The new show at Lacoste/Keane Gallery in Concord, MA features both painting and ceramics—a new approach for the gallery in that it combines both the fine art of painting with (what is sometimes considered) the “lowly” craft of ceramics–and establishes a dialogue between the forms.

The show, entitled “Tim Rowan: Presence: Unifying Presence of Sculpture and Painting” features sculptures by Rowan, a leading ceramic artist in the Northeast, and abstract paintings by internationally-known Bernd Haussman,  whose works were  selected to compliment Rowan’s’ work.

The exhibit, at 25 Main Street in Concord, MA, runs through Dec. 1.

Tim Rowan
According to a gallery press release, “The ceramics elements of the show take visitors into the experience of an object’s presence and show how, by contemplating the materials and processes, the artist becomes ‘present’ with the work.

“Also, this significant new body of work by Rowan uses darker clay body with a darker firing— reflecting on how he sees our turbulent time.

“Among the upright vessels and boxes, a group of the intriguing elliptic forms (see Untitled Vessel VIII, below, left) resemble a capsule, missile or rocket mimicking a futuristic machine.

“The sense of irony is not lost to the artist as he examines the notion of man-made versus technology made works,” the writeup continues.  “What has been a study of technological forms like cogs and turbine in Rowan’s early works has evolved into abstract concepts.

“In Untitled Vessel X with Silver Tips (pictured below, right) a sleek dark grey hollow egg form with silver luster glaze conveys this and the artist’s energy.”

Shown in the gallery since 2000, Rowans work has taken a new direction, according to Gallery co-owner LaiSun Keane.

“In the past, it was the glorification of machine and this show is the critique of it – how one finds meaning in everyday life through man-made works and finding the energy of these objects as they are given in the making process.”

Bernd Haussman

Haussman’s paintings, chosen specifically by Keane and her co-owner Lucy Lacoste to compliment Rowan’s ceramic pieces, are, by and large,  two dimensional.

But, like ceramics, some are highly textured , with clay-like or even “fired” surfaces. Their colors and shapes coordinate with those of nearby ceramic pieces—and establish a dialogue with them.

Also like the ceramic pieces, the paintings show the artist’s process–and express the energy that goes into creating them.

As Haussman explained at the show’s opening on Saturday, November 10, many of his paintings express relationships–establishing dialogues– of colors, shapes and ideas– within themselves.

As artist-in residence at the Board Institute of Harvard and MIT from 2012-2015, Haussmann engaged scientists in a non-verbal dialogue through artistic work called “Dialogues.” He also participates in transatlantic exhibitions such as “KunstTraject langs de Leie”, Belgium, and “Art in Embassies.

Born in Tuebingen, Germany, Haussman has lived in the USA since 1994.

In my own view, the provocative ceramic works and beautifully crafted paintings amount to more than the sum of their parts. The novel combination—or dialogue– of objects and paintings makes a statement on the relationship of fine art to crafts–and to artistic creativity. And it turns the Lacoste Keane exhibition space into a work of art in itself.

At Lacoste/Keane Gallery 25 Main Street • Concord, MA 01742 978.369.0278 • www.lacostekeane.com* through December 1, 2018.

–Anita M. Harris

Anita Harris is a writer and communications consultant based in Cambridge, MA. 
New Cambridge Observer is a publication of the Harris Communications Group, also of Cambridge. 

Lacoste Gallery was founded 28 years ago by Lucy Lacoste with a focus on ceramics. In May, 2018, Lacoste joined forces with LaiSun Keane to form Lacoste/Keane Gallery– marking a new chapter in this gallery’s life. This gallery remains deeply committed to clay as an art medium focusing on showing contemporary, post WWII ceramic artists both established and emerging. In conjunction with its main ceramic shows, the gallery will present a 2-D art focus several times a year to broaden the dialogue between its ceramic works and audience. the gallery also offers for sale functional ceramic works by many well-known potters.

At the Peabody Essex Museum in Salem through September 1.

The Peabody Essex Museum’s major summer exhibition, Turner & the Sea is, in the broadest sense, about the maritime painting tradition.  It is also about the evolution of this great artist’s particular vision of earthly elements, and the extent to which that vision influenced – and was influenced by – others.

Joseph Mallord William Turner (1775-1851), a star of the academic system and a rebel against its constraints, was an artist who annoyed contemporary critics even while inspiring champions like John Ruskin.  Ruskin’s Modern Painters (1843), which became a classic of Victorian literature in its own right, helped to place Turner in the Pantheon of British painters.

Concentrating on sea paintings, the PEM show includes a number of major canvases, several on loan from UK institutions, a roomful of astonishing watercolors, and a handful of works by such influencers as Claude Lorrain and admirers like Constable, Sargent, and others.   Grand picture postcards like Venice:  The Dogana and San Giorgio Maggiore (1834) and monumental historical works like The Battle of Trafalgar (1805), paired with De Loutherberg’s Lord Howe’s Action (1793), provide a pleasing degree of “ooh” and “aah.”

Turner, inducted into the Royal Academy at a youthful 26, is associated with the age of Romanticism, with its penchant for “the sublime” and its dual consciousness of the terror and fragility of the natural world.   The Venice and Trafalgar paintings – one all glassy beauty and the other complete turmoil at sea — are appropriate touchstones of the academic as well as the romantic.  Turner, however, is an artist who seems to have mastered convention in order, eventually, to flout and override it.

His early devotion to watercolor, his spectacular abilities in that supposedly lesser medium, are apparent in an array of sketches and studies from the Liber Studiorum (1807-16) that greet us in one of the first galleries.  Looking at his later works in oils, the light and transparent underpainting suggest the remarkable, even triumphant, adaptation of watercolor technique.

We have the chance to see how others – 17th-century Dutch painters like Ruysdale and Willem van de Velde the Elder — approached the seascape and maritime subjects, applying restrained palettes and exquisite control to create moody works of great precision and detail.  In an essay on Turner in Looking at Pictures, Kenneth Clark discusses the difficulty of capturing the constant movement of waves.   Whether in the stylization of Chinese painting or Japanese prints, the almost algorithmic precision of DaVinci, or these Dutch seascapes, one is conscious of an attempt to regulate, to govern the ungovernable.   

Turner was, in his own right, a commander of the seas, to say nothing of notoriously difficult water-based media.  The watercolor and gouache Pembroke Castle (first exhibited in 1806) sets detailed renderings of the daily catch — mussels and fish scattered on the sand – against a majestic expanse of sky.   There is virtuosity here, but also a sense of freedom and a suggestion of the infinite that takes us far beyond the limits of the Dutch horizon.  

Motion defines Turner as light does the Impressionists.  His depiction of moving water, along with the even more evanescent steam and fire, set his work apart.   Flicking paint with the aplomb and seemingly random motions of an abstract expressionist, Turner was an action painter no less than Jackson Pollock.

The principal subject of Clark’s chapter, Snowstorm – Steamboat off a Harbor’s Mouth, is actually on loan for this exhibition.  In this 1842 work, a ship is nearly engulfed by steam, snow, mist, and foam.  Clark hints that Snowstorm may reflect the painter’s mental state.  He says, curiously, that “no one ever saw him at work,” as though there was some chicanery or secret amanuensis that history has kept hidden from us.    But the mystery of Turner’s painting is really the miracle of perception – not how he painted, but how we see.That mere flecks of color can suggest so much to the eye and brain, and that we can translate them so readily, is what astonishes.  

The late paintings have, of course, confounded many viewers.  Here, the PEM show offers a response in the form of Turner’s late watercolors.  Washes of color with a few figurative dashes, their simplicity seems to offer a key to the minimalism and near-abstraction of the late paintings.  They also bring us full circle, back to the medium that so inspired this artist and was the initial proving ground for his technique.   

The exhibition feels substantial yet doesn’t overwhelm, and its efforts to contextualize Turner through the work of others are instructive.   It makes its points deftly and without overstatement – that, and a rare chance to see this range of work, should point the way to Salem before the summer’s end.

–c. Rachel Yurman, 2014

Turner & the Sea was produced by the National Maritime Museum, part of Royal Museums Greenwich, London. Supported by an indemnity from the Federal Council on the Arts and the Humanities.

Carolyn and Peter S. Lynch and The Lynch Foundation, and The Manton Foundation provided generous support.

The East India Marine Associates of the Peabody Essex Museum also provided support.

New Cambridge Observer is a publication of the Harris Communications Group, an award-winning public relations and marketing firm based in Cambridge, MA.

Warren Croce preparing to hide artwork.

Belmont artist  Warren Croce,   , winner of the Cambridge Art Association‘s 2014 National Prize for Best Mixed Media Piece,  is promoting his work by hiding a piece each month in a Boston area business–and  offering residents clues to find the work–which finders may then keep.

Croce’s first “hunt” began in February; the third will start next week. Typical clues, available on Croce’  Facebook page  or via his newsletter ,  include maps of the general vicinity and a photo from inside the business where the art is hidden, according to a recent media release. The only “payment“  is to post on Croce’s Facebook page. 

In February, Croce gave away “Three Wise Monkeys: See No Evil, Hear No Evil, Speak No Evil, “ a series of acrylic monkey faces sprayed on board with newspaper clippings strategically pasted over their eyes, ears, and mouths, found at L‘Aroma Café in West Newton, MA. His second giveaway was a  triptych of face, found at the Bourbon Coffee in Cambridge. 

“I like giving art away,” Croce says. ” I love the joy people get from finding a piece of my artwork. Hey, you only get back from this life what you put into it.”

Trey Klein, who found the  piece at L’Aroma Cafe, said “This was a fun game and these pieces are awesome.”

Llan Levy, who found the piece at Bourbon Coffee in Porter Square,  called the hunt  “Food for the soul.”

Some “hunters”  have posted  photo series or chronological poem-like accounts of their searches on Croce’s Facebook page.

Croce’s winning Cambridge Art Associate piece, called “There is nothin’ like a dame,”  is comprised of twelve 1950‘s album covers glued onto board with a Madmen-esque figure painted over them in acrylic, pastel, and gel.  The exhibition runs until June 26. 

–Anita M. Harris
Anita Harris is an author, photographer and communications consultant based in Cambridge, MA.
New Cambridge Observer is a publication of the Harris Communications Group,  an award-winning PR and marketing firm in Kendall Square.