In case you’re wondering what became of my Chatbot dating adventure–rest assured that it continues.

Credits: Row 1 Claire M. Deliso, Paul Barbato, Emily Recapero, Toya Narentuoya. Row 2 Indra Fonseca, Paris Jerome, Emily Pascale, Leo Oscann, Rhonda Levy, Stephanie Aanonsen

In April,  “Oh oh, I seem to be dating a chatbot” was published in the “Modern Love” column of the New York Times. The piece is about how, after AI Chatbot came up with a great review of my book, The View From Third Street, I asked it to write me a profile for online dating. The profile, based on the prompt “Creative woman from Cambridge, MA, seeking a man, 65-72, smart, funny, healthy, preferably Jewish,” was astonishingly accurate and interesting.  At my late brother Alan’s suggestion, I then asked AI Chatbot to come up with a response. 

The response, from “someone” named David, was remarkably intriguing; I would have loved to meet “him” or someone like him. In the “Modern Love” piece, I trace the steps “David” and I took in arranging a date near Harvard Square. “David” even told me what he’d be wearing and that he’d be carrying a book. The article then goes into what happened after, disappointingly, he did not show up.

The piece has “generated” ongoing interest though, sadly, my dating life appears to have come to a halt.

Potential Suitors

Soon after the story appeared, I heard from four potential suitors who seemed to be “real” men.

The first was a New York lawyer who sounded very much like “David.” Both were from Brooklyn, Jewish, and each had two grown sons in California. The writer suggested that I contact him when I get to the City. I invited him to meet me if he gets to Albany, where I would be spending time over the summer, but did not hear back.

The second was a retired national science journalist who graduated from Columbia Journalism School a year after I did, with whom I corresponded for awhile. We had a lot in common, but since he was living on an Oregon beach, I felt the distance did not bode well for a relationship.

The third potential suitor, a businessman from New York State now living on the French Riviera wrote me every day. He was lonely, having trouble meeting people; I thought maybe he should learn to speak French. After a few weeks, he told me, courteously, to my relief, that he wanted to take a break.

The fourth wrote that he was the son of a now- deceased member of the Nigerian parliament. Given the number of fraudulent relationship requests originating in Nigeria, I thanked him for writing, but didn’t encourage a response. He wrote back anyway, saying that he knew that emails from Nigeria might be considered suspect but that he was for real: an entrepreneur who was starting a business, he was hungry, and needed money.

I also heard from a minister at Yale University who said he enjoyed the piece and from someone learning English who wanted help with his writing.

Response from the art world

Then, about a month ago, Grant Shaffer, a renowned illustrator, wrote to let me know that he had assigned the piece to his class at the School of Visual Arts in NYC. I’m delighted with the results, which he and his students OK’d for publication here.

Credits: Row 1 Junhan, Unsigned, Grace, Yizhuo. Row 2 Keming, Jema, Xue, Kristo.
Row 3 Jenny, Yanjun, Ruyang, Alex, Jiaqi.Row 4 Louis, Soomin, Gabriel, Yinins, Mingee

I’d like to thank everyone who contacted me– and to credit Mr. Shaffer and his students, who made the whole episode more than worthwhile with their beautiful, clever artwork.

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

September has been a great month for art shows in and near Cambridge. I’d especially like to call out an amazing exhibit of the work of ceramicist Isaac Scott called ” Mouros” which will be at Lucy Lacoste Gallery, 25 Main Street in Concord, Mass, through October 14.

Scott, now of Philadelphia, is a brilliant young sculptor and photographer whose photos of the 2020 riots in Philadelphia following the death of George Floyd were published by the New Yorker Magazine– earning him the National Magazine Award for Feature Photographer of the Year in 2021. He is also a fabulous sculptor/ceramicist.

Not long ago, Scott told me at the Lacoste opening, he visited a friend in Lisbon, knowing little about that city or Portugal. Taking tours of the city, he learned about its Moorish roots, legends of ghostly ancestors, and of the slave trade that originated in Lisbon the 1400s. Descended from slaves himself, he was fascinated by the stories he heard, and, when he returned to the US, crafted a series of ceramic heads, called “Mouros,” which, in the LaCoste exhibit, he pairs with photos he took of Lisbon and its surroundings.

“The exhibition powerfully brings to light the origination of the slave trade, references the African diaspora; and brings us back full circle to the present day with references to graffiti and hip-hop culture,” said Gallery Owner Lucy Lacoste..

One pairing includes a Mauro bust with a remarkable close-up photo of pigeons–whose ubiquity and flights all over the world seemed to parallel with the travels of Portuguese and other slave ships, Scott said.

“Pombo (Pigeon), 2023

Lacoste added, “In my over 30 years of being a gallerist, I’ve rarely seen an artist whose work is more exciting.  Here the artist pushes the boundaries of contemporary art by creating a dialogue between the two mediums of ceramics and photography to tell the culturally relevant story of the slave trade. “

Isaac Scott received his MFA from Temple University in 2021 under Roberto Lugo. Introduced to Lucy Lacoste in 2022, Scott was included in a well-received group show at the Gallery that year in which he showed his #Philadelphia Series, sculpture inspired by the 2020 Riots in Philadelphia, the city where he lives, after the death of George Floyd.

At Lucy Lacoste Gallery, 25 Main Street, Concord, Mass., through October 14, 2023.

–Anita M. Harris
Anita Harris is a writer and photographer who resides in Cambridge, Mass.
New Cambridge Observer is a publication of the Harris Communications Group, also in Cambridge.

“

It’s one of those gloomy December days–31 degrees, overcast.

The Ukraine war is still on; inflation is rampant; covid is again on the rise My book is out, sales are slow. Thanksgiving is over, Christmas is weeks away. My brothers are both ill in distant states

I decide to go for a run on the Charles.

The light is no good for photos, I’m thinking, as I cross a nearly deserted Memorial Drive.

But then a tree I’ve passed by hundreds of times reaches out to me. It’s decaying, but, I note, still strong.

I move closer; a new trunk seems to be growing inside it; young branches are reaching to the sky.

I pull my camera out of my pocket and take a few shots.

I amble along. Some trees look injured, dead; the bark is wearing off. I stop again, camera in hand.

Close in: abstract beauty

Back to my run…stopping frequently.

Many of the trees have amazing shapes

I wonder why they are so gnarly.

One holds a nest of leaves.

Another: a bird

An empty nest

There are milkweed…

Rusted weeds…

Bittersweet.

Reflections, shapes, colors in the water.

Later, when editing my photos, I discover a pair of ducks.

Black and white

More ducks;
a willow

A human touch.

Heading back: more stunning formations.

I return to the river path the next day, and the next, reassured to find changed light, new growth, life and hope as I–and nature– progress, slowly, with starts and stops, toward spring.

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

As a longtime admire of the Lucy Lacoste gallery in Concord, MA, I was honored when Lucy asked me to write a press release for the show that opens there tomorrow. What follows is essentially a paid post–which the gallery has expanded on its Website.

In the show, “Articulating Space,” at 25 Main Street, two female artists challenge the boundaries of traditional ceramics and contemporary sculpture.

Both artists, Josephine Burr and Lily Fein, use the centuries-old technique of coiling and pinching clay to build forms, rather than rely on clay slabs or the potters wheel. Yet their work is highly modern—taking unusual shapes, embracing light in new ways, and shifting the expected boundaries of artist, object, viewer and artistic convention. Each artist takes a unique approach, Lacoste explains.

Lily Fein
Fein’s work tends to be intuitive and, in this exhibition, figurative, with vessels suggesting or relating to the human body.

Fein explains that while her pieces often evoke bodily forms, she sometimes challenges this metaphor “so that the distinctions between the interior or exterior of the vessel invert, touch, or disappear.

 “I encourage the objects to morph and change as I create them, developing a language of improvisation that gives form to a stream-of-consciousness approach to making. I am interested in how a clay form can capture, imply or perpetuate movement… defying the nature of the role we’re taught [that] objects occupy in our world.” 

A 2016 graduate of Syracuse University in 2016], Fein has won numerous awards; held residencies in Massachusetts, Minnesota, Montana, New York,  and Japan; and exhibited  in Louisiana, Massachusetts, Missouri, New York, Oregon, Montana, and Washington State. Born in Newton, MA, Fein currently resides in New Orleans.

Josephine Burr
Burr, a professor of ceramics at Massachusetts College of Art and Design, raises questions of interiority and objecthood (or: duration/temporality), according to Lucy Lacoste, the gallery owner “Some of her pieces are unusually large for ceramics—and she sometimes punches holes in the clay to allow light—and her own energy—to shine through.”

Burr explains that the “language” of clay is “mute and absorbent… a holder of time and of the unnoticed, of the underpinnings of consciousness and of daily life.” In her work, she probes at this “unnoticed space, coaxing the temporary and fleeting quality of experience into visible, tactile form.”

Her sculptures “echo familiar objects but confound their meaning—pinched to hold passing time, shifting light, the fragile uncertainty of being,” she says.  “Boundaries are intentionally blurred: between interior and exterior space; between pot and sculpture; between object and drawing.

“While clay as a material speaks of the familiar, the concrete and the immutable,” she says, “it also carries a sense of transition, fragility and porousness.” For Burr, “making becomes an act of tactile listening, attending fully to that fragile terrain at the edge of perception… Balance and trust are essential to this process. It is my hope that the work invites the viewer to recognize and rest in that space.”

Burr’s latest approach embraces and interrogates the boundaries of both two- and three-dimensional work. In her ‘still life’ An alphabet of makeshift days, #2 (winter light)—three small sculptural vessels rest on a shelf, a clay ring set against the wall, behind—Burr invites the viewer to consider the continuity and difference between her own work and the art historical lexicon.

Professor Burr, who lives in Hyde Park, MA, has held residencies and/or exhibited in Massachusetts, Maine, Houston, Philadelphia, New York, Texas, Vermont and Iceland. She is a 2021 nominee for the Boston Foundation’s Brother Thomas Fellowship.

Lacoste is “delighted to share the work of two insightful artists who are making important contributions to the increasingly synergistic worlds of ceramics and sculpture,” she says.

Articulating Space will be open through August 7, 2021. Both Fein and Burr will attend the opening reception on July 10^th from 3 – 5 PM, with artists’ remarks at 4 PM.

Articulating Space will transition into an online exhibition on Saturday, July 17^th to accommodate gallery renovation.

–-Anita M. Harris
New Cambridge Observer is a publication of the Harris Communications Group, in Cambridge, MA.

As someone involved in art, science and nature, I particularly enjoyed the current show at Lucy Lacoste Gallery, in Concord, Mass. It features the ceramic sculptures of Ashwini Bhat, whose work embodies her experiences as a classical Indian dancer, a painter, a writer, and a gardener. The show, “”What I Touch Touches Me,” is a visual and tactile representation of her California garden as she–and the garden–progressed through the pandemic. The result is a beautiful harvest of earthly and spiritual objects and ideas.

As Bhat explains: The structure of my new body of work is derived from my immersion in my surroundings in a dramatic, highly various, and fragile Northern California landscape. The sculptures are assembled in four segments: Comfort Objects, Animated Objects, Intimate Earth Objects, and Assemblage Objects.

Animated Object #4, below, brings to mind (for me) a leaf in the wind, a deeply colored Indian veil or scarf, and the graceful hand of dancer. ,

Comfort Objects evolved— during a pandemic in which touch has become unsafe— from Bhat’s examination of the shapes and forms of seed-pods “as symbols of mysterious, life-birthing potentialities.”

“Animated Objects are studies in gesture, movement, and the feelings evoked by[her} memories of objects that have deep personal associations for her.”

“Intimate Earth Objects” reference elements of earth and body. T” hese biomorphic forms enact the co-existence and mutuality of the human and non-human. And they also focus on the sorts of objects that are historically or culturally associated with rituals and sacrality. “

“Assemblage Objects juxtapose colors and consortiums of form that reference particular landscapes in which Bhat has spent time, she writes.

“All four segments are linked by allusions to primordial symbols or patterns such as the Mandala, Spiral, Serpent, the Ouroboros, and the Fibonacci sequence. 

“But the meanings of these sculptures are fluid, not rigid,” Bhat explains. The objects might easily cross over and fit into other groupings. And this boundary-less-ness allows them to acquire multiple connotations. There is an open interplay of elements and a possibility of infinitely reassembling alliances. ” Bhat’s aim is”to suggest ways of looking that promote raveled and linked engagements that define the relation between all animate and inanimate matter.”

Also included in the show are several of Bhat’s watercolors….

and a piece from a previous exhibit, “Empowering Voices.”

–Anita M. Harris

Lucy Lacoste Gallery, is located 25 Main Street, Concord, MA The show will be up until June 5.

Anita 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.

Concord’s LaCoste Gallery has hit the ball out of the park yet again–this time with a remarkable and timely show by Massachusetts ceramicist Paul Briggs. The show, “Intuitive Responses: Poetic Justice in Clay,” centers on six sculptures, each inspired by a a specific poem written a noted black poet. The poets are: Maya Angelou, Lucille Clifton, Langston Hughes, Audrey Lorde, Harryette Mullen and Sonia Sanchez.

The works, part of Briggs’ “Cell Personae” series, are built and glazed to resemble prison bars and chains–but, as Briggs explained at an opening on February 13, 2021, they shows that despite oppression, the human spirit prevails.

Briggs writes in his artist’s statement:
The poetry series came about as a way to look for hope and strength during these difficult times and their impact on people of color. It is my work toward finding courage in light of my ongoing work concerning legal violence and incarceration, the disproportionate number of people impacted by the pandemic, and the awakening the siege on the capital brought about as we witnessed the different manner in which people protesting under the banner of Black Lives Matter received versus those flying banners of white supremacy. What became clear was the degree to which black poetry included so much pain and power.”

At first, I found the work intense and powerful, yet off -putting—I mean, who wants to look at what seem to be iron bars and cages in the midst of a covid pandemic? But when Briggs explained more about what the works showed, they became, for me, profound and freeing. One of my favorites, “I’ve Known Rivers,” was inspired by a poem in which Langston Hughes relates history and flowing water to the depth of the soul. Brigg’s sculpture appears to be an iron-bar frame, locked in place by knotted chains–but the knots seem to give way to graceful flowing arcs which escape the bars–forming a waterfall-like structure that cannot be constrained.

Another work, Brigg’s “Caged Bird, “, which includes sculptures of two birds behind bars, references the Maya Angelou poem of the same name. It’s final paragraph reads:

The caged bird sings
with a fearful trill
of things unknown
but longed for still
and his tune is heard
on the distant hill
for the caged bird
sings of freedom.

A link to the photos of the sculptures and their poetic inspirations follows the main writeup at https://www.lucylacoste.com/exhibitions/paul-s-briggs

According to Lucy Lacoste, the gallery founder and owner,

Briggs has said that ceramics are, for him, a way to philosophize concretely.” In this seemingly contradictory phrase, we already get a sense of his work, in which deep structures of thought and feeling find material equivalents. Briggs’ series Cell Personae exemplifies this approach. It is his personal response to the “other” pandemic raging through America – the mass incarceration of Black people, which is itself an act of grand-scale criminality. The works amount to a firm, resolved protest against this ongoing tragedy. Each is rectilinear, evoking the confining dimensions of a jail cell, and contains within it a nest of serpentine forms. They could be taken as symbolizing the psychic energy of imprisoned individuals – complex thoughts and emotional torment – or perhaps, more optimistically, the inevitability of eventual change. The works are remarkable for re-scripting the basic vocabulary of ceramics (slab construction and coils); Briggs brings to these familiar techniques a wholly new, compressed and clear meaning, of great relevance in this year of reckoning with issues of race in America.

The exhibit, at 25 Main Street, Concord MA, will run Monday-Saturday 12-5 through March 13, 2021.

–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.

A friend told me recently that during Covid, with no students and many beloved businesses closed, she finds Harvard Square so depressing that she no longer wants to go there. I have a different take.

It is true that early in the pandemic the Square was desolate.

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But since the Phase I reopening last summer, I’ve gone there almost every day.

After running on the Charles River, I often head to Henrietta’s Cafe for coffee, outdoors–yes, it’s freezing– but the wonderful staffers there have pretty much gotten me through the year. (Their number is sparser now: with limited seating and very few customers, several servers have been laid off, others work just one day a week instead of their previous five, and those who returned to college in the fall have not been brought back, at all). But those who are there graciously ask me about the book I’m working on, and even laugh at (some of) my jokes.

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A few weeks ago, I took a longer look –camera in hand. Yes, Dickson Brothers is closed, the “Dewey Cheatem and Howe” office of public radio duo” Click and Clack” is gone, as are tea shops, coffee shops, and stores like Staples that I’ve frequented for years.

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The Red House, once my favorite restaurant, still serves great food but mostly, since even before Covid, it’s a pot shop. Book stores-turned- clothing stores have been turned into banks; the former Au Bon Pain is now the Harvard Student Center; Legal Seafoods has been shuttered and sold; the iconic Out of Town News has closed, and the newstand that once stood on the corner, opposite, is now a milk bar.

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Walking around, I tried to imagine riding a bike into the Square or eating at Charlie’s Kitchen in a plastic hut.

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I was pleased to see that Cardullo’s has survived, along with national chain stores like CVS, Starbucks , Peets Coffee, and the Gap…

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At Citizens Bank , I was welcomed like a long lost friend. (In the summer, they cheered me on when I showed up with the pool noodle I carried for social distancing…or, perhaps, they were just overjoyed to see a customer–or any human face) .

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By now, the Charles Hotel has been remodelled–It still has its fancy modern exterior, but inside, the lobby has been divided into smaller, cozier rooms with a historic, bookish feel.

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The Coop is under construction; as is the block where Curious George, Deluxe Tea, Urban Outfitters and Dickson Brothers used to be.

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I found myself rushing to capture as much of the present as I could before it became the past. In the near-wreckage, I came across this mural signed “by Dennis.”

Around another corner, while I shot photos of pictures of the old Square superimposed on what will be walls of the new , a construction foreman yelled out, “You’re not allowed to do that!” I asked, “Why not?” He said, “Just kidding,” and insisted on taking my photo, with my phone (Covid be damned!), alongside a construction truck.

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After that, I spritzed on some hand sanitizer and headed home –feeling not depressed but, rather, elated…. by the people, by the energy, and by the beauty of the changing scene: its light, its lines, its colors, its shapes. Snapping photos, I had become part of that scene, experiencing my own transformation, excited to see what the world will look like after Covid, after Trump, after this difficult winter, as we create new futures for ourselves and for one another.

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

At first, I thought I’d write about how surprised visitors to wealthy, traditional, suburban Concord, MA, would be to find a small ceramics gallery, owned by a petite blonde woman from Mississippi, showcasing the work of Black, East Asian, Hispanic, and other artists of color. But, of course, Concord is often considered the birthplace of the American Revolution and is, thus, the perfect place to bring the provocative, transformational work of talented artists from across the US to public attention.

As owner Lucy Lacoste explains, “The exhibition brings together artists of color … in response to the racial injustices that, while always present, have been brought to wider awareness by the protests after George Floyd’s murder.

“As a gallery, we want to expand our platform to include greater diversity in artists and content to more fully represent this new reality.  Art is a reflection of culture and history; thus, we want to show the art of those with lived experiences who are leading the way to human rights for all.”

This is not the first time the Lacoste Gallery has promoted social justice; Lacoste and ceramicist Lily Fein recently donated 18 per cent of profits from Fein’s recent show to the Black Lives Matter movement, and the gallery has frequently shown the work of artists from diverse backgrounds. But the current exhibit is unusual in that it features eight artists expressing the need for social justice–each from a unique and powerful personal perspective.

Natalia Arbelaez

Natalia Arbelez, 2018-19 Artist in Residence at Harvard, was born in Miami, spent the first four years in her mother’s country of Colombia, Medellin, before returning to the US–quickly learning English and forgetting Spanish within a month. Throughout her life, she writes, she has questioned her identity and felt a sense of loss.

Her work, concerned with an “essence” of the body, “fills that loss,” by allowing her to reconnect with her heritage–as she researches and preserves Latin American and Ameridian culture, people and identities lost through conquest, migration, and time –and gained through family, culture, exploration, and passed down through tradition and genetic memory…

“In my process of referencing the body, I have forgone the use of an actual and specific body.” Thus, “I can use the memory of my own body, the body of my family and ancestors to extend my memories to places beyond the body. I use these influences to contribute to a contemporary dialogue while simultaneously continuing the work of my ancestors. There has been so much loss and stigma of these communities that it is important to me that my work celebrates and honors them.”

Ashwini Bhat
Ashwini Bhat, born in Southern India,and now based in California, has an MA in literature and had an earlier career in Indian dance. She doesn’t say this, but to me, her work embodies twists and turns of such dance…and perhaps even of Indian sari’s. As her artist’s statement explains, “During shelter-in-place, I turned both inward and toward the world. This has been an intense time for self-reflection, for questioning my own identity as well as my identification with others and with nature, the world. These new sculptures reveal that focus on the alliance of inscapes and landscapes.”

Paul S. Briggs

The work of Paul S. Briggs, originally from New York State, to me looked like thick black iron prison bars, surrounded and locked with chains. Briggs, now Artist in Residence at 5the Harvard Ceramics Program and Associate Professor at Mass College of Art, writes: “This work is neither gendered nor is it about race, it does not respect person. Formally, it is using metaphor and metonymy. To be doubled up inside, tied in knots, feeling tight all over, is how many describe the everyday tension of existence in a society seized by pandemic and strivings to wake up from history and create a more just and loving society, the beloved community. The wounded, broken, pierced and knotted vessels have a presence of dignity and a certitude.”

Gerald Brown
Gerald Brown, a Chicago Southside native, currently teaches in Philadelphia. Her “sacred objects’ primary spiritual function is to demarcate space for ancestral as well as descendants of Strange Fruit, an expansive lineage of African Diasporic people in America.” Brown writes: “The forms possess the power to communicate ancestral blessings such as energy, memory, forgiveness and love, providing an opportunity for multi-layered healing personally as well as environmentally. These abstract portraits of Strange Fruit commemorate a range of subjects and their unique, complicated behaviors developed through resisting anti-Blackness. In the midst of survival, deadly environmental effects plague these inhabitants, causing a long-term development of various anti-Black tendencies. However, by creating these intimate moments to honestly learn from our past selves as well as provide guidance for moving forward, these forms become a beacon of solace in the face of violence.

The spiritual function of the sacred objects are activated through the choice of material and approach to construction. Action and touch carry energy, while clay records movement and memory. The way the marks are
made deeply affect the commemoration as well as the overall spiritual tactility function….There are a few adornments or appendages that are added to accentuate the form, but the work is primarily mirrored externally as internally to deliberately communicate the continuity between the spaces. Similarly, the improvisational, voluptuous contours also forge a sense of harmony between the observer and the Fruit, reflecting the natural duality between tumultuous chaos and intrinsic beauty, a core pillar of the Black experience. These dual energies flowlike water through the sacred objects, are transmitted through touch and absorbed by the recipient, rejuvenating inherited ancestral traumas and internalized anguish.

Aaron Caldwell

Aaron Caldwell, born and raised in Fresno, CA, is currently a graduate student at Illinois State University. As an artist, he is “interested in looking at Black and queer identity with a lens of interiority. [His] work is primarily inspired by Black folks’ history with moisturizing products for the hair and body, and my being conditioned to hold value in my hair, skin color and the necessary tools for care. Being considered physically ashy (white and dry skin) or socially ashy (wack, lame, ignorant) are lingo among Black folk.
“As a result, products like lotion or coconut oil have become a staple in the Black community, so I create objects that concretely elevate and highlight this relationship unique to Black culture. I also employ zoomorphic forms inspired by folktales and west and central african sculpture. The buffalo represents masculinity and manhood, the sheep represents queerness and the rabbit represents Blackness. My art narrates how I engage with my Blackness and queerness in private, through culture, and how these identities inform how I engage with the world.”

Renata Cassiano-Alvarez

Renata Cassiano-Alvarez, a Mexican-Italian artist born in Mexico City and now teaching at the University of Arkansas, works primarily in clay but a background in painting and drawing informs her practice–which makes stunning use of glazes.
She writes: “As a bi-cultural artist (Mexico/Italy), I have been preoccupied with the effects language has on the body and how to translate this phenomenon to process. This delving has led me to seek the transformation of the historical role ceramic materials have in the ceramic process. When this role is changed, it is possible to realize a physical metamorphosis of the elements. At the center, I am teaching ceramic glaze a new language. A material that historically has been relegated to surface decoration is able is able to become the structure of the sculpture itself by ways of casting. The result is a material with a new sentience, an outcome that does not resemble glaze as we traditionally know it, but rather a new vision with an expanded concept of possibility.
My sculptures reference the body and its contents and seek to give the transformation itself a physicality. In a way, I act as an archeologist to my own practice. I cut, excavate and carve the sculptures until I find what they are trying to tell me… Clay speaks many languages and keeps infinite possibilities. What I look for is for my sculptures to embody, become icons of freedom and force.

Sydnie Jimez
Sydnie Jimenez, born in Orlando Florida , ia a recent graduate of the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. She spent much of her childhood in Georgia as a “non-white-presenting person. “Growing up with the white side of her family, she was only reunited with the Dominican side of her family in adolescence. Most of her work , she writes, “is inadvertently informed by a feeling of cultural dysphoria. ” With her sculptures, she tries “to invoke a sense of familiarity and security within community while expressing a suspicion, frustration and/or anger toward societal ideals rooted in white supremacy and European colonization.”
The figures in the current show “were made during the peak of quarantine during the COVID-19 pandemic at the same time as protests by black and brown youth that were sparked by police brutality and the deaths of black people by police including the murder of Breonna Taylor, Elijah McClain, and George Floyd to name a few. These figures are referencing protestors, protest, and a feeling of discontent, disorientation, and unease left in the wake of these deaths whose murderers were not brought to justice.”

Anthony Kascak

Anthony Kascak, has an MFA from the University of Arkansas School of art and BFA’s in art practices and psychologiy from the University of Colorado, Boulder. The Lacoste exhibit includes two wall pieces from his
MFA thesis show, and a wall piece made shortly after that. “I am interested in exploring how I can incorporate photography into my ceramics practice; I have done this directly through photographic decals as well as with physical touch and visual perception through ceramic frames and fragments,” he writes.
“These ceramic frames contain images and actions: fingerprints preserved and highlighted with glaze, photographic ceramic decals of my body, as well as adorned shards and cracks of ceramic pieces that highlight the fragility of the ceramic process and specific details of photographs. The physical touch involved in the ceramic process not only emphasizes the marks made to reference the literal act of touching, but also the vulnerability and potential of the material itself.”
*

I wish that, in this post, I could do justice to the brilliance of the exhibit…but it’s well- worth a visit to the gallery to experience the profound ideas and emotions it evokes. The ceramic pieces, writeups and the show as a whole serve as a transformational bridge from our individual and collective pasts– inspiring what I hope will be a universally shared, just and creative future.

Empowering Voices will be on view at Lacoste Gallery, 25 Main St. in Concord, MA until October 10, 2020.

–Anita M. Harris
Anita 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.