Joining you all in a meditation for healing and peace.

26/10/2023

What a multi-layered experience at the MFA…

22/10/2023

Celebrating B. Amore's Spotlight Review... Read more in our current issue.

For the Love of Vermont: The Lyman Orton collection
On view at Bennington Museum, Bennington, VT through November 5, 2023

"Jamie Franklin, curator of the Bennington Museum, has assembled fifty-four works in several of the Museum’s upper galleries. The arrangement of the exhibit is very inviting and arranged in sections such as, “The Artists Arrive, Coming Together, Village Beautiful, Making a Living,” each delineating a period or cultural value in Vermont life. Curatorial choices range from well-known to self-taught artists and the array of paintings provides an intimate and colorful view of what has comprised Vermont life from the past to present." – B. Amore

Images: 1) Rockwell Kent (1882–1971), Vermont Hills, 1923–1927, oil on canvas, 221/8 x 381/8". 2) Luigi Lucioni (1900–1988), Three Graces, 1949 (Manchester), oil on canvas, 171/8 x 14¼". 3)Kyra Markham (1891–1967), Two White Oxen in Winter, 1959, oil on board, 23¾ x 29¾". All images courtesy of The Lyman Orton Collection at Bennington Museum

19/10/2023

Northwoods: Absence and Presence.
Th Art of Alan Bray and Poetry of Welsley McNair

A thoughtful, site-specific delight where poetry meets painting.
On view at The Gallery at Somes Sound, Mount Desert, ME through October 31, 2023

“Reading Wes’s poems or looking at Alan’s art,” writes curator Stuart Kestenbaum in the exhibition catalogue, “it’s clear…they have taken the time to examine the power of place—how we shape the land and it shapes us.” They also know how to shape our vision of a world through powerful poems and paintings."

Gallery at Somes Sound

Image: Alan Bray, Cheese Factory Spring, 2007, casein on panel, 24 x 18". Courtesy of the artist.

18/10/2023

There are some wonderful works of art on view right now at the Hood Museum of Art!

In our current issue, Eric Sutpin takes us to the Kent Monkman: The Great Mystery exhibition. On view through December 16, 2023. Read all about it in our latest issue.

"Kent Monkman’s artistic alter ego reprises her role as fabulous interlocutor in The Great Mystery. Miss Chief (an equivoque of mischief) is a gender fluid, unabashedly sexy, uninhibited avatar that Monkman created in the early 2000s. She’s an amalgamation of identities: Two-spirit, q***r, non-binary, Indigenous, Cree—she’s a fictive entity who playfully traverses the panoply of Western art (which Monkman admittedly loves, in spite of its colonial roots.)" –Eric Sutpin

Photo: Kent Monkman, The Great Mystery, installation views at the Hood Museum. Photo: Robert C Strong II.

Hood Museum of Art