artscope magazine: May/June 2009 Welcome Statement: Brian Goslow, managing editor Letters to the Editor ARTSWorcester's BIENNIAL 2009 GRIDWORK: Further explorations into the urban landscape featuring new work by Robert Maloney and Sean Thomas BEN ARONSON - LIGHT AND GEOMETRY: The Urban Signature RADKA DONNELL: THE WORK OF TOUCH DOROTHY SIMPSON KRAUSE: LOSING GROUND NATURAL WORLD: A BRICKBOTTOM ARTISTS' ASSOCIATION MEMBERS' EXHIBITION JOE FIG: IN THE PAINTER'S STUDIO POINT OF VIEW: OUTDOOR SCULPTURE GALLERY-BY-THE-FALLS THE SIXTH SENSE: CONTEMPORARY JEWELRY FROM KOREA Featured Artist: Dominique Boutaud FéLIX DE LA CONCHA: PRIVATE PORTRAITS/PUBLIC CONVERSATIONS 2009 PORTLAND MUSEUM OF ART BIENNIAL SCULPTURES IN LOVE WITH ARCHITECTURE JESSICA GONACHA at YES Gallery and Studio THE BRIGHT & SHINING LIGHT OF IRREVERENCE: RICHARD SAJA AND THE HISTORICALLY INACCURATE SCHOOL WHERE HISTORY AND CONTEMPORARY MEET BRATTLEBORO-WEST ARTS PREMIER GROUP EXHIBITION SCOTT PRIOR (ongoing) and LARRY PRESTON / GREG GILLESPIE and LEONEL GóNGORA ANDIAMO! Art on the Hill Destination: Federal Hill, Providence’s Little Italy THIRD ANNUAL CONFERENCE OF ENCAUSTIC PAINTING AXIOM CENTER FOR NEW AND EXPERIMENTAL MEDIA CAPSULE PREVIEWS

ARTSWorcester's BIENNIAL 2009 Brian Goslow ARTSWorcester Aurora Gallery 660 Main Street Worcester, Massachusetts Through May 29 ARTSWORCESTER’S BIENNIAL GAVE ME FOUR AND A HALF HOURS OF PLEASURE. It’s laid out in small thematic portions best exemplified by two central showcases of sculpture (one including my own personal favorite, Cheryl Lichwell’s “Release,” its brush-haired, naked figure holding cones and dice, pleading for someone to make a deal) and a small collection of landscape renderings by J. Barry Hanshaw, Eugene Epstein, Brian Higgins, Joyce Michaud and Nancy von Horne, which greet visitors downstairs but wouldn’t be out of place in a museum setting. Matthew Day Jackson ascends to his pinnacle in two works of careful, if comically precarious, balance. “Endless Column” stacks up a series of vividly reproduced oils and etchings by masters of different eras of that icon of confusion, the Tower of Babel. Jackson sets his gorgeously detailed, art-historical towers head-to-tail, but slightly off-center, as if daring each viewer to nudge them into some serendipitous confusion of his own. The selection of William K. Rudolph as curator of this year’s Biennial gave the 200 or so works submitted for consideration equal footing in the selection process. It’s impossible to expect that art professionals judging an open exhibition wouldn’t have some familiarity with, and fondness for, various submitting artists. Not this time. Rudolph only recently became the Worcester Art Museum’s curator of American art, after a four-year stint at the Dallas Museum of Art. “His newness was a rare chance to have an unbiased selection,” said ARTSWorcester gallery director Jan Seymour. The end result — an overwhelming 88 works by 87 artists — guarantees Read the entire article in our magazine pages...