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

RADKA DONNELL: THE WORK OF TOUCH James Dyment New England Quilt Museumy 18 Shattuck Street Lowell, Massachusetts Through July 12 Radka Donnell’s quilts are not necessarily something that will excite the traditional quilter, simply because she breaks all the rules. Unlike the traditional patterns handed down from the Amish and Mennonites, these are not designed with repeating geometric shapes. Her quilts may seem disorganized at first, but the compositions are carefully balanced, not with symmetry but with intuitively placed color and form in an uncontrolled fashion. This method connects to human emotion. Trained as a painter and an art therapist, Donnell has said, “Laying out and piecing quilts gave me a sense of wholeness and certainty that I lacked as a painter.” If she had continued pursuing painting, she may have been an abstract expressionist. Donnell came to the United States from Bulgaria in 1951 and later received her M.F.A. from the University of Colorado. She was one of the first quilt artists to take a feminist stance. “Quilt making politicized me,” she has said. To Donnell, quilts symbolize warmth, the human touch and the primal bond between mother and child. “By its original closeness to a person’s body, the quilt can become an icon of personal feeling and hope,” she wrote in 1977. “This is its nature, invoking no absolutes, but open as to a human embrace.” What is closer to a human than the feel of cloth? This exhibition is comprised of quilts from Donnell, her family and friends, and several private collectors; one is from the permanent collection of the New England Quilt Museum. Robert Shaw from Shelburne, Vermont, known as one of the country’s leading authorities on Read the entire article in our magazine pages...