artscope magazine: January/Febraury 2009

Welcome Statement: Brian Goslow, managing editor

Brian Goslow, managing editor (bgoslow@artscopemagazine.com)

Welcome Statement, January/February 2009

Since the first artscope issue of 2009 coincides with the inauguration of a new president, it seemed proper to feature shows at a number of new galleries – including Walker Contemporary and Bead + Fiber in Boston’s South End - and people beginning new encore careers as artists. artscope writer (and artscope email blast! editor) Sarah Fagan spent an afternoon with F. Stephen Barylick, Margie Florini, Tally Forbes and Steve Silver of Canvas Fine Arts Gallery; she also talked with former engineer Scott Schuldt, whose beadwork will make its New England debut this month.

We’ve been waiting for the right opportunity to feature Nicholas Abraham, who revisited an earlier life passion seven years ago and now devotes up to 20 hours a day painting works that have found much favor in area hotel galleries. Roanna Forman reviews his new series of opera greats at OperaArt and the Live at the Met in HD simulcasts that are packing movie theaters around the country, reigniting the country’s passion for opera. Our stage of stories also includes Franklin W. Liu’s preview of Cirque LeMasque’s late January performances at Emerson College’s Majestic Theatre and Greg Morell’s feature on the Portland Stage Company’s ambitious undertaking of Henrik Obsen’s “Peer Gynt.”

Speaking of ambitious – anytime I ask one of our writers to cover a group show, they’re given the enormous challenge of condensing the works of a wide variety and number of artists into 600 or so words while capturing the feel of the exhibition. For this issue, Rhode Island beat writer Meredith Cutler visited the Newport Art Museum, 5 Traverse and AS220 to properly gauge the 19 artists celebrated in “NetWorks 2008”; James Foritano not only reviewed the Attleboro Arts Museum’s Annual Members Show, but served as a juror; and Hope Stockman time traveled through three centuries of paintings in reviewing “Now&Then” at Victoria Munroe Fine Arts. I got off easy, only having to select the best of the “20 Artists of Worcester … and Their Work Spaces” exhibition at Davis Publications, creators of many of our country’s art textbooks. And returning to the new theme, Minying Tan was one of the early visitors to the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston’s Herb Ritts Gallery.

Even the most well-meaning plans can take time to bring to fruition; indeed, it wasn’t until George Gerard visited Laura Evan’s studio to see the work from her January show did I fill a long-desired goal of covering the Boston Sculptors Gallery. As artscope grows as a magazine, so do our requests for coverage. To meet this challenge in the coming months, we’ll be adding Internet-only reviews to artscopemagazine.com.

The winner of this issue’s centerfold contest is Boston sculptor Joyce McDaniel, whose aluminum and handmade paper “Flush” was judged “best of show” by judges Thomas Bruhn of the William Benton Museum of Art, Susan Hendricks of the Lyman Allyn Art Museum, and artscope writer Taryn Plumb. For our May/June issue, we’re looking for submissions of works on paper. Full details can be found in the classified section in the back of this issue or by writing centerfold@artscopemagazine.com.

Before heading out to deal with the season’s first snowstorm, I’d like to thank all of you who sent us spirited and heartfelt letters and comments about our annual expanded year-end issue. If you didn’t get a copy, you can order one by calling our main office at (617) 639-5771. Better yet, take out a subscription (or two) to guarantee you don’t miss a single issue of artscope.

Letters to the Editor

Dear artscope magazine,

I want to thank and show my appreciation to the staff that chose the image of my painting, “World No. 5,” for the “Centerfold Contest Outtakes” section. It reproduced exactly as I know this painting. I really enjoyed seeing the other 10 images chosen, as well. What a wonderful way to celebrate some of the many offerings that the magazine received. I feel so honored to be in this lineup! Today I’ve received several e-mail notes from colleagues and collectors who are as joyful as I am to see my work present in the magazine. So thank you for the recognition you are providing me - and the joy! The articles I have read so far have been fantastic. I love being able to enter the worlds of so many artists through both their images, their words, and through the words of each artscope writer. Undoubtedly I will share the magazines with the artists with whom I work, for there are many teaching opportunities. What a professional magazine you are providing for the artist, the collector, and the art appreciator!

Pat Mattina
Artist & Creative Process Consultant
Guild Arts Center, Natick, MA

Dear artscope magazine

Wow! What a beautiful cover you created from Jane Hesser’s photograph for your November/December 2008 issue. The accompanying review was a wonderful, poetic reflection by James Foritano on the exhibition “Entangled.” I admire and am inspired by the spunk and smarts embodied by publisher Kaveh Mojtabai, editor Brian Goslow and the “entire” (read small, steady and tireless!) staff of artscope. I am honored that my curatorial efforts at The Trustman Art Gallery at Simmons College have been so respectfully considered for coverage. artscope’s commitment to non-profit and university galleries is an important reflection of the wealth of art, artists and ideas in New England.

Barbara O'Brien, Director
Trustman Art Gallery, Simmons College

Dear artscope magazine

I just returned from Lowell where I picked up the new issue of artscope. I was thrilled to see the beautifully laid out and written article about our current show, “Winners’ Circle.” Thanks so much for giving us such great coverage! Also, to my delight, it followed a piece on Paul Chan, my daughter Marlo’s significant other. I can’t wait to show the magazine to him!

E.Linda Poras, Executive Director
Brush Art Gallery & Studios

Dear artscope magazine

Thanks so much for the write up and review of our “Ryan Walker: The Recycler” exhibition. The writing of Hope Stockman was insightful and the photographs clearly placed with the graphics. It was a boon for Ryan as a local emerging young sculptor. This is his first major one-person exhibition since finishing his MFA. The press is advantageous as his work should be seen. Ryan’s vision is unique in his attention to eternal internal detail, his apparent love of color, his choice of form and the obvious current concept which references the objects in our world, what we make and what we do with all that stuff.

Kathleen Driscoll, Associate Professor/Gallery Director
School of Design, Mount Ida Gallery

Dear artscope magazine

Thank you for Taylor Polites’s article on the three artists who graduated from MassArt’s low-residency MFA program. The exposure meant a lot to the artists and to us in the program. Another article featured another program graduate.

Barbara Baker Coordinator
MassArt at the FineArtsWorkCenter Graduate Programs,
Massachusetts College of Art and Design

Dear artscope magazine

I just got back in town last night and finally got to see the current issue of artscope today. I appreciate what Brian Goslow wrote about my work in Capsule Previews and I just want to thank you. I also got to see Adel Abdessemed’s exhibit at MIT and read with interest his story on his work.

Paul Pedulla
Cambridge, MA

Dear artscope magazine

We continue to hear praise from our visitors who look forward to your publication to be informed about shows and events in the eastern Massachusetts region; they love the convenience of picking it up at whatever location they happen to visit. All the best for another year of exciting, enlightening publications.

Nan Rogers, Gallery Administrator
Belmont Gallery on Art

Dear artscope magazine

I got a few copies of the November/December 2008 issue and I loved the article Minying Tan wrote on my exhibition at the Panoptican Gallery of Photography. I really appreciate what she wrote about the images. I am a big fan of Greg Crewdson, so her comparison of my work to his, while emphasizing the differences, obviously made me quite happy. I really like his work and I think we have the same fascination for American suburbia at night. I just prefer to leave the stage empty, whereas he provides the actors.

Christian Waeber

To the Ends of the Earth, Painting the Polar Landscape

Chet Williamson

Peabody Essex Museum
East India Square

Salem, Massachusetts

Through March 1

FROM THE EPIC TRAGEDY AND TRIUMPH OF HUMANKIND EXPLORING THE OUTREACHES OF THE NORTH AND SOUTH POLES, TO THE SUBLIME MAJESTY OF THE AURORAS BOREALIS AND AUSTRALIS, HERE IS A COMPLETE EXHIBITION OF POLAR LANDSCAPE PAINTING. IT'S THE FIRST TIME SUCH A COLLECTION OF OUTSTANDING WESTERN PAINTINGS OF THE ARCTIC AND ANTARCTIC HAS EVER BEEN EXHIBITED.

According to the show’s curator, PEM’s Associate Curator of Maritime Art and History Samuel Scott, the polar landscape painting tradition belongs most appropriately to the 100 years between the 1830s and 1930s. These artists traveled to the ends of the earth to paint the expansive polar environment, many literally risking their lives to document the then newly explored vistas.

They created remarkable work of high drama and timeless beauty. While the stars of this show are well-known painters such as Frederic Edwin Church, William Bradford and Rockwell Kent, the lesser lights shine no less brightly, especially the precious pastels of David Abbey Paige, the utility sketches of A.Y. Jackson and expressionist paintings of Lawren Harris, who also contributes a rare film, shot from the bow of a ship in 1930. These works reveal a fascinating relationship between art, the imagination and the environment.

Church’s “Aurora Borealis” anchors the exhibit. Painted in 1865, this 7-footwide oil painting depicts a lone ship witnessing the brooding drama of the northern lights broiling in the polar sky. A skilled draftsman with a flair for the dramatic, Scott noted that when Church created the work, it was augmented by his imagination. But what makes the work so spectacular is how effectively it portrays how dwarfed man is when set against nature’s grandeur.

The exhibition is broken into four sections. In “Theater of Heroism,” the concept of polar space is shown as fertile ground for landscape painters, who presented cultural heroes against the backdrop of daunting environments. The “U.S.S. Vincennes in Disappointment Bay,” an 1840 oil on canvas painting attributed to Captain Charles Wilke, depicts the flagship off the coast of Antarctica at the farthest point south that any vessel on that expedition had ever reached. There is no real drama here. The work is a kind of staged heroism done up in portraiture.

“Witness” shows the journey of artists who experienced their subject matter first hand. Thomas Cole and his circle, which included

DON MAYNARD: MAINTAINING GRAVITY

Catherine Laferriere

January 2 through 30

THIS JANUARY, AN INSTALLATION BY CANADIAN ARTIST DON MAYNARD TRANSFORMS WALKER CONTEMPORARY. THE LIGHTS ARE SWITCHED OFF, THE WALLS SWATHED IN DARK FABRIC. IN THIS MIDNIGHT DREAM AN ILLUMINATED PLEXIGLAS HOUSE FLOATS BELOW THE CEILING, TETHERED WITH ROPE TO ROCKS ON THE FLOOR. MAYNARD'S "MAINTAINING GRAVITY" ILLUSTRATES A PRECARIOUS STATE OF BEING, SOMEWHERE LOST BETWEEN CHAOS AND A QUIETER ANGLE OF REPOSE. HIS ODE TO UNCERTAINTY IS CURIOUSLY COMPELLING.

The house, the focal point of thevproject, glows with a low wattage bulb through warm echoes ofvtranslucent masking tape. It appearsvfragile and complex, but oddlyvhappy – the sort of vehicle James may have chosen were a giant peach unavailable. And like Roald Dahl’s fictional fruit, the house is buoyed by whimsy and hope, and weighed down with instability. The central fortress of our common narrative is under attack. It is this juxtaposition of refuge and vulnerability that Maynard explores. “When one enters the space there is an immediate sense that what the viewer is seeing is quite likely impossible,” said Maynard. “The point”

RYAN MCLENNAN: LOTTERY

Catherine Laferriere

February 6 through 26

Walker Contemporary
450 Harrison Avenue
Boston

WELCOME TO RYAN MCLENNAN'S NATURE SHOW. LOOK ONCE, AND THE IMAGES ARE SIMILAR TO THOSE OF A FINELY ILLUSTRATED CHILDREN'S BOOK: VISUALLY PLEASING, EASY TO INGEST, COZILY DRAWN. REINDEERS PRANCE, FOXES SCURRY, BEAVERS BATTLE FOR A LAST BITE OF WOOD. THE MURKY WHITE BACKDROP LENDS ITSELF TO A SNOWY WINTER SCENE. IT'S A PLAYFUL AND FAMILIAR AMERICAN NARRATIVE.

Look twice, and the children’s book melts away. Acrylics surrender to the bending and stretching of the animals. The movement is quiet, but palpable. Details that emerge only after sensitive scrutiny of the natural world materialize. The contour of a delicate knee bone is precise; the gradations in heavy winter fur are exact. Like John James Audubon, McLennan involves the audience in his ecological studies. And like the great American naturalist before him, McLennan commits himself to the observation of animals in their natural habitat.

Look again, and McLennan’s celebrationVof the natural world doubles as an elegy. As his noble herds face increasingly restricted habitats and some come to terms with extinction, the artist

FAITH RINGGOLD: Story Quilts

James Fortiano

Through March 1

META WARRICK FULLER: Sculpture from the Studio
Through May 17

Danforth Museum of Art. 123 Union Avenue. Framingham, Massachusetts
AFTER A SMOOTH TRIP ON THE COMMUTER RAIL FROM BOSTON'S SOUTH STATION TO FRAMINGHAM, I FOUND MYSELF, AFTER A 10-MINUTES WALK, IN THE STIMULATING COMPANY OF FAITH RINGGOLD AND HER FRIENDS. MS. RINGGOLD, WHO HAS A LONG HISTORY OF ACHIEVEMENT IN THE PRIVATE AND PUBLIC SPHERE OF ART, DOESN'T TRAVEL ALONE. AND THE DANFORTH MUSEUM HAS DONE A STELLAR JOB, BEHIND ITS UNPREPOSSESSING FAçADE, OF HOSTING A BUSTLING CROWD OF THE TALENTS FAITH BRINGS WITH HER -- IN PARTICULAR, META WARRICK FULLER, WHO SITS, IN HALF PROFILE, ONE TALENT AWAY FROM FAITH RINGGOLD, IN THE STORY QUILT " LE CAFé DE ARTISTSES."
Fuller, one of our foremost African-American sculptors, chose the Danforth as much as the Danforth chose her. She had lived and worked for years in Framingham, and her descendents recently gifted the museum with a large collection of the sculptures and sculpting tools from her studio.

She studied with Rodin in Paris at the turn of the last century and Fuller carries forward her teacher’s strength and tenderness in such bravura works as the group sculpture “Danse Macabre” and in the deeply felt portrait bust “Woman Glancing to Her Right.” There is an intimately observed quality to the art in this studio-cumgallery which creates a hush in which one can almost hear the scrape of Ms. Warrick’s chisel and the tap of her mallet, both silent now, on her original work table.

Back in the main gallery, one gathers the sense that Faith Ringgold hasn’t missed many connections in her life and her art. She has a symphonic sensibility, embracing both the spirited dead and the very alive. “Le Caf é des Artistes,” for example, is at the same time a rambling but cohesive crowd of luminaries seated at outdoor tables in front of a heterogeneous background of blue sky, a looming cathedral, and the gaily-striped awnings of the eponymous café.

One would think that their personalities would be lost in the crowd or crowded out by their busy background. Not at all. Instead, each distinct artistic sensibility peers out from the crowd through alchemy of posture and dress and an intangibly individual expression in the eyes and

SCOTT SCHULDT: The Politics of Beads

Sarah E. Fagan

Bed + Fiber
450 Harrison Avenue
Boston

January 10 through February 21

THE BEAD ARTISTS STRING BEADS. SOME GLUE. SOME CREATE JEWELRY. SCOTT SCHULDT MAKES SOCIAL STATEMENTS WITH BEADS - THOUSANDS OF THEM - SOME NO MORE THAN A HALF A MILLIMETER WIDE.

Schuldt embroiders beads onto canvas. An up close and personal look at one of his completed pieces of original beadwork is not unlike looking at a computer graphic, each pixel sewn on by hand in a display of unparalleled precision.

Schuldt spent his youth, or as he likes to call it, “his Wonderbread Years,” in Minnesota before settling in Seattle in 1985. His love of building led him to a career in mechanical engineering. Over time, however, he found it could also be satiated by a hands-on approach to the study of his other love: Native American culture and craft. While trying to understand the rules of carving in Pacific Northwest tribal art, Schuldt made wood carvings of his own. While learning about clothing, he picked up a needle and thread. “That felt natural,” said Schuldt. “I could sew pieces of fabric together forever.” When he tried his hand at a type of Native American beading involving embroidering beads into tight patterns, the final products received positive reactions. Once he had mastered the technique, Schuldt began beading his own pieces — narrative works of themes important to him. The very first piece that he sold was to the Museum of Art and Design in New York: the engineer had become a bead artist.

In recent years, Schuldt’s pieces have taken an increasingly political turn. In 2005, when his beading projects hit a certain level of intensity — and notoriety — Schuldt made a decision:

OUR CUPS RUNNETH OVER: Sculptural and Functional Ceramic Cups

James Foritano

WHERE ELSE, IN THESE PARLOUS TIMES, WOULD SUCH A TITLE BE SO APPROPRIATE? ONLY AT THE VENERABLE BOSTON SOCIETY OF ARTS AND CRAFTS, UP A SHORT FLIGHT OF STEPS TO THEIR SECOND FLOOR NEWBURY STREET GALLERY WHERE PARTICULAR CUPS OF FANTASY AND FOLKSINESS OVERFLOW IN GENEROUS DISREGARD OF THE TIMES. IN THIS BIENNIAL EXHIBIT, CUPS FOR TEA OR COFFEE, OR JUST CONTEMPLATION, STRUT THEIR STUFF: SAUCY CUPS (WITH OR WITHOUT SAUCERS), FANTASTIC CUPS, QUIRKY CUPS, SLEEK CUPS, FOLKSY CUPS, HAUTE CUPS, IN-YOUR-FACE CUPS.

Society of Arts and Crafts
175 Newbury Street
Boston

Through January 25

A chortle from my companion brought me around the corner to her side, where she was grasping the unfortunate nose-handle of a ceramic guy who was staring at her action, with a steady ceramic gaze, without offense. A society attendant who was bustling behind the scenes – they must receive training in how to “bustle” in such a fragile environment - emerged to note our fascination and lead us to where ranks of the same handle-nosed fellow, created by Ken Goldstrom, were waiting to take their place, solo, on a Plexiglas shelf.;/p>

Other cups in this company might feel it was grandstanding to stick their noses out to be grasped - or maybe it’s we who ascribe emotional stances to such artistic artifacts. Elizabeth Kendall’s “Three White Ribbons,” a swirl of two curvy confections in their enfolding saucer, all realized in flawless white porcelain, projects a miniscule majesty that I, for one, would never dream of approaching sleepily, in my bathrobe, for a “cuppa joe.” But, for closing a deal, or for a ceremony marking an important stage of life, these cups would float into your hands.

Another porcelain cup by Irina Zaytceva, decidedly non-utilitarian, was pierced all over with tiny holes between braids dotted with flowers. Not a cup to take camping or even to leave unguarded in a low spot in your home. But was there a snicker or unkind comment from its neighboring cups?

NOW & THEN

Hope M.Stockman

Victoria Munroe Fine Arts
179 Newbury Street
Boston

Through January 24

Juxtaposing contemporary and historical works on paper in a series of playful and thought-provoking pairings, these works from past and present share subject matter and medium, but differ in their style, technique and above all, intent – and the distance of two or more centuries. Contemporary artists Mary Armstrong, Celia Eldridge, Linda Etcoff, Jeremy Foss, Sharon Horvath, Joel Janowitz, Todd McKie, Raja Ram Sharma and Kelly Spalding are some of Munroe’s long-time favorites, all of whom have had solo shows in her gallery. Their current exhibited works are primarily pencil, watercolor and pastel drawings on paper. The contrasting series of historical drawings and watercolors are 18th and 19th Century European works created for the academic study of various natural and manmade forms. As such, the fundamental question the show begs is what is gained and lost by art created for Art’s sake, versus art borne out of exploration in natural history and design.

In “Now & Then,” Munroe links olds and new work with a curatorial spontaneity that helps create visual and thematic associations for viewers, while inspiring consideration of the effect of intention as artists from both eras depict flora, fauna, vases, urns, architecture and landscapes with different representational purposes. In terms of choice of medium, Munroe has always loved the immediacy of works on paper. On paper, artists’ thought processes become clearly visible. Munroe is interested in the delicacy and modesty that working with paper requires and believes works on paper tend to draw out artists’ scholarly sides.

The quirky amalgamation of the historical drawings and paintings on display is the result of Munroe’s passion for 18th and 19th Century art related to natural history or design. She has collected them over the past two decades in travels that span Europe to India. The conscious creation of these works without the burden of Art has brought forth wonderful aesthetic forms wrought with descriptive information. Be they scales on a fish or acanthus leaves on a Corinthian column, no detail is left un-rendered, lest the biologist or architect should require its explicit visual reference. The lack of focal point

ANNUAL MEMBER'S JURIED EXIBITION

James Foritano

Attleboro Arts Museum
86 Park Street
Attleboro, Massachusetts

Through January 22

PAINTINGS, PHOTOGRAPHS AND SCULPTURES LOOK AT ONE DIFFERENTLY WHEN ONE ARRIVES IN THEIR MIDST NOT SIMPLY TO REPORT, BUT OT JUROR. THEY ASSUME A PREENING SILENCE THAT ALL BUT SCREAMS: "PICK ME! PICK ME!"

Your reporter might never have had this rare experience if not for the generosity and need of the Attleboro Arts Museum. Their Annual Members Exhibit needed a juror to shepherd the nearly 180 submissions of their burgeoning membership into various award categories: Best Representational, Best Abstract, Six Juror’s choice, assorted Merit Certificates, and one final category simply labeled “Visions.”

Simple huh? Fortunately, on the commuter rail to Attleboro, in a cold sweat of preparation, I flipped to a page in my dog-eared copy of Clement Greenberg’s essays where I found a double-underlined quote: “Approach art naked.” Unfortunately, a food stain had obscured the last two words of that admonition: “of preconception.”

Fortunately for all concerned, while I was looking for the dressing room (What is that man doing?) I had second thoughts and emerged simply in my robe and clipboard. I had confused “juror” with “judge” but since that was one of my lesser confusions, I looked simply eccentric. Clipboards, like horses, seem to know who’s in charge. Mine immediately pulled me, robe flying, towards those 11 artists it judged

In Pursuit of Beauty

Brian Goslow

Montserrat College of Art
23 Essex Street
Beverly, Massachusetts

Through January 24

HELD ACROSS THE STREET FROM MONTSERRAT'S FUTURE STUDENT VILLAGE - THE DéCOR OF WHICH WILL HOPEFULLY INTEGRATE SOME OF ITS FEATURED DESIGNS - THIS EXHIBITION REINTRODUCES AND REINVENTS TRADITIONAL ARCHITECTURAL BEAUTY AND TAPESTRY WITH A FRESH "MODERN" FEEL.

The seven patterns resembling 19th century adorned chairs of PIXNIT’S “Parlous” wall installation look splendid in their cocktail dress shapes, the swirls and shapes of their majestically carved “wooden” bases “sanded” to perfection. Its top pattern, as spectacular as you’d find in any mansion, looks as if it was roller painted on, though you can’t figure out how. It’s a spectacular first impression of the show.

Tomas Rivas’ carved drywall work, “Dos Módulos Chuecos con Borde Colgando (Two Crooked Units with Edge Hanging),” captures the ornate character of our grandest mansions and houses, its cutout portions revealing the unheralded art of etching that went into these buildings. In “Roseton y su Sombra

LAURA EVANS: TURN.EXTEND.ADJUST.BEND.REST.REPEAT

George Gerard

Boston Sculpture Gallery
486 Harrison Avenue
Boston

January 2 through February 8

Sculpture Laura Evans is concerned with the physical intersection of human forms and constructed spaces. In this particular exhibition, the twisting, evolving structures that she presents - sometimes isolated, sometimes as a set - contain an industrial feel that is coupled with organic textures and shapes. Viewed entirely as a set, the structures come together in a composite of tension. Is the organic threatening to overtake the industrial?

As sculptures, Evans’ work contains an undeniable exploration of process. When the eye follows the varying joints of tubing, integrated meshes of wire and textures of plaster wrap, it is similar to travelling down a foreign road, where every detail adds to visual depth and dimensionality.

Evans’ color choice is an important part of the process as well. She aimed to use a neutral palette, browns, grays and whites all adding to both the industrial and organic feel of the work. In “Looping Back,” a cardboard piping network winds its way along the floor and pops into a writhing loop. The loop’s colors change from scarred cardboard browns to opaque whites to translucent layers of a white wrap around the browns. Color adds to the aforementioned tension, in this case holding it to an individual piece rather than the whole set.

The humanistic element in Evans’ exploration is, at first, not quite as evident as the element of a constructed space. Human form is abstractly applied and is very much open to interpretation. For example,

20 ARTISTS OF WORCESTER ... AND THEIR WORK SPACES

Brian Goslow

Davis Art Gallery
Printer's Building
44 Portland Street
Worcester, Massachusetts;/br>

Through January 23

THIS EXHIBIT, AND ITS COINCIDING EPONYMOUSLY NAMED BOOK, SPOTLIGHTS A CROSS SECTION OF CENTRAL MASSACHUSETTS ARTISTS FROM THE WELL-ESTABLISHED - INCLUDING STEPHEN DIRADO, WHOSE "COMET HYAKUTAKE, LOOKING NORTHWEST, EDGARTOWN, MA" GRACES THE CONSTRUCTION AWNING OF THE MUSEUM OF FINE ARTS, BOSTON, AND HOWARD JOHNSON, WHO'S SHOWN AT BOSTON'S HOWARD YEZERSKI GALLERY - TO NEW NAMES EQUALLY DESERVING OF YOUR ATTENTION.

The book, the brainchild of professional photographer Scott Erb, whose “Beauty Knot” C-Print of a woman’s duel reflection melting together in a warm perfect cube greets visitors to the gallery, features portraits of the artists in their studios. They’re displayed here with mostly new works. Jonathan Lucas is shown constructing the plaster castings of molded cameras which provide the backdrop of his huge multi-media “Love’s Protest 1,” which is fronted by a digitally printed woman’s face on vinyl, her eyelashes pulling you into her face to contemplate whether those closed eyes are sleeping or in deep meditation.

Around the corner, classically (and Montserrat) taught Scott Holloway’s “Dreaming of the Original Sin” features a jawless skull underlined with two crossed bones surrounded by sparkling gold paint that melts into a glossed palate holding eerie, barely decipherable writing. It’s a format that’s made for much desired t-shirt designs that have introduced him to new audiences.

Oil painter Tom Grady beautifully captures special, universal moments. He’s seen in his workspace surrounded by a mini-gallery of his work (a subliminal marketing tool, I suspect), working from a digital image in creating “Toys,”

CANVAS FINE ARTS GALLERY

Sarah E.Fagan

561 Massachusetts Avenue
West Action, Massachusetts

It's never too late to devote yourself to a lifelong passion, especially if you follow the example of painters Tally Forbes, Steve Barylick, Margie Florini and Steve Silver, "second career artists" represented by Suzanne Schultz and Canvas Fine Arts Gallery.

Canvas is in the business of finding the “perfect fit” for all things aesthetic, whether matching artists with venues or corporations with artwork. Schultz, its director, is also an art agent who helps manage the careers of over a dozen New England artists, and it’s not unusual for her to hold exhibits for those represented in Boston and beyond. I was able to talk to Forbes, Barylick, Florini and Silver at a recent opening just across from the Boston Garden.

Villanueva, who grew up in Chile and moved around before settling in the States, knows how difficult it can be to get a foot in the door. Upon moving to New Bedford

ERIC CARLE MUSEUM OF PICTURE BOOK ART

Greg Morell

125 West Bay Way
Amherst, Massachusetts;/br>
THE ERIC CARLE MUSEUM OF PICTURE BOOK ART RISES FROM THE GROUND LIKE A WHITE CLOUD AT THE SOUTH ENTRANCE OF THE HAMPSHIRE COLLEGE CAMPUS. AS ARCHITECTURAL SCULPTURE, IT IS A MASTERWORK OF DESIGN SIMPLICITY. THE MUSEUM'S WHITE STUCCO WALLS GRACEFULLY REACH INTO THE HORIZON; ITS GENTLY CURVED ROOFLINES BLEND AND ECHO THE BACKDROP OF HAMPSHIRE'S ROLLING HILLS. RATHER THAN BEING BUILT, IT LOOKS AS IF IT GREW FROM A SEED.

The interior space is flooded with natural light, inviting the outside in and encouraging the insider to venture out for a picnic or a promenade. From this vast hall of light the visitor can meander to the theater, the gift shop, the Carle Café or the Reading Room.

The Reading Room is a comfortable and engaging playspace of colorful couches, soft pile carpets and hundreds of books. It is a veritable storehouse of spirited literature, illustrated fantasy and wonderful stories. It is here, in this plush library, where adults can rediscover their childhood. In this charming bookery, mothers, fathers and grandparents can share with their children the fabled stories that meant so much to them when they were wee ones. The Reading Room is a vortex of inter-generational interaction — the museum’s rabbit hole.

The Museum’s East Gallery currently features a diverse sampling of illustrators entitled “Over Rainbows and Down Rabbit Holes: The Art of Children’s Books.” The exhibition, which runs through March 8, presents 80 works

PHOTOGRAPHIC FIGURES

Minying Tan

Herb Ritts Gallery/Clementine Haas Michel Brown Gallery
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
465 Huntington Avenue
Boston;/br>
Through May 10

A SURVEY OF PHOTOGRAPHY PAST AND PRESENT, "PHOTOGRAPHIC FIGURES" PRESENTS A SUMPTUOUS VARIETY OF WAYS IN WHICH THE CAMERA HAS CAPTURED THE HUMAND FORM. THE EXHIBITION IS THE FIRST TO BE HELD AT THE HERB RITTS GALLERY, THE NEW PERMANENT GALLERY FOR PHOTOGRAPHY AT THE MFA.

Comprising roughly 75 images, the exhibition includes three by the late fashion and celebrity photographer Herb Ritts, whose foundation donated $2.5 million for the creation of the gallery. It’s a new twist in Ritts’ sometimes-controversial relationship with the MFA. In 1996, while his exhibition “Works” was drawing one of the largest audiences ever seen at the museum, a Boston Globe review that summed up much of the critical opinion at the time characterized Ritts’ output as “fun, all style and little substance.”

But in “Photographic Figures,” Ritts’ contributions are relatively earnest, though they still embody his strong graphic vision. Ritts’ depiction of Sinead O’Connor in repose brings to mind a Buddhist monk in meditation, while his portrait of Olympic athlete Jackie Joyner-Kersee, captured mid-jump, is a stark arrangement of light and dark tones. The majority of the works in “Photographic Figures” are formed

TO ROME, TO ROAM NEW PAINTINGS BY TOM GLOVER NEW SCULPTURE BY MEGAN BOGONOVICH

Rick Agran

“To Rome, To Roam” juxtaposes the two-dimensional with the threedimensional, the concrete historical with the ephemeral whimsical. Painter Tom Glover’s sketches and canvases explore Roman cityscapes and the surrounding countryside while the ceramic sculptures of Megan Bogonovich offer inner scenarios, mindscapes, counterposed feminine energies, floral orifices and strange boat-mates.

Glover studied painting with Maine coaster John Laurent and shares Laurent’s hazy distances and visual innuendoes lovingly. When abroad he draws, sketches, paints quick studies and photographs copiously, then returns to his studio stateside. Paris and Trinidad were past jaunts that resulted in topical shows.

One enters the exhibition to Glover’s“ View from La Scala di Spagna,” an upsy-daisy street and cityscape. Painted aloft from a pigeon’s-eye view, the narrow street unfurls into distant rolling hills. Another streetscape, “Roman Rain,” shines from foreground to the middle distance as rain-glazed cobbles pave the floor of a canyon of buildings in terracotta, ochre, yellow, California poppy and creamsicle, a single red umbrella as punctuation. “Orvieto Farmhouse” offers a countryside landscape where some details are lovingly attended to and other simply dabbed in. What up-close looks like unevenness, blends into sumptuousness; as you retreat a half-dozen paces, chicken scratch becomes vineyard; gray lines transform to a field’s furrows.

NETWORKS 2008: A COLLABORATION

Meredith Cutler

Newport Art Museum
76 Bellevue Avenue
Newport, Rhode Island;/br>

5 Traverse Gallery
5 Traverse Street
Providence, Rhode Island;/br>

AS220 Project Space
93 Mathewson Street
Providence, Rhode Island;/br>
Through January 11

“NetWorks 2008: A Collaboration” is an ambitious exhibition spread across three diverse venues in Rhode Island where the artwork and stories of 19 influential Rhode Island artists have been celebrated and documented through a triad of gallery exhibitions launched and supplemented with video and photographic portraits of the participants. This unique exhibition and historical document is the result of a partnership amongst the Newport Art Museum; the artists; celebrated Rhode Island art collector Joseph Chazan, MD; Umberto Crenca, artistic director of AS220 (Providence’s renowned alternative art space); and 5 Traverse, a private gallery in Providence.

In the elegant setting of the Newport Art Museum’s Cushing Memorial Galleries, distinguished Rhode Island artists Howard Ben Tré, Toots Zynsky, Salvatore Mancini, Jonathan Bonner, Jacqueline Ott, James Watkins, Elizabeth Pannell, Timothy Philbrick, Mark Freedman, Denny Moers, Ruth Dealy, Umberto Crenca and Walter Feldman hold court with artists newer to the local art scene, or flourishing in its well-formed underground. These include Angel Quinonez, Xander Marro, CW Roelle and the artists who photographed and filmed them, Richard Goulis, Scott Lapham and Lucas Foglia. It’s an ambitious undertaking, finding the kernel of common ground that unites this group and translating that into a cogent exhibit experience.

The component of the wider project that best illustrates this goal is the lasting document of photographic and video portraits of the artists themselves. The stills were tackled by Lapham and Foglia, and, at their best, center the personalities of each individual in a space that informs their work and narrates their story. In Foglia’s portrait “Umberto Crenca,” the joyfully

LYNNE DREXLER - PAINTER

Elena Sarni

Portland Museum of Art
Seven Congress Square
POrtland, Maine;/br>
Through March 1

UPON ENTERING THE MUSEUM I IMMEDIATELY REALIZED THAT MY VISIT HAD COINCIDED WITH A BOOK SIGNING BY A POPULAR MAINE ARTIST AND CHILDREN'S BOOK ILLUSTRATOR, WHICH MEANT THAT THE MUSEUM HAD BECOME A STIMULATING, ART FILLED PLAYGROUND. I CRINGED, SEEING A SMALL CHILD RUNNING DIRECTLY TOWARDS A CANVAS WITH OUTSTRETCHED HANDS SHOUTING, "MOM IS THIS WET? IT LOOKS WET..." LUCKILY, THE YOUNG CONNOISSEUR WAS SNATCHED AWAY BEFORE TOUCHING THE CANVAS.

Crisis averted, I turned to focus on the exhibition that had brought me there: “Lynne Drexler - Painter.” Being a retrospective, the exhibition was as much about Drexler’s life as it was about her work. In conjunction with Portland Museum of Art’s Curator of Graphics, Photography and Contemporary Art Susan Danly, the exhibit was organized by Monhegan curator Tralice Bracy and the Monhegan Historical and Cultural Museum Association, many members of which shared intimate friendships with the artist, the type of friendships only island life produces.

Despite the fact that Drexler spent much of her career in New York City, her status in the city’s art scene, confirmed by her Chelsea Hotel address, it is her Monhegan Island work that defines the exhibition.

Drexler, whose southern roots are reflected in the alluring southern accent she never lost, had moved to New York City in the 1950s where she studied under Hans Hofmann and Robert Motherwell and became part of what was considered the second generation of abstract expressionists. She married John Hultberg, an established artist, whose gallery representative

ALISTAIR MCCALLUM: PHOTOGRAPHS OF THE NATURAL AND PASTROAL WORLD

Paula Melton

Vermont Artisan Designs
106 Main Street
Brattleboro, Vermont;/br>
January 2 through March 4

"I LOVE TO GO OUT IN THE STORMS. THE WORSE THE WEATHER, THE BETTER." THAT'S ALISTAIR MCCLALLUM, DESCRIBING THE CONDITIONS HE PREFERS WHEN TAKING WINTER PHOTOGRAPHS - THE SHOTS HE AFFECTIONATELY NICKNAMES "THE WHITE SCENES." "MY WORK IS INSPIRED BY NATURE," MCCALLUM SAID. "I LIKE TO GO OUT SKIING ALL THE TIME, AND I ALWAYS BRING MY CAMERA ALONG." BEING OUT IN THE SNOW ON HIS FARM, WITING FOR IMAGES TO "POP OUT" SO HE CAN RECORD THEM, MCCALLUM SAID, "COMBINES EVERYTHING I LOVE."

No wonder, then, that McCallum and his wife chose Vermont as the place they would settle down in 1985. McCallum’s appreciation for the dark time of the year emerges in every print, each scene rich with the velvety light and sumptuous shadows of the wooded snowscape. Any viewer who has used the cliché “the dead of winter” will think twice before uttering it again. McCallum’s range of grays is so lush that the prints almost make you feel war

McCallum’s relatively recent foray into digital printing has expanded this range of tones even further. “I have entered the digital age,” he jokes. After spending his high school years shooting “street scenes in New York,” the artist graduated from the Rochester Institute of Technology in 1979 and headed to

NICHOLAS ABRAHAM

Roanna Forman

OperaArt.US
581 Boylston Street
Copley Square, Boston;/br>

Opera aficionados are a rare breed. They love, and generally know, everything they can about the genre: the great composers, the famous roles, the singers that brought them to musical life, and the scenes that stop the show - and the heart.

Nicholas Abraham is one of them, and he’s translated his love of opera into a series of 20” x 24” oil paintings, on view in a comfortable gallery setting in Boston’s Copley Square. There are 25 portraits so far by this self-taught 67-year-old artist who did India ink sketches in high school, but resumed visual arts seven years ago, when he finally had time to devote to art.

After studying the works of Impressionists like Manet, Renoir and Degas and reading widely on art, Abraham began painting his own canvases. He paints, he said, painstakingly, by trial and error, always challenging himself. But painting is always a pleasure, never a stress. “When I try something, I have no idea how I’m going to Nicholas Abraham, Luciano Pavarotti, Tenor 1935-2007, 2008, oil on linen. Nicholas Abraham, Madama Butterfly, Puccini, 2008, oil on linen. OperaArt.US 581 Boylston Street Copley Square, Boston accomplish it, but I persevere, often painting over areas until I get it right. If painting

A DAMNED FINE IDEA: BERLOIZ'S LA DAMNATION DE FAUST IN THE MET: LIVE IN HD

Roanna Forman

For the third season in a row, the Metropolitan Opera is bringing live performance broadcasts to movie audiences worldwide. And this season’s “La Damnation de Faust” by Berlioz was especially right for the screen, with its imaginative use of cutting-edge video interactive technology.

The 1846 work adapts Part 1 of Goethe’s epic about the horrific consequences of Faust’s bargain with the Devil to gain Marguerite, whom Mephistopheles, in a bet with God for Faust’s soul, has dangled before him as the ultimate temptation. Faust, a disaffected intellectual who tries alchemy to unlock the laws of the universe, embodies the classic conflict between human knowledge and the divine, a soul’s struggle between good and evil, and abandonment tounbridled desire. All themes hefty enough for the opera stage.

For a work about one of literature’s greatest magicians, the Met has chosen the ingenious director Robert Lepage, who first staged it in 1999. Known to audiences for creating Cirque du Soleil’s “KÀ,” Lepage divided the set for Faust into 24 “boxes” using multi-tiered scaffolding and vertical beams. Video images are projected onto 24 individual;/p>

CIRQUE LE MASQUE

Franklin W. Liu

Cutler Majestic Theatre at Emerson College
219 Tremont Street
Boston

January 21 through 25

/br>

Brothers Dennis and Bernie Schussel, co-creators of the Cirque Le Masque will prolong the merriment of the New Year with six spectacular performances to "Carnivale" certain to delight the entire family at the Cutler Majestic Theatre this January.

The fact that Dennis and Bernie are brothers is probably the troupe’s only similarity to The Ringling Brothers in bringing popular traveling circus entertainment to the public nationwide. Unlike Barnum & Bailey’s circus, there are no live animals performing tricks in Cirque Le Masque’s 90-minutes long presentations.

The show is comprised of a troupe of comics, wildly funny clowns, jugglers, aerialists, contortionists, amazing strength, grace and balancing acts, and daring acrobatic acts performing with no safety nets. All wear colorful

PEER GYNT

Greg Morell

Portland Stage Company
25A Forest Avenue
Portland, Maine;/br>

January 27 through February 22

Portland Stage Company Artistic Director Anita Stewart, now in the eleventh year of her tenure, has thrown caution to the wind in adapting and directing the very rarely produced early Henrik Ibsen opus, “Peer Gynt,” one of the most ambitious theater projects of the season.

Most of us are familiar with Ibsen’s more sobering later plays, modern dramas dealing with women’s issues in a drawing room format. “Peer Gynt” bears little resemblance. “Peer Gynt” is Ibsen in the full flourish of expression. It features a huge cast of characters, quick-changing scene shifts, numerous exotic locations, and a panorama of thematic concepts and special effects.

Peer Gynt is a man on a robust quest for self-discovery. He is a rogue, a fool and a weaver of dreams, chasing adventure from his home in frosty Norway to the dark caves of trolls, the high seas, and the hot sands of the African desert.”

It is no small wonder why today’s theater companies regard this script as unproducable. Portland’s Stewart, however, has been thinking and ruminating about this play for years and actively worked on it for the past three. She has enlisted the support of Maine’s “Figures of Speech” puppet company to assist her on this grand theatrical quest. The local puppet company has enjoyed a long association with the theater, having

REAL ART WAR

Taryn Plump

56 Arbor Street
Hartford, Connecticut/br>
Don’t look too closely for meaning. At least not within the tornado of broken and macheted letters in glossy crimson paint and winetinted felt. Although this Carol Padberg mural is titled “Helvetica Mash Up,” there are no hidden words to find, no secret Rorschach Test to contemplate. The jumble of broken letters, rather, is a visual study on the many layers of language – and a reminder that spoken words can confuse as often as they communicate.

This kind of cerebral, explorative work is the cornerstone of Real Art Ways, a 33-year-old non-profit art organization tucked away in an old mill building just at the edge of West Hartford. Through art exhibitions, performances, concerts, cinema, readings and educational and speaking programs, the art space seeks out the unique and the unusual, the undiscovered and the experimental. In a sense, the “alternative” has always been at Real Art Ways’ core. These principles were first cultivated in 1975, when a group of artists started the organization on Asylum Street

STEVE SYVERSON AND THE ARTS LEAGUE OF LOWELL

Jim Dyment

An average day for Steve Syverson starts with a short commute to his store, Van Gogh’s Gear, which he’s been running for just over five years. He has already achieved his goal to “beat the odds” that retail businesses fail within the first three years. It’s an inviting space that offers artists and students fine art supplies and custom framing.

Later in the day, he may work on a sculpture. As you may expect, Syverson is also an artist - preferring to work in three dimensions. His free time is limited, so he usually finds himself working on a commissioned piece or something that’s linked to an upcoming show. Currently he’s working on a body casting made from cold-cast bronze resin. One of his recent sculptures, “Body Armor,” is a life-sized human form constructed in small copper sections with a quilted appearance. It’s formed to model the back of a female figure. He will soon work on a companion, the front, to finish the piece as conceived. Copper is his medium of choice because it’s easily worked within the short time periods that fit into his busy schedule. Tags on the backside of Syverson’s copper works explain that he uses thin sheets of copper that he then modifies with oxidizers. Heat and hydrochloric acid are used to change the surface of the copper, resulting in a wonderful array of colors. The surface is then protected with a sealant but the surface will likely change slowly as it ages.

The rest of Syverson’s day is filled with e-mails, phone calls or an occasional person coming in to discuss some matter pertaining to the Arts League of Lowell (ALL). He’s been involved with

Capsule Previews: January/February 2009

Brian Goslow

Due to their high sensitivity to light, the water-based pigment paintings from around the world featured in the Watercolor— Bodycolor exhibition at the Worcester Art Museum, 55 Salisbury Street in Central Massachusetts, are rarely shown, including some of the museum’s recently acquired Asian, English and French creations. Ranging from the Italian Renaissance and Baroque periods to late 20th century, you can see the works of Maurice Prendergast, John Singer Sargent and Winslow Homer alongside those of Franz Kline, Byron Browne and Norman Bluhm through March 1.

While the first month of the year is typically the gloomiest and most depressive, the colorfully cheerful and delightful “It Changes Everything” exhibition spotlighting Waltham Mills Artists Association members Liza Bingham, Hannah Bureau, Kirsten Lamb, Antoinette M. Winters and show curator Susan Post features a mixture of bright paintings that promise to lighten up your mood from January 2 through 31 at the Kingston Gallery, 450 Harrison Avenue #43 in Boston’s South End. “The use of recurring elements of still-life, figuration, landscape or abstraction animate the inanimate in their paintings, acting as emblematic embodiments of their obsessions,” Post said of the works. “But whatever its apparent subject, the work in this exhibition is also about decision making, process, and how even the smallest, subtlest of modifications can change everything.”

In the 1950s, legendary journalist Edward R. Murrow hosted a public radio program that set out to bond Americans together through a discussion of important issues. Wanting to ignite similar conversations today, the Nahcotta Gallery, 110 Congress Street in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, asked writers and artists to use the thesis of the program in creating works for “Inspired: This I Believe.” In explaining the reasons for hosting the show, the gallery’s Abbie Chislett stated, “Not just our boundaries and borders divide us, but our growing inability to understand one another as fellow humans. ‘This I Believe’ hopes to establish mutual empathy and compassion and create connections through people sharing their personal beliefs, ranging from the simple to the profound, the funny to the heartbreaking. The goal of ‘T.I.B.’ is not to homogenize the beliefs of the world, but to inspire recognition and respect for the differing beliefs of others.” The show runs from January 2 through February 1.

Gillian Frazier has turned the most intense moments of her life into powerful, mostly charcoalmade, figurative drawings. Her retrospective “Reflections,” which can be experienced at the Boston Graduate School of Psychoanalysis, 1581 Beacon Street in Brookline, Massachusetts from January 5 through 29, explores three series on the intimacy of romantic and parental love: portraits of her mother at various stages of life, created as part of her grieving process; the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq through the kaleidoscope of having a beloved nephew serving in the Marines; and self-portraits in which she reviewed her family background and her own personal growth. Frazier, who normally creates abstracted landscapes, said these works serve as her selftherapy: “Whenever something is emotionally upsetting me, instead of writing in a diary, I create art to help ‘work things out’ or use art making as an emotional release.”

Whether it’s his opened mouth “Turbofish” ceramic creation or similarly themed snails, puff fishes and other worldly bottom feeders, Benjamin Lambert’s work is the kind you could imagine on your desk or bookshelf and can be, when they’re exhibited throughout January at the Daniel Kany Gallery, 89 Exchange Street in Portland, Maine.

Johnathan Derry’s “New Work” exhibition, which runs from January 12 through February 12 at Providence College’s Hunt-Cavanaugh Gallery at 549 River Street Avenue, brings the sculptor’s process of drawing to life. His most recent sculptures are based on everyday objects and refuse with a recognizable association with our everyday world but assembled in a way that connects to his aesthetic for line drawing. Often evoking a sense of purpose, Derry said the sculptures have mechanical and industrial elements that have as much to do with the negative space surrounding the pieces as they do with the components that make the work.

Jane Hesser’s photographs magnify the intricate networks, systems and relationships of the natural world while Kim Salerno’s delicious eye candy installations take inspiration from William Morris’s use of plant materials and the animal world as well as the patterns of Persian Classical and French Aubusson carpets. These “Tangles and Snarls” can be experienced from January 16 through February 5 at the Chazan Gallery at Wheeler, 228 Angell Street in Providence.

New Hampshire painter and Millbrook Gallery and Sculpture Garden owner Pamela R. Tarbell gets her own exhibition at the Lyceum Gallery & Sculpture Garden at the Derryfield School, 2108 River Road in Manchester, New Hampshire. “Lines” runs from January 16 through February 23 - schooldays only - and features over 20 large oil paintings “full of pure color and informed by undiluted design” that are a departure from her previous “Spirit of the Dance” series of Native American inspired work.

Should you find yourself in Chiang Mai in Northern Thailand before February 10 (and believe it or not, I recently talked to someone who will be), the Bank of Thailand Museum is featuring an expanded version of the “Bhutanese Textiles: Weaving from the Heart” exhibition hosted at the Asian Cultural Center of Vermont last year. The 154 textile works and 50 large format photographs spotlight the unique national dress of the Bhutanese; the show is complemented by “From the Land of the Thunder Dragon; Textile Arts of Bhutan,” a video produced by the Peabody Essex Museum.

The title of Sandra Berbeco’s “New View” exhibition at the 215 College: An Artists’ Cooperative Gallery refers to both the imagined landscapes and garden flowers that have populated her past paintings; over the past year, she’s modified her work to present these images in unusual angles on elongated canvases, which can be seen from February 6 through March 1 at 215 College Street in Burlington, Vermont.

Robert and Shana ParkeHarrison’s untraditionally created and staged photographic works of loss, human struggle, and personal exploration within landscapes scarred by technology and overuse have engaged museumgoers for years. Their “Art and the Transforming Landscape” exhibit celebrates the husband and wife team who’ll be judging entries for “Elsewhere,” for which Silvermine Guild Artists were challenged to create works which “reflect upon a world we think we recognize, but exits outside time and place as we know it, various states of being, points of reference, journeys and visions of those places;” the winners will be displayed along with “Layers + Meaning/ Order + Space,” a collection of new works by New Canaan artist Ann Conrad from February 22 through March 13 at Silvermine Guild Arts Center, 1037 Silvermine Road in New Canaan, Conn.