http://www.lacostegallery.com/

At the opening, Jeff Shapiro described his latest approaches.. After nine years in Japan, where he focused on wood-firing techniques and the “character of clay,” he moved to New York’s Hudson Valley, where for 30 years, he has created sculpture that may have “a sensibility to certain qualities of the Japanese aesthetic,. yet is a departure from both traditional Japanese pots.”  He thinks of his latest work as fine art:  that is, sculpture using clay as his medium.  One new series includes a solid-vertical form in black with a rough textured surface. In some cases, he treats the material like stone, waiting until the clay hardens so that he can carve and chisel it to expose its “inner quality.”  

deconstructed vessels; structural “cuboids; ”  and highly textured slabs which are fired in an electric kiln.

This is Shapiro’s fourth solo show at the Lacoste. It runs through May 26.

Much enjoyed the current show at Lacoste--which has long been my favorite Concord, MA, Gallery. This time, owner and former ceramicist Lucy Lacoste is featuring the work of ceramicist Don Reitz– pieces from as far back as the 1960s through equally-if-not-more exciting work from 2014, just before he passed away in his 80’s.

As Lacoste explains, “Don Reitz is one of the great geniuses of contemporary ceramics and was devoted to clay, color and expression throughout his career.

“The show  encompasses three periods in the Reitz’s career– the Sara series, in which he used color to narrative stories on earthenware clay, his wood-fire period using fire and ash for expression, and his color with wood-fire and salt, which was a summation of the many elements in his life works.

‘There are also connector pieces that led from one period to the next such as the colorful plates that preceded the use of color in the Sara series and earthenware with expressive brushwork that came at the end of his life.”

My favorite pieces were those embodying both painting and sculpture. That is, ceramics in the three-dimensional form of brush strokes, incorporating  and exhibiting both color and motion. 

 
According to Lacoste, “The driving force in Reitz’ life was to be an artist and communicate through his art.  As a youth with dyslexia, he found making marks in dirt to be expressive. He took this into his ceramics throughout his career with markings on clay being his personal language. His marks, symbols and signature were always important to him whether in his salt-fire work, where the salt melted in firing to become a revealing skin; or in the ‘Sara’ period where everything was a mark or symbolic imagery done with a colorful palette; or wood-fire where the marks were revealed through the ash. The artist has always approached his work intuitively and expressively.

I Go Without Fear, 1984, earthenware, low-fire salt with engobes,

“Among the pieces in the show is a  wall plaque I Go Without Fear, 1984, earthenware, low-fire salt with engobes, 2 x 25 x 20” from his ‘Sara’ series.  Reitz’s ‘Sara Series’ was born of adversity: while he recovered from a serious car accident and his young niece from cancer, the two exchanged drawings in what amounted to a healing partnership. A childlike sensibility with color and form in abundant informs Reitz’s work from this period. This is an endearing yet powerful work showing a stick figure cautiously and optimistically moving out into the world.

Jammin’

“Jammin’, 2013 is a powerful triptych being shown for the first time from the private collection of his family.  This piece stands out for its bold, dynamic color and free calligraphic painting.  It is one of the strongest and largest of his series of triptych showing the artist at his most painterly.”
The exhibition is free and open to the public and is wheel chair accessible.
Through March 27, 2017 at the
Lacoste Gallery
25 Main Street • Concord, MA 01742
978.369.0278 • www.lacostegallery.com

–Anita M. Harris

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

With all of the sturm, drang, disruption and depression in Cambridge last week after Donald Trump was elected President, I thought I’d retreat to upstate New York to commune with nature and art.

The nature went well,  but as it turned out, there was a shooting, probably gang-related, at Crossgates Mall, not far from my family home. There was news of hate crimes in New York  and elsewhere. And  I arrived at the Tang Museum at Skidmore College a few minutes too late for a community discussion of the election and its aftermath.

The discussion had been held beneath an installation called “Flag Exchange,”  comprised mainly of torn American flags. The flags collected as part of a multi-year project in which artist Mel Ziegler traveled across the US— offering new replacement flags for tattered ones flying at homes, post offices, businesses, and other public locations. The exhibit also included picnic tables painted red, white, and blue–all aimed at provocation and one would hope thoughtful dialogue on the current state of democracy.

After  accepting the gift of  a safety pin (the post-Trump election symbol of solidarity with those who have experienced racism, homophobia, xenophobia and such),  I did manage to escape somewhat into art in a wonderfully expansive  exhibit called “Six-fold Symmetry: Pattern in Art and Science,” curated by Skidmore faculty from a variety of disciplines.*

Among my favorite pieces were:

Drawing Memory, 2016, a wall-sized installation in which Nigerian artist Victor Ekpuk (b. 1964) uses white chalk on black-painted background to evoke and build on his understanding of Nsibidi, an African art form used by the secret Ekpe, or (Leopard Society). Art history Professor Emeritus Lisa Aronson writes that while he remains an outsider to the society, Ekpuk’s work resembles the dense and crowded aesthetic of Nsibidi (which is  often played out on cloth) giving his viewers a complex display of imagery to decode. Ekpuk’s wall drawings mirror Nsibidi’s impermanent and performative nature, both in his preferred use of an erasable chalk medium and his practice of removing the murals from the wall at the end of exhibition.

First Family–Hexagon, 2010

Iranian born Monir Farmanfarmaian (b.1924) synthesizes Persian history and artistic traditions and western geometrical abstraction in her mirrored sculpture “Hexagon.” According to  Computer Science Professor Michael Eckman, the calculation and geometry of 14th century mosaics are closely tied to Sufism, the mystical aspect of Islam, and its sacred numerology. As Farmanfarmaian explains, “The six sides of the hexagon are the directions, forward, backward, right, left, up, down. The hexagon also reflects the six virtues: generosity, self-discipline, patience, determination, insight and compassion. All the mosques in Iran, with all the flowers and the leaves and the curves and so on are based on hexagons. For me, everything connects with the hexagon.”

 Arachna’s Arcade, 2008, by Providence, RI, sculptor Dean Snyder (b. 1955) is a “drawing in space,” of a spider web. Its  “silk” is composed of highly-polished steel–which makes the web appear almost photographic in that it transposes the outside garden into the Tang gallery, curator Rachel Seligman, associate professor of mathematics, points out.

Energy Scaffolds and Information Architecture (Return to Formlessness), 2015  With use of color pencil, graphite and architectural stencils on antique ledger book pages, the intricate drawings of American artist Louise Despond (b. 1983) emerge  “organically”,  beginning with a few marks on paper but with no formal plan.  “Each drawing is a process of discovery, with a larger, universal force guiding the emerging patterns. This intuitive process generates imagery that is symmetrical, highly geometric and possessed of an expressive energy that she feels is connected both the spiritual realm and to nature,” Seligman writes.

Hours 1-8, 2016. In this series of oil paintings on linen, Grace DeGennera (b. 1956 ) “explores the ways we experience the passage of time.”  As  Roe-Dale points out, DeGennera uses “iteration”  to depict this movement, not unlike  the way in which mathematicians iterate a model (as Gravner and Griffeath did to generate their “snowfake”, described below). “Time that progresses discretely is visualized in her beads of pigment, suggesting a clock ticking …hour by hour,” Roe-Dale writes. “From afar, however, the series evokes the continuous unbroken flow of time from past to future, through the loosely brushed washes of color in the backgrounds, which reflect the shifting light as day turns into night.”

Bentley “photo” of real snowflake

Wilson Bentley’s “Snowflakes” are captured through novel
photomicrosopy techniques he developed  starting in 1885. Bentley (1865-1931) a farmer and amateur meteorologist, was the first to photograph a single snow crystal. According to Roe-Dale, Bentley’s work responds to the 1611 inquiry of  German mathematician and astronomer Johannes Kepler’s  into the genesis of forms and to his theories about he origin of the intricate hexagonal pattern of the delicate snowflake structure.

Snowfake

Snowfakes
In 2016, Janka Gravner (b. Slovenia, 1960)  and David Griffeath (b. US, 1948)  used a mathematical model to computationally generate what they call “snowfakes.”. A goal was to investigate the formation of snow crystals and perhaps to advocate for the human ability to replicate natural, ordered beauty with deliberate, algorithmic design. According to Roe-Dale, Gravner and Griffeath used the methods of cellular automation to account for physical variables such as temperature, pressure and water vapor density in modelling the diffusive, freezing, attachment and melting actions of individual water molecules in a matrix of three dimensional space. They came up with more than 80 types of snowflake crystals generated by nature, thus providing insight into the form and design of ice and other crystalline solids.

*
Thomas Bansted’s “Last of the Dreadnaughts,” 2011-2012, (below) is  based on “Dazzle,” a pattern of disruption conceived by British artist Norman Wilkinson in 1917.  During World War I, Wilkinson commanded a unit in the Royal Academy, in which artists and students created bold patterns used on ships to make it difficult for submarines to predict boats’ paths or aim weapons.

In “Dreadnaughts,” Bangsted, (b. Denmark, 1976) created a series of large-scale digitally-assembled photographs of World War I ships.  Associate Art Professor Sarah  Sweeney writes that in his manipulations, Bangsted applies a Dazzle pattern that “highlights the incongruity of the ship with its background”–breaking up the form of the ship and concealing its identity.

As explained on the Tang Website, Patterns, systems, and networks are all around us, and in this digital age we are increasingly aware of their influence on our lived experience. This exhibition explores some of the ways in which human beings create and manipulate patterns, and why we are intrinsically driven to do so. Patterns allow us to understand and predict complex natural and cultural phenomena, and to create artworks and other structures of surprising complexity and unity.

Yet the exhibit also shows that in nature–as in snowflakes and spider webs–while amazing and beautiful patterns exist, no two creations  are exactly alike, and patterns are enhanced and enlivened by variation.

Given the current political situation, it strikes me that that much as we may crave the comfort and safety of ongoing patterns, we can also be bored by them. And that as inhabitants of the natural world we must expect–and find beauty despite– disruption in our lives.

I highly recommend the exhibit, which will be at the Francis Young Tang Teaching Museum and Art Gallery at Skidmore College in Saratoga, New York, until March 12, 2017.

*The exhibition was co-curated by Rachel Roe-Dale, Associate Professor of Mathematics, and Rachel Seligman, Assistant Director for Curatorial Affairs, Tang Museum, in collaboration with: Lisa Aronson, Professor Emeritus of Art History; Grace Burton, Associate Professor of Spanish; Michael Eckmann, Associate Professor of Computer Science; Rebecca Johnson, Associate Professor of Psychology; Elizabeth Macy, Visiting Professor of Music; Josh Ness, Associate Professor of Biology; Gregory Spinner, Teaching Professor in Religious Studies; and Sarah Sweeney, Associate Professor of Art. The exhibition is supported by The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and Friends of the Tang.

–Anita M. Harris
Anita Harris is an author, photographer and communications consultant based in Cambridge, MA. 

New Cambridge Observer is publication of the Harris Communications Group, an award-winning PR and digital marketing firm located in Kendall Square, Cambridge.

Having just published a book on the late 1960s, and having driven past the famed Corita Kent gas tanks on route 93 South of Boston hundreds of times, I wondered, on entering the wonderful new exhibit “Corita Kent and the Language of Pop” at the Harvard Fogg Museum how I could possibly have missed Kent’s amazing presence in the Pop Art scene.

The show juxtaposes some 60 works by Kent–who was born in 1918 and became a nun in 1936–with approximately the same number of works by  known pop figures such as Andy Warhol,  Jim Dine,  Edward Ruscha, Roy Lichtenstein, Robert Indiana, and others.  It examines Kent’s screen prints; that 1971 bold “rainbow swash” design for the Boston Gas tank, as well as films, books, and other works.

But in a talk after the September 3 opening, Susan Dackerman, consultative curator of prints at the Harvard Art Museums, said that she herself had  not known much about Kent’s  work until she met another curator’s sister–Mary Anne Karia (née Mikulka), a former student of Kent’s at Immaculate Heart College in Los Angeles, and a long-time friend of Kent’s. Mikulka showed Dackerman the notes, papers and prints saved from her student and later days. That introduction, in 2010, turned into a multi-year research project in which a team of Harvard art historians and graduate students began to place Kent–who left the convent and moved to Boston in 1968– in the artistic and cultural movements of her time.

The exhibition explores how Kent’s work both responded to and advanced the concerns of Vatican II, a movement to modernize the Catholic Church and make it more relevant to contemporary society. The church advocated conducting the Mass in English. Kent, like her pop art contemporaries, simultaneously turned to vernacular texts for inclusion in her vibrant prints, drawing from such colloquial sources as product slogans, street signs, and Beatles lyrics. Vatican II also  advocated having priests turning to face their congregants–a theme shown in the reversals of words in various Kent prints which require viewers to commune or relate to the work in new ways, as pointed out by Elizabeth Cary Agassiz Professor of the Humanities. While Kent questioned the authority of the Church, she also took up  the church’s fight against poverty as an artistic theme. 

By bringing “Wonder Bread” into her work,  according to American studies graduate student Eva Payne Kent, Kent pointed out the need for food and  the leavening qualities of bread–as well as the symbolism of the communion wafer, and the sharing of bread as a means of communion among everyday people.

Kent thus emphasized the egalitarian rather than the authoritarian, and, unlike the implied messages of recognized pop artists,  her messages made her art not purely critique of the commercial world but brought out the importance of quotidian life.

In 1968, a year after she was featured as the new nun on cover of Newsweek Magazine, Kent left the convent and her teaching position and moved to Boston.

At this point, as sixties political protests escalated, Kent began to include news photo images of war, racial struggles, political figures in her prints– perhaps relying less on words to express emotion.  I found these works less vivid–but they packed a punch-. I was especially taken by an anti-war print that included a photo of Daniel and PHilip Berrigan, friends of hers who were priests and antiwar activists with whom I interacted at Cornell and later, during the Trial of the Harrisburg 8.

Asked in Q&A why Kent had not been considered important to the Pop Art, Dackerman pointed out that a center of the movement had been the Ferris Art Gallery, in Los Angeles–and that the recognized pop artists were often referred to as the “Ferris Studs.”  Not only was she a woman, Dackerman said, but she was, of all things “a nun.”. Another speaker mentioned that unlike her male counterparts, Kent, then called “Sister Mary Corita,” might have been considered “too cheery” and positive about the Church, possibilities for communion, and the egalitarian nature of the commercial world.

All in all–the show is a must-see for anyone interested in the 1960s, pop art, female artists or the relationship of art, religion, politics and social change.,

Anita M. Harris
Anita Harris is the author of Ithaca Diaries, Coming of Age in the 1960s and of Broken Patterns, Professional Women and the Quest for a New Feminine Identity.
Print and e-versions of both books are available on Amazon or Kindle.
New Cambridge Observer is a publication of the Harris Communications Group, an award-winning PR and marketing firm in Cambridge, MA.

The Cambridge Art Association’s 70TH exhibition year, opened Friday, September 12, with the 70th Fall Salon, CAA announced in a press release, yesterday.

The salon  runs through September 26, 2014, in both the Kathryn Schultz Gallery (25 R Lowell St)   and
University Place Galleries (125 Mt. Auburn St). Awards were presented on Friday, September 12.

CAA Event Calendar

The opening  honored the memory of longtime member and supporter Mary Schein, whose husband, Edgar Schein, has provided longtime sponsorship and support of the Fall Salon. The 70th Fall
Salon features artwork in a range of media from 144 Cambridge Art Association Artist Members.

Of the prizewinners, who were each awarded $250, Edgar Shein writes:
Jim Kociuba (Cambridge, MA) – November Rain, oil on canvas
This painting captures the style, color and content of what I always thought Mary appreciated—gentle
colors, a simple natural beautiful theme of the receding stream, and a softness of style we associated with some of the paintings of Vuillard and Redon both of whom Mary loved. I have to admit after looking them up on Google that much of their work was anything but gentle and soft, but when they did achieve it, it had a special quality that always attracted us greatly.

Susan Burgess (Cambridge, MA) – Maine Retreat, oil on canvas
This painting is a wonderful reminder of the summers Mary and I spent in Maine. We divided our time
between Bethel, where I worked, and the ocean that she loved, having grown up in Carmel, California. The two coasts are totally different, with the young California coast plunging steeply into the sea, while the geologically much older Maine coast gently eases into the ocean as this painting so elegantly shows. Our favorite places were Boothbay Harbor and Rockland where we spent several summers at the grand old Samoset Hotel. The peaceful and calming and eternal vista of this painting could be seen over and over again all along the coast.

Upcoming exhibits: 

• Time Travelers – a small group show with work by Stephen Martin, Conny Goelz-Schmitt, and Lorraine Sullivan October 2–30, 2014. Opening reception, Thursday, October 2, 6-8pm at Kathryn Schultz Gallery
• 70th Members Prize Show, juried by Al Miner (Assistant Curator of Contemporary Art, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston)October 10 – November 15, 2014. Opening reception: Friday, October 10, 6-8pm at University Place Gallery
• Motion Envisioned – a small group show with work by Bea Grayson, Bob Hesse, and Ruth LieberherrNovember 4-29, 2014. Opening reception, Saturday, November 15, 1-3pm at Kathryn Schultz Gallery
• PLATINUM – Northeast Open Show, juried by Alise Upitis (Assistant Curator, MIT List Visual Art Center)December 4, 2014 – January 16, 2015. Opening reception Friday, December 5, 6-8pm at the Kathryn Schultz Gallery and University Place Gallery.

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

Anita Harris is a communications consultant and the author of Broken Patterns, Professional Women and the Quest for a New Femninine Identity (2014) and the forthcoming Ithaca Diaries, Coming of Age in the 1960s. (Spring, 2015).

When I checked out Yuvee, Inc.’s newly launched “map of the Web” for visual arts in the greater Boston area, I was pleased to find links to the various museums and galleries laid out on a single page that showed museums’ geographic relationship to one another–and leading to brief summaries of each museum’s collection, its Twitter, Pinterest, and other social sites, as well as its address and phone number.

But I was more than pleased–actually, I was  amazed to find a section devoted to public art –including small galleries and installations– some of which are in quite out-of the way places. For example, one link, to the City of Cambridge’s public art tour,   took me to a mesmorizing video installation I’d first discovered after attending a Yoga class at the youth center  on Huron Avenue.

The video, by The Cantabridgians”, by Michael Oatman, includes 23 1-minute portraits of Cambridge Residents posed with objects in locations of their choice, designed to provide a sense of them in their particular neighborhoods.

Other links from  Web Hub’s map of the “public”  visual arts go to the City of Boston Public Art sites and the Rose Kennedy Greenway.

The Boston Art Map, accessible at maps.webhub.mobi/boston-art, is one of the first sites brought to “life” by newly launched “Yuvee, Inc.,” under the auspices of “WebHub” and “A Social Atlas of the Web.”   According to Yuvee founder Tim Higginson, WebHub is focused on enabling the next generation of Web experience for the “cross device”‘ lifestyle in which individuals use smartphones to access the web.

“An atlas is a collection of geographic maps, which help people find their way from A to B, learn and explore what is in an area and see connections between places, Higginson explains.  “Maps” of the Web do the same thing for people who are using the Internet. They give people an Instant, organized way to find and explore a whole of resources and the ability to switch easily among maps on different topics. At http://WebHub. mobi, “anyone can make a map of the Web on any topic,  and share the map with others.

According to Higginson, the map concept is ” a vast improvement” over traditional search engines, which deliver long, linear lists with items separated from the others, and require individual searches and sifting through pages of results. Such lists do not convey interrelationships and structure among items. Other resources, such as Pinterest, Tumblr, Facebook and Youtube tend to focus on single types of information. In contrast, he explains , “maps” of the Web can pull all these relevant items together in a structure, organized and annotated way, in a single URL that is always available from anyone’s smartphone, tablet, laptop, pc or other Web-enabled device.

The maps are independent of browser and OS, do not require downloads, syncing, re-doing searches, typing urls, or even knowing a  know a URL on a topic covered by a map to get an in-depth experience of the Web on that topic. What is more, Higginson says, “WebHub is free and respects its users’ privacy. “We hope this Boston Art ‘map of the Web’ gives people a richer, faster, easier way to learn about and enjoy all the incredible things that are going on in the visual arts in and around Boston..and that people enjoy all the other maps available at www..webhub.mobi.”

I note that it’s possible to advertise on WebHub, which, Higginson says, is its business model.

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