artscope magazine: November/December 2007

Welcome Statement: Brian Goslow, managing editor

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

Welcome Statement, November/December 2007

Welcome to artscope’s first expanded year-end issue. Along with our regular reviews and previews, we hope you’ll enjoy our look at some of our favorite exhibitions and artists of the past year as well as some of the non-winning entries of our artscope cover contests, which began with our March/April 2007 issue and has attracted over 200 artist submissions since that time, that we felt was worthy of your attention.

The theme for our January/February 2008 issue cover contest is “Winter Blues” – how you define them is up to you. More detailed information can be found in the back of this issue or by visiting artscopemagazine.com.

For this issue, we asked our writers to branch out of their regular boxes, if you will, to cover an area of the visual and performing arts they wouldn’t normally cover. The end results include Roanna Forman introducing us to the wide-ranging Turkish-centered Dunya performing arts organization, Catherine Laferriere telling us about the great student theater program at Saint Anselm’s College, the New England Center for Circus Arts by Paula Melton and the activist Beehive Collective of Maine by Greg Morell. Please let us know what you think about our coverage in this regards and whether you want to read more articles like this in artscope.

We continue to build our outreach from our initial coverage core of the Greater Boston and Cape Cod region to the rest of New England thanks to the addition of four new writers: Elena Sarni of Maine, Rick Skogsberg from mid-state Vermont, Taryn Plumb, who’s reporting from Central Connecticut and Sandy Lashin-Curweitz, who took a ride down Route 146 to review URI’s “China Seen by …” photo exhibit. If you’re a writer and don’t see the area you live in covered, please contact us at info@artscopemagazine.com about rectifying that. We also welcome theater blogger Chris Caggiano, who interviewed playwright Ronan Noone about his new play “Brendan,” currently being premiered by the Huntington Theatre Company.

artscope magazine has been a proud sponsor of the Paradise Lounge Gallery; William Henderson takes a look at its “Fifth Anniversary Retrospective” being held in November. Artscope publisher Kaveh Mojtabai noted, “Gallery director Ami Bennitt‘s goal was to create a space where the boundaries between art forms, creators and presentation would be broken down, not boxed in; this is a philosophy we share and why we are happy to sponsor them.”

As we reach the holiday season, I encourage you to search out a truly unique gift from a local gallery or at one of the many holiday-theme shows that’ll be taking place in the weeks ahead. You can also give that arts fanatic on your present list a subscription to artscope; call (617) 639-5771 for details.

This expanded issue was a full team effort from our sales staff, our graphic designer and especially our writers who not only took on added assignments, but also delivered them on deadline. Bravo, everyone! And bravo to you our readers for your support and encouragement during the past year.

See you in 2008!

Wendy Artin: Esprit de Corps

Catherine Laferriere

Gurari Collections
91 Charles Street

Boston

November 3 through December 9

Aesthetically speaking, living in Italy is different from living anywhere else. Without meaning to, simple arcs morph into sensuous curves; ink pools into rich and suggestive ripples. And time and time again, the human figure is discovered and dissected in a way that glorifies the sacredness and eroticism of the form. To live in Italy is to bathe in the worship of the body, and Roman resident Wendy Artin doesn’t seem to disagree.

For this Gurari Collections exhibition, Artin brings Rome to Boston. The show combines the artist’s familiar watercolor nudes and landscapes with 11 life-sized charcoal drawings of male and female figures. Both the scale and media represent a new direction for the artist.

“When I work from the models in watercolor, anything longer than 30 minutes or maybe 40 minutes ends up over-worked,” Artin explained. “There is a delicate balance in how much information the watercolor should contain to be satisfying. Too much information and all of the fluidity is killed. I have worked this way for years, and as I grew better at it, I also realized how much I was constantly leaving out - and wanted to put in. I can get a fair amount of the very subtle information in the light areas, but can’t work back into the dark areas without the watercolor suffering.”

Indeed, Artin’s charcoal works reveal entirely new sets of features. Wrinkled skin and slivery veins complement calluses, knuckles and fingernails. Strands of hair are isolated and wilt in layers against protruding kneecaps and the stacked tiers spinal chords. Her beautiful people benefit from both skill sets,

Whitney River: New Paintings

George Gerard

Chase Gallery
129 Newbury Street

Boston

November 1 through December 1

A New England fall brings to mind images of pumpkins, full forests of changing color, apple cider and a cozy sense of calm. This fall, Chase Gallery has selected an exhibition that keeps with the spirit of the season.

Whitney River’s paintings easily reflect this fall mood in her choice and portrayal of topic. For this exhibition, she has chosen to paint reeds through an exacting and meticulous process, juxtaposed against airy backdrops reminiscent of fall colors. River is an accomplished artist who earned a Bachelor of Arts degree at Yale University and has been featured in a number of exhibitions and collections, including Fidelity Investments.

In all of her artwork, River chooses to paint the natural landscape surrounding her home in Portland, Maine. Each piece is created from a time-intensive process using oils. “I render organic objects with great precision because I am intrigued by the reality of the forms,” she said. “Each branch I examine reveals curves, bends, bumps, and scars that express its unique character and form.”

Close examination reveals River’s process.

Design Life Now: National Design Triennial

Gary Duehr

The Institute of Contemporary Art/Boston
100 Northern Avenue

Boston

Through January 6

The Institute of Contemporary Art recently expanded its ICA Store to take over most of the 4th floor, a major renovation to what had been galleries for artwork. With its mall-type design of wide aisles, flanked on either side by sleek white nooks, the Institute hopes to enhance the art-slash-shopping experience.

Oops. Correct that. This writer has evidently misunderstood the whole enterprise. What’s happening on the 4th floor is actually “Design Life Now: National Design Triennial,” a touring show organized by the Smithsonian’s Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum, which presents the best work of the last three years in product design, architecture, furniture, film, graphics, new technologies, animation, science and fashion, featuring big brands like Apple, Google and Nike.

That laundry list of media, with products that range from iPods to surfboards, from a chandelier to a kidney liver transportation device to a botanical garden, adds to the random, ultra-democratic feel of the exhibition. Kind of like a high-tech Ikea. With every cool thing in its own carved niche, treated equally, and no real curatorial eye other than “best,” it’s hard for larger meanings to accrue.

So, you might as well browse, and not without perverse enjoyment in the neat stuff. For example,

Rewind: The Paradise Lounge Gallery Five-Year Anniversary Retrospective

William Henderson

969 Commonwealth Avenue
Boston

November 1 through 30

Called “a bustling underground art space,” The Paradise Lounge Gallery – part of a multi-functional entertainment and dining space - began presenting “low-brow” pop art group and solo exhibitions in 2002 with “Infections,” the debut painting exhibition by former Weezer bassist Mikey Welsh. Since then, the gallery has presented alternative visual art by pop culture heroes including Mark Mothersbaugh of New Wave icons Devo (and “Rugrats” music creator); marathon New York painter Steve Keene; West Coast illustrator/painter/toy creator Gary Baseman; concert posters from the hipster collection “The Art of Modern Rock,” and the visual art by area musicians Asa Brebner and Dave Tree.

This retrospective exhibition will feature artwork shown at the gallery over the past five years and will include paintings, photography, concert posters and mixed media. “Every artist that I asked said they would love to participate,” gushed gallery director Ami Bennitt, talking about this retrospective during a recent telephone interview. “This is about celebrating the gallery and this venue and its success, so everybody who lives around here are part of it and they’re all very excited to be back at Paradise.”

She can’t believe that it’s been five years since she first nervously sent out the press releases announcing the gallery’s opening show.

SPECIAL EVENT -- Boston International Fine Art Show

Catherine Laferriere

Cyclorama at The Boston Center for The Arts
539-551 Tremont Street

Boston

November 15 through 18

Now in its 11th season, or as its director and co-producer Tony Fusco said, “the first year of the second decade,” the Boston International Art Show (BIFAS) is the only one of its kind on the East Coast. Offering an equal mix of traditional and contemporary fine art, BIFAS offers the opportunity to see and purchase artworks from 40 major U.S. and European galleries. Last year’s event garnered sales in excess of $2 million, with original art going for a few hundred dollars up to the seven-figure price range.

This Fusco & Four produced show is held at the historic and majestic Cyclorama at the Boston Center for the Arts, a huge circular-domed structure built after the Civil War that occupies an entire block in the South End. It initially housed a diorama of the battle of Gettysburg. “From the very beginning it was a building devoted to history and art,” Fusco said. The facility features a glass skylight designed by Buckminster Fuller. “It's a fantastic structure for an arts show because the circular room allows us to have a really dynamic floor plan. It is a beautiful space and we use it to the maximum.”

Fusco also notes that a number of prestigious galleries are returning to the fair,

Global Feminisms

Sarah E. Fagan

Davis Museum and Cultural Center
Wellesley College

Wellesley, Massachusetts

Through December 9

The term “feminist art” may invoke images of works by Judy Chicago, Claude Cahun and other overtly “female” works of art discussing or challenging femininity in the 1970s. Perhaps we picture “recently discovered” women artists of the European Renaissance or Baroque, the more avant-garde posters of the Guerrilla Girls, or simply abstract paintings and sculptures that look suspiciously like parts of the female anatomy.

But this female-centric exhibit, which will surely become a cultural landmark, does not merely present art that provides a counterpoint to the male-dominated art world, as feminist art did decades ago, nor does it attempt to reinterpret the western canon, nor to exhibit works by solely American and Western European artists. The beauty is in the multiplicity presented in the scale of the project, evident by its title: “Global Feminisms.” There is more than one definition of feminism here, and it comes in the form of work from every inhabited continent on the globe.

“Global Feminisms,” which is the first show at Wellesley College’s recently renovated Davis Museum, premiered at the Brooklyn Museum earlier this year, is a show for contemporary feminist art; in fact, nothing in it was created pre-1990. This is a far cry from the exhibits America saw in its last major wave of feminism in the 1970s. And it shows.

Tiger by the Tail! Women Artists’s of India Transforming Culture

Sarah E. Fagan

Women’s Studies Research Center and Rose Art Museum
Brandeis University

Waltham, Massachusetts

Through December 14

These works from 17 female Indian artists, some quite famous and all from urban areas, were brought together through the efforts of American co-curator Wendy Tarlow Kaplan and Indian co-curator Roobina Karode in this exhibition which inhabits two buildings on the Brandeis campus. An international collaboration between the United States and India, this exquisite show was compiled and brought to the U.S. to provide the more intense “focus” that Women’s Studies Research Center (WSRC) founder and director Shulamit Reinharz believes is the next natural step in the recent resurgence of feminist artistic scholarship.

This show expresses contemporary feminism within the fertile microcosm of the Indian subcontinent. The vessels of many of the sentiments expressed are on one level specific to Indian history, sexuality, religious practice and culture. This specificity is poignant and not to be forgotten. The language and traditional iconography of myths and legends is often used and reinterpreted to give new power to the female. Historical happenings are cited. Yet it is impossible to say that these culturally particular works cannot also provide extensive dialogue as to the similarities and differences between female discourse and hurdles in India as compared other cultures.

Navjot Altaf’s wooden sculpture “I Have No Fate Lines - Thank God” nods to the tradition of reading the lines in one’s palm as a prediction - nay, a telling - of a woman’s future. Their lack of control puts her in control.

Textile Heirlooms from the Indus Valley

Brian Goslow

Worcester Art Museum
55 Salisbury Street

Worcester, Massachusetts

Through February 4

Assembled by Thomas W. Simons, the U.S. Ambassador to Pakistan from 1996 to 1998, who along with his wife Peggy, developed an interest in textiles of the world during his 35 diplomatic career, this exhibition gives us a personal connection to a region that has played a monumental role in the early history of the 21st century. It’s amazing to consider how these works have survived centuries of turbulence in the region they were. That’s especially true for the “Woven Cloth for Turban” roll made in late 19th century Thatta in Pakistan’s Sindh Province that you could imagine, with the right skilled tailor, converted into a garment to wear today.

An early 20th century “Child’s Vest and Hat” from Indus Kohistan in the North-West Frontier Province of Pakistan, made to be worn in isolated mountain valley climates, feature intricate minute cross and tent stitched fabric complimented by multicolored beads and buttons weaved into their designs, as well as beading similar to that of our own Native American Indians.

Donna Hamil Talman: Danse Ardente

Brian Goslow

Carney Gallery, Regis College
235 Wellesley Street

Weston, Massachusetts

Through December 19

It’s always exciting to see an artist take their art in new and unexpected directions. Donna Hamil Talman has done just that with this exhibition that follows an earlier fall show where her work not only “moved” across the walls of ARTSWorcester, but danced in its exhibition space as a result of having been screened onto silk draperies that seemed to bring its subjects alive.

Hamil Talman, who is represented by the Copley Society, where she won the juror’s prize at 2005 Fall Member’s Show, has exhibited at numerous Boston and East Coast galleries. Until recently, her works gave the impression of having been chiseled off the walls of century-old caves thanks to her unique style of placing varnish over her photographs. Some of the images in her “Linking Back,” “Lineage” and “Ancestor Portraits” series were indeed fossils shot at the Eyzies-de-Tayac national prehistoric museum in France, including works from the Lascaux Cave.

Her pervious series, “DNA/Body,” utilized similarly distorted images from x-rays of the artist – she has autoimmune illness lupus, which may explain her intense exploration of the human body and its makeup - and others complimented with superimposed DNA code imagery.

The human body is still featured in the images of “Danse Ardente,” but the impressions were not initially created with a tripod or an x-ray machine, but with the assistance

Sensacional! Mexican Street Graphics

James Foritano

Mass College of Art and Design
Stephen D. Paine Gallery

621 Huntington Avenue

Boston

Through December 1

Aye Carumba! This show makes you want to paint OUTLAW!

Sorry, I lost control there for a moment. But, perhaps I can blame it on my environment. Just picture the bemused art reviewer entering, clipboard in hand, pen poised, art history foremost, and perceiving through an auditory scrim of intermittent screams and a low rumble of mariachi music, figures of hallucinatory proportions and colors, addressing his every desire for food, fashion, sex, security, progeny - have I left anything out?

Gurus of popular culture will tell you that commerce, however sanely it is described by macro-economists, is intimately connected with the rampant desires of the Id. Who better to conduct this phantasmagoria of communal desire than street artists, who, in Mexico, are a numerous tribe jealous of every unpainted inch on the bifurcating walls of streets and alleys. If you are a merchant of the least transitory article of commerce or, if you hawk a service skill from a roofless street corner, these artists want your business!

They are, for the most part, a tribe unschooled in the niceties of art, and as impatient of restraint as your typical customer,

The Sacred Deed: The Art of Brother Thomas

Catherine Laferriere

Pucker Gallery

171 Newbury Street

Boston

Through November 26

Celebrating the life and work of Brother Thomas Bezanson, this extensive collection of pottery is a poignant and polished tribute to the recently departed Benedictine Monk. Reflected upon the smooth surfaces of the tea bowls, vases and plates are the tenets of Brother Thomas’ being – his serenity, his spirituality, his notions of art.

“It was only later in life,” Brother Thomas wrote in a January 2007 dispatch from Erie, Pennsylvania, “I became conscious that art was not an occupation. At some point it became a state of being, i.e., it became something from which you can never retire, an interior burning bush that never burns out.” For Brother Thomas, art transcended a material masterpiece and the intellectual planning behind its design. Instead, for him, art was a conduit to the inner experience of creating, sharing and receiving beauty.

Ceramic Sculpture: Fire and Ash

Britt Beedenbender

Fuller Craft Museum
455 Oak Street

Brockton, Massachusetts

Through January 6

This exhibition has the feel of a sacred space. Its light is low, almost glowing. There is no sound, yet there is an earthen smell, and the objects that inhabit the room embody life and speak to the interrelationship between the hand of the maker and the object.

“Fire and Ash” explores the sculptural works of seven acclaimed contemporary ceramic artists and the range of expression they have achieved using the wood-firing process, the oldest method of high fire ceramics. The forms include vessels, totems, wall sculptures and non-functional objects and reference nature, humans, architecture and machinery. While the artists have used their expertise and skill to exert a measure of control during the firing, there is an element of unpredictability that can yield unanticipated and sometimes remarkable results. Nearly all of the artists have studied in Japan and their works, often minimalist and contemplative in nature, speak for themselves.

Joy Brown’s herd of swelling pods greets the visitor. Nestled on the floor, these organic forms, which seem on the verge of movement, are softly rounded, their rough and uneven surfaces given warmth through the effects of ash upon the unglazed clay.

The View from Above: an exhibition of emerging artists

Britt Beedenbender

Cotuit Center for the Arts
4404 Falmouth Road/Route 28

Cotuit, Massachusetts

Through November 17

This collection of diverse works created by 10 emerging artists from “New England and beyond” was brought together by co-curators William Hekking and Jessie Nickerson. The exhibition is an entertaining, thought-provoking and at times edgy assemblage of diverse works that Hekking said “offers a macroscopic view of artistic practices taking place in the contemporary world.”

The viewer is lured into the gallery by the sound of a singular chime that emanates from Richard Johnson’s mesmerizing found object construction entitled “Revolutions per Minim.” An artist who considers himself foremost as a composer, Johnson is an inventor and builder of creative instruments which incorporate sound, movement, design and in this instance, an element of unpredictability.

Don Burton’s interactive two-part video and sculpture installation is engaging in its subtle brilliance. The work is inspired by his walks through the woods where Burton has encountered long forgotten stonewalls, those colonial markers placed on the landscape to assert our settlement of the wilderness. Burton describes his interior forest as a look at “how we use our land and the environment” and examines

SPECIAL EVENT: SMFA December Sale

Brian Goslow

School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

230 The Fenway

Boston

December 5 through 9

Whether you’re a serious collector or someone who simply loves overdosing on thousands of pieces of art in a single setting, the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston’s annual December Show is a not-to-be-missed event. You can find yourself unexpectedly face-to-face with a work by Robert Rauschenberg or Chuck Close only to have your heart stolen by a painting by a student who has yet to have his or her first exhibition. With approximately 5,000 works rotated on an ongoing basis, you just don’t know what you’ll find – and what you’ll leave with.

Works by established SMFA alums Jim Dine and Shelburne Thurber will be displayed along with more recent grads Brian Burkhardt, Lalla Essaydi and Timothy Andrew Kadish as well as many SMFA faculty, great artists in their own right.

SMFA grads and undergraduates created 30 percent of the work. “For many, it’s their first experience of making a sale,” curator Joanna Sultan said. “A relationship begins between the collector and that student that can last for years.” The show is a testing ground for young artists to find out what sells – and how much someone will pay for their work.

OUR FAVORITE SHOWS OF 2007

artscope staff

(artscope magazine asked some of its writers to share their memories of their favorite exhibition of the past year. Hopefully, instead of kicking yourself for missing these shows, you’ll keep an eye out for future chance to see these artists’ work.)

Fine Arts Work Center MFA Thesis Exhibition by Rena Lindstrom

I had been anticipating this exhibition since the first class of MFA students arrived in Provincetown in September 2005. Founded in 1968, the Fine Arts Work Center (FAWC) is a truly extraordinary institution. It has become an internationally renowned, premier residency fellowship supporting talented individuals at the outset of their careers.

Now, through a new collaboration between the FAWC and the Massachusetts College of Art and Design, an MFA in Visual Arts is being offered. The eight students in the class of 2007 were an adventurous group, enthusiastically engaging in the challenge of a small, new, low-residency program, and deeply committed to their development as artists.

This was no vacation on the Cape. With only two months each year to work on site with resident instructors and visiting artists, it was all about the studio, critique and work. I got to know several of the artists as they took their coffee breaks at a nearby cafe where I am a barista, serving up caffeine and sweets late night and early morning, seeing on a daily basis who is dragging, who has a cold, circles under her eyes, who has made a breakthrough in the studio. The other 10 months are long-distance in students’ hometowns, guided by a local mentor in communication with resident faculty.

Except for Nathalie Ferrier, whose fascinating thread constructions captures and release light and space in labyrinthine constellations, this class of MFA students is all painters. The Class of 2007 returned for a third September last month to present their thesis exhibition.

The exhibition took place in two parts; smaller work hung in the Hudson Walker Gallery at the FAWC, and larger pieces were installed in two beautiful spaces at the Provincetown Art Association and Museum. The smaller works sparked my appetite and that excitement grew in my first quick pass through PAAM’s spacious galleries. The high ceilings, the larger size of the work, the light, the color - there was an exponential expansion of sensation. And more than that, there was something visceral about the collection, something akin to the instinctual, some elemental emotional charge. This was strong work.

From the dramatic presence of Carole Ann Danner’s figures; to the movement in Kay Knight Clarke’s heavy-hanging clouds and changeling skies; the reductive, intimate and elegiac abstractions of Cathleen Daley; Alice Denison’s extravagant and romantic English flower compositions; the controlled, murmuring verdance of suburbia in Liza Bingham’s paintings; and finally, to Sandra Deacon Robinson’s floor to ceiling mysterious, humid, beckoning, swamp forests - this group of artists found something together here that enriched their individual work. And exhibited together, that work speaks to the collaborative success of an inventive new MFA program.

Edwin Dickinson in Provincetown, 1912-1937 by James Foritano

This exhibition at the Provincetown Art Association and Museum was my favorite not because it eclipsed all other artists and their art, but because it involved them. Just as Governor Winthrop’s Boston became, according to his wishes, “as a city upon a hill” for (some) refugees from religious oppression, so Provincetown parlayed its glorious nature and remove into a vital, century-long community for artists of all creeds. As I attempted to give my readers some context for Dickinson’s prominence in this history, it became glowingly present to me and changed my outlook on American art.

Michael Kenna: Hokkaido at the Robert Klein Gallery

Hokkaido was a wonderful photography exhibition showcasing serene landscapes ranging from abstraction to detail. Kenna is a master of his technique, creating an intimate experience with his use of line, context, and emotion. Each piece seems to resonate with an individual beauty; a beauty that is all the more enhanced when presented together. As an artist, Kenna continues to remain consistent with his method of presentation. The layout is simple and clean and it is his art that creates the mood of the space. The viewer is able to join with Kenna’s frame of mind and still take from it a wholly unique experience.

In the Spirit of Play at the Lascano Gallery in Great Barrington, Massachusetts by Greg Morell

“In the Spirit of Play” was a rich experience full of humor, zest, color, seasonal sensation and toys. Lots of toys, painted, sculpted and collaged with exuberance showcasing 17 Berkshire artists. Curator Jessica Hess and gallery director Ramon Lascano put together a holiday feast that I savored. It was an intelligent, provocative and thoroughly enjoyable cornucopia of visual concepts all flirting with the theme of toys. This was not your typical holiday showcase of smaller works. This was a holiday event, an exploration of inventiveness enjoyed by the young, the seasoned and the sophisticated.

ARTSWorcester’s Biennial 2007 by Chet Williamson

DeCordova Museum and Sculpture Park curator Nick Capasso judged more than 250 pieces for ARTSWorcester’s 13th Biennial, one of Central Massachusetts’ largest and finest juried shows. The resulting exhibition of 95 works by 74 artists represented the categories of painting, photography, works-on-paper, sculpture, mixed media, computer art and crafts. The Worcester Art Museum’s Hoche-Scofield Scholarship Fund provided $2,500 for cash awards to 16 artists in the five categories.

ARTSCOPE ARTIST PROFILE: Rich Brouillet

William Henderson

You don’t know whether the thin pregnant woman in the silky green dress in one of illustrator Rich Brouillet’s paintings is happy or afraid. Her expression reveals neither her emotion nor gives away what she’ll do next. If there is a next.

There isn’t. Not for this girl, not for this painting. At least from where Brouillet sits (or stands depending on the complexity of the painting over which he is working). The fact that the viewer is forced to draw in (or speculate on) the character’s past and future is part of the charm of his work.

And also part of his plan.

A skilled draftsman and a self-taught artist, Brouillet, 37, thinks he’s on the cusp of something great. After 15 years painting and trying to get into galleries, this has been a breakthrough year,

ARTSCOPE ARTIST PROFILE: Cynthia Consentino

Greg Morell

Northampton sculptress Cynthia Consentino does not merely show her work in galleries - she takes them over - animating galleries and exhibition spaces with marvelous creations that shock, provoke and amuse.

Known for its radical politics, from my chair, Northampton is far too conservative in its arts. However, when Consentino shows in this Western Massachusetts town, she rattles the dust off the pretty pictures of the Valley Realists and offers us a breath of fresh air.

Consentino plays with the duality of the innocent and the horrible, and between these polarities

ARTSCOPE ARTIST PROFILE: Pete Bergeron

Taryn Plumb

Please don’t say Pete Bergeron’s oil and canvas landscapes look “like pictures.” That term makes the classically trained painter cringe. Instead, he prefers to think his work has a “life-like, walk into it” quality.

It certainly does.

Featuring apricot-colored sunrises over misty waterways and weathered clapboard barns set against gray skies, his paintings are at once beautiful and pastoral – making the viewer want to just hop into them and stay awhile.

“I don’t try to improve on the appearance of something,” said the West Redding, Connecticut-based painter. “I love looking at something that really depicts in a realistic fashion whatever it is that’s being painted. I love to see something come alive.”

Bergeron, whose work is featured at P.H. Miller Studio in Woodbury, Conn., draws inspiration from the Hudson River School, as well as classical masters such as Rembrandt. The latter most influences his technique: For each painting, Bergeron applies layers of glazes, starting with a gray-green verdaccio, then continuing with two to three transparent colors, and finally finishing with

ARTSCOPE ARTIST PROFILE: James Wolf

Britt Beedenbender

It is difficult to keep track of James Wolf. He is high energy and constantly working on a myriad of projects – whether based around his own creative expressions, commissions for public spaces or those of the Cotuit Center for the Arts. With mid-western roots, Wolf found himself on Cape Cod in the late 1980s where he founded the CCfTA, where he’s worked with such acclaimed talents as Edward Gorey and Leon Russell and developed it into one of the leading creative centers on Cape Cod.

The son of a musician, and surrounded by the music of Detroit in the 1960s, Wolf found an instant affinity with music and was a serious musician by the time he entered high school. It was not until July 2007, however, after years of producing hundreds of others, that Wolf finally produced his own nine-person band, James Wolf and the Big Bad Band. With its raw sound and compelling groove, the band sold out all three nights. In response to that initial success, Wolf has scheduled four more performances at CCfTA on February 28, 29 and March 1 and 2.

Wolf composed much of the band’s repertoire.

David Torcoletti: Soldiers

Rick Skogsberg

The Gallery at Mount Ida College, Carlson Hall

777 Dedham Street Newton, Massachusetts

Through December 9

The extraordinary provenance of David Torcoletti’s photographs of Viet Nam War-era American servicemen confers an unassailable authenticity on their composite of image and effect. But though their visceral interface with the viewer emerges dynamically from an interaction and catalysis among the elements - context, effects and events - which, taken together, constitute their unique coalescence of complexity - each photograph has a stand-alone integrity from which no contextual element nor effect may be split off.

My first look had me reeling. The confluence of time and fate, the sweep of event smeared, as if randomly, across these young faces are too sad for words, yet no less than astonishing.

Make no mistake. These are not combat shots.

China as seen by…

Sandy Lashin-Curewitz

Fine Arts Center Galleries, University of Rhode Island

105 Upper College Road

Kingston, Rhode Island

Through December 9

The visual component of the University of Rhode Island’s Fall 2007 Honors Colloquium “China Rising,” this exhibition is a diverse collection of images from “insiders” and “outsiders,” photographers and digital artists, chosen and hung under the experienced eye of curator Judith Tolnick Champa.

At the entrance to the main gallery, Rhode Island resident Tina Barney’s “The Teenage Son” quickly captures the present tension in China between history (the father, graying temples, cigarette in hand, wears a Levi’s sweater and looks straight at the camera) and the future (the son, in parka and sneakers, looks off, disinterested). Like Barney’s directorial technique, Champa uses “The Teenage Son” to set the mood for the rest of the exhibit.

Around the corner, schoolgirls look out over two cities in Weng Fen’s “Bird’s Eye View: Haikou” and “Bird’s Eye View of Shenzen.” Under a cloudy sky of cool blues and white, two girls, one with a reassuring hand on the other’s shoulder, survey Haikou’s expanse of impersonal towers and shrinking green space. In contrast, the Shenzen skyscrapers are in the distance, and a lone heroine is perched on a faded, overgrown concrete wall, overlooking an otherwise hidden lot of red taxis and white and yellow buses. The vibrant colors and brighter sky somehow give this backdoor glimpse a more inviting atmosphere.

RedHOUSE: Architecture for Art

Jeff Badger

Lamont Gallery, Frederick Mayer Art Center, Phillips Exeter Academy

Tan Lane

Exeter, New Hampshire

Through December 1

Everyone who owns artwork understands the fun and challenging process of hanging it in your home. You select the rooms, arrangements and perhaps even the wall colors to best compliment each individual piece. But what if you were able to start from scratch and build a house specifically designed to showcase your collection? That was the task assigned to architect Jim Olsen by Frederick and Jan Mayer in 1996. Together they collaborated on the creation of RedHouse, a remarkable three-floor residence that houses the Mayer’s extensive art collection in downtown Denver.

“RedHouse: Architecture for Art” is an exhibition of both the Mayer Collection and the creation of RedHouse. By exhibiting selections from the Mayer’s eclectic art collection next to preliminary sketches, models and interior photos of the finished residence, the exhibition casts the architectural process as a curatorial project in itself.

89 Seconds at Alçazar

Elena Sarni

Bowdoin College Museum of Art

9400 College Station

Brunswick, Maine

Through January 6

One of the oldest college art museums in the nation, the Bowdoin College Museum of Art’s collection of more than 15,000 objects includes work dating back to the 9th century BCE. But just because its collection includes work from ancient times, doesn’t mean that Bowdoin is stuck in the dark ages. A recent two-year, $20.8 million dollar renovation that added 12,570 square feet to the 1894 Walker Art Building has brought the Museum into the 21st century and reflects to the world what Bowdoin insiders already knew - the Bowdoin College Museum of Art is just as serious about its contemporary art collection.

BigTown Gallery: Gallery Members Show

Rick Skogsberg

Through November 10

Holiday Show

November 17 through January 15

BigTown Gallery
99 North Main Street

Rochester, Vermont

Need a reason to drive three hours into the heart of snow country before any snow even flies? Here are five: Varujan Boghosian (constructions and collage), Lawrence Fane (sculpture), Penelope Jencks (sculpture), Nancy Taplin (painting) and Hugh Townley (sculpture and relief). And one more: you won’t see this assemblage of artists exhibiting together anywhere but BigTown Gallery’s Gallery Members Show featuring artists selected from BigTown’s first three seasons, each showing new work and older pieces not seen in their respective solo shows.

In only three years, gallery owner and director Anni Mackay seems to have already fulfilled her mandate to bring the best of contemporary fine art to central Vermont. This show not only reminds one of the quality of the work and the maturity of the artists that BigTown has been showing, but provides a wonderful opportunity to see pieces by major artists interacting and resonating with each other.

Jencks, Townley, Boghosian and Fane can all be said to have “arrived” at the top stratum of living/working artists; that is, artists whose work is getting peak exposure even as it evinces a visible maturity of process. If, by that standard, Nancy Taplin, at 57, the youngest in this show, has previously been characterized as “emerging,” it is evident in the way her paintings strongly anchor what might otherwise seem a sculpture-heavy show that she is arriving. Her “Bulging at the Base” (50 x 64 inches, oil on linen) seems pitched directly between

Collector’s Corner: Bruce Brown

Elena Sarni

While teaching English at Freeport High School in the 1970s, Bruce Brown noticed that Maine school lacked an arts education program. Deciding to do something about it, in the process of designing an arts and music appreciation course he himself ended up teaching, Brown took a crash course in Maine art by visiting several Portland galleries. Some afterwards, he found himself with an intense desire to collect art.

Brown, a Maine native, described his first purchase, a seascape by Stephen Etnier, as a moment of “pure insanity.” He remembers thinking, “What if I moved to Oklahoma? I’ve got to take something with me.” He’s remained in Maine, but regards that moment as life transforming.

He initially collected “lobster pots and lighthouses,” wanting to celebrate his home state. His collecting interests have evolved and expanded to include international work. “I’m more purposeful...patient and maybe balanced in my collecting these days,” he said.

After a few years, Brown began going to Boston and New York and discovered that not only were prints more affordable on a teacher’s budget, but that he loved them.

Theater -- Brendan

Chris Caggiano

The Huntington Theatre Company, Wimberly Theater at the Boston Center for the Arts
539 Tremont Street

Boston

Through November 17

As the adage goes, write what you know. That’s certainly true for Huntington Theater playwriting fellow Ronan Noone, who was born and raised in Ireland before immigrating to Boston later in life. In this artscope interview by Christopher Caggiano, Noone talks about his latest play, “Brendan,” which is being directed by Huntington artistic associate Justin Waldman. It focuses on the experience of one Irish immigrant, the eponymous Brendan, and his struggles to adapt to his adopted country.

How would you categorize this play?

Noone: I usually emphasize the comedy, but people are always able to find holes in that. I figure if Chekhov can refer to his works as comedies, then I have license to call my work a comedy as well. Coming from the Irish perspective, a play has to be very black for it to be a comedy. When I think of Irish comedy I think either a comedy of manners like Richard Sheridan or black comedy with Martin McDonagh or Sean O’Casey and his Dublin trilogy, even though those are all tragedies. It’s very hard to categorize them all under one banner. It’s more like each of them defines a specific type of comedy.

Theater -- Rhode Island theater season preview

William Henderson

As the state’s go to theater for national touring productions and performers (“Wicked,” “The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee” and the Smashing Pumpkins for instance), the Providence Performing Arts Center is thought, by some, to be the anchor of Rhode Island’s art scene. Three decades of painstaking renovations has restored much of the pre-World War I glamour to the facility, which turns 80 next year. And while we don’t begrudge them their birthday cake, there is much more to Rhode Island’s theater scene, from the recently reinvigorated Theatre By The Sea (itself celebrating a birthday in 2008) to the also well-known Trinity Repertory Company.

As Rhode Island’s largest arts organization, the Trinity Repertory Company, with an annual operating budget of $8 million, is a linchpin of Providence’s arts and entertainment district. Since its founding in 1964, it has produced 52 world premieres, and annually balances contemporary with classic works, including six subscription productions, for an estimated annual audience of 160,000. This year’s production of “A Christmas Carol” will run from November 16 through December 30 and will feature the directorial debut of Fred Sullivan, Jr. (at least with the company), and if you think the name is familiar, it is. Sullivan has appeared in Trinity Rep’s “A Christmas Carol” 20 times in the last 31 years.

Theater -- St Anselm's Abbey Players

Catherine Laferriere

Saint Anselm College’s Dana Center for the Humanities kicks off its 27th season with an impressive array of performing arts offerings. Embracing a decidedly multi-cultural program, African, Kyrgyzstani and Parisian artists will appear alongside regional and student talent with the college’s own Anselmian Abbey Players performing Michael Cristofer’s “The Shadow Box” on November 15, 16 and 17.

The Abbey Players were founded in 1949 and developed under Saint Anselm legend Ted Comiskey. Landis K. Magnuson now marks his 20th anniversary with the group as the second ever director of production.

Dance -- Boston Ballet

Franklin W. Liu

The Boston Ballet, featuring their entire company of acclaimed dancers, inaugurated their 2007-2008 season with a splendid one-night-only Gala Performance on October 12 at the Citi Performance Arts Center, Wang Theatre.

The evening honored and celebrated the 30 years of tireless devotion and gracious volunteerism of a true supporter and a life-long friend to the Boston Ballet: Cathryn S. Keith, who passed away earlier this year. A memorial scholarship endowment to benefit Boston Ballet School students has been set up to honor her life.

The Boston Ballet Orchestra opened the evening with an overture, “Petruchka” by Russian composer Igor Strasvinsky, who composed it in the winter of 1910 for Sergi Diaghilev’s Ballet Russes. This was a surprising choice indeed, when one considers that there are five Stranvinsky scores amongst over 50 repertoires performed by the Boston Ballet, and Petruchka is not one of them.

Community: Dunya

Roanna Forman

“What we have just seen is not just theater; it mirrored the world we live in.”

That line, from Dunya’s 2006 concert production of “Wisdom and Turkish Humor,” sums up the organization’s raison d’être and extraordinary appeal. Director Mehmet Ali Sanlikol founded the organization with Robert Labaree in 2004 to “find creative ways to show paradoxes found in parallel, but contradictory, cultures,” as Sanlikol puts it. Dunya’s primary cultural prism is Turkey, but it makes some surprising connections on related cultures through its creative programming and superb musicianship.

Community -- The Brickbottom Artists Association and Joy Street Studios

Roanna Forman

This November, the Brickbottom Arts District is celebrating its 20th Anniversary as one of the oldest live-work artist communities in the United States. And once again, the Brickbottom Artist Asocciation is partnering with Joy Street Studios for its open studios weekend on November 17 and 18 from noon to 6 p.m. Together, they will produce a rich viewing experience featuring live art demonstrations and special events with over 100 participating artists.

Since the studios are concentrated in single buildings, it’s easy to enjoy the diverse representation of artwork without extra legwork or struggle in inclement weather. One finds everything from painting, drawing, photography and installations to music and sound, jewelry, hand bookbinding, calligraphy, animation and fabric art.

At Joy Street Studios, located at 86 Joy Street, 40 artists will give live demonstrations every 15 minutes. For instance, you can watch glassblower Beth Gaertner mold beads through a hot blue flame, adding tiny decorative drops like so many marshmallows, or shaping fun, freaky animals as kids look on. Or see Riki Moss turn wet paper pulp into “strong, transparent skin-like magical material” that’s used in sculpture, light fixtures, or as part of “The Paper Forest,” an environmental arts display. Jewelers, painters, silversmiths, marble makers and many others will all share their creative processes.

Community -- The Beehive Design Collective

Greg Morell

The Beehive Design Collective is a small colony of 15 artists living and working in Machias, a distant corner of Maine. These industrious Bees work and produce art as a collective, sharing life, work, art and consciousness as only a small collective can.

It is difficult to ascertain whether their politics motivate their art or whether their art drives their politics. Working together as a collective, they produce intricate tapestries of banner murals that address political themes in much the same way as medieval windows visually illustrated the gospels.

I first encountered the Bees and their art at a political rally in Kennebunkport, Maine, the pre-event of an anti-war peace march to the Bush compound on a hot August morning.

Community -- Brattleboro's NECCA: A Circus Arts Mecca

Paula Melton

New England Center for Circus Arts
Cotton Mill Complex, Brattleboro

Vermont

If you're planning to run away with the circus, run away to Brattleboro first. A known hotbed of the visual arts, the town also supports the New England Center for Circus Arts (NECCA), one of the only centers east of the Mississippi for learning professional-level flying trapeze, aerial dance, juggling, clowning and tightrope performance.

World-renowned trapeze twins Elsie Smith and Serenity Smith Forchion founded NECCA in 2003 after many years touring the world with Cirque de Soleil, the Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey Circus and independently with their own Nimble Arts performance troupe. In addition to “The Love Show” – a full-length, family-friendly, vaudeville-inspired theatrical performance – the twins present their duo aerial act internationally, teach and choreograph for circus and theater troupes around the country and even create custom aerial performances for wedding receptions. Serenity also performs with her husband, Bill Forchion, who has an extensive background in television and film as a stunt man and actor.

Music -- The Pandas

Brian Goslow

Many musicians get lumped into the category of artists even if the majority of them do little of their own creating. That’s not the case with The Pandas, a four-man group from Central Massachusetts that uses sound to paint multifaceted works using your imagination as their palette.

The group recently appeared as the opening act of the fall season in the Worcester Art Museum’s Third Thursday Series, part of that institution’s attempt to attract a younger audience. Far from your typical rock band – if you could even call them a rock band, the Pandas utilize synthesizers, computers, accordions and found instruments, which in this performance included a children’s xylophone found at a local yard sale by detuned and synthesizer guitarist Sean Carroll.

Performing in WAM’s Museum Café, the Pandas used, as they do at most of their appearances, visual accompaniment.

artscope Capsule Previews

Brian Goslow

Most of the works in the Barbara Krakow Gallery’s Julian Opie exhibition were made in 2007, giving the show, which remains on view at 10 Newbury Street, Boston through November 28, a loud Now! factor. Whether it’s the liveliness of the continuous computer animation work “Ann, dancing 1” (joined by 2004’s “Bijou with earrings”), the head shot portraits of “Carlos, schoolboy” and “Jack, printer,” the up close and personal buttocks of “Show Time 4 (flocking) or the surprising minimalist detail of “View of Lake Motoso and Lake Fuji,” this is a rare opportunity to see a major modern artist’s work fresh out of the studio.

Duane Slick explores American mythologies and the Native American experience through his Winnebago/Mesquakie heritage in “Paths of My Fathers,” which opens November 3 and remains on view through December 1 at the Nielsen Gallery, 179 Newbury Street, Boston. At times an intense reflection on man’s inhumane attitudes towards other men and the failure of the brave new world of modern inventions to truly improve the planet, the paintings bring us back to the simple animalistic form of living our original settlers honored and survived. In providing the direness of the message, Slick reminds us some people remain who feel “back to nature” is the only answer to true peace.

From 1945 through the early 1990s, Gerald Cantor collected over 750 works by Auguste Rodin, starting with a bronze version of “The Hand of God” sculpture that caused him to first fall in love with the French sculptor’s art. “Rodin: A Magnificent Obsession, Sculpture from the Iris and B. Gerald Cantor Foundation,” which features 67 of those bronze works along with photographs, works on paper and documents remains on view at the University of Connecticut’s William Benton Museum of Art, along with the complementary “Rodin’s Contemporaries” exhibition with works by Theodule Ribot, Alphone Legrose, Camille Pissarro, Felix Buhot, Henry Somm and Edmond-François Aman-Jean, continues through December 16 at 245 Glenbrook Road, Storrs (please note, the museum is closed from November 17-26).

“Samuel McIntire, Carving an American Style,” includes over 200 works from original drawings and test pieces to the finely detailed finished furniture works and ornaments that adorned buildings and ships made by Salem architect whose 250th birthday is being celebrated by the Peabody Essex Museum. Curator Dean Lahikainen put together the accompanying book, which would make a great holiday gift along with a couple of tickets to the museum for the exhibition which runs through February 24 at East India Square, Salem.

“Laos Transpired: Contemporary and Ethnic Works from the Laotian Diaspora,” the eighth installment of the Brush Art Gallery’s “Building Community Through Culture” series includes oral histories and testimonials from survivors of the Vietnamese War bombing, ethnic costumes from the collection of the Prince of Laos, a site specific installation featuring lanterns and spirit houses by Mali Louanchao and a multi media interactive installation created by Steve Arounsack utilizing oral histories from Laotians who now live in Lowell. Held in collaboration with “Legacies of War: History, Healing, and Hope,” a New York-based non-profit peace-aiming organization, the show opens November 4 and continues through January 15 at the Brush Art Gallery, 256 Market Street, Lowell.

In a similar theme, Stonehill College students curated “A Reflexive Journey: The Immigrant Experience in Art,” an exhibition exploring why immigrants left their home countries, the journey they took to get here and the process they went through in assimilating into a new culture. Experience it from November 12 through December 12 at the Cushing-Martin Gallery, 320 Washington Street in Easton, Mass.

A few doors down from the Brush, the Arts League of Lowell’s ALL Arts Gallery at 246 Market Street presents “Elements: On and Off the Wall,” featuring works by Roberta Bloom, Jeffrey Briggs, Lindley Briggs, Chrissy Theo Hungate, Jay W. Hungate, Steve Syverson and Lizzie Upitis weekends from November 10 through December 2. ALL’s Holiday Sale and Show follows on the weekends of December 8-9 and 15-16 with vendors selling a wide variety of hand-made art items and well as local artists offering original oil and acrylic paintings, prints and mixed media works for under $150. Call (978) 970-2100 for gallery hours.

“Fortune at the Threshold” introduces five unique Providence artists that Firehouse 13 promises “exemplify the raw, recycled, and insightful talent that lies around every corner, in every bar, and in endless studios around the city.” Zane Claverie took two years to finish his large-scale cut and paste collage installation made of found objects; street artist Shawn Gilheeney pieces explode in “an abstract contemporary meltdown,” ceramic vessels by maverick clay sculptor Kik Williams will float your imagination; Justin Coleman shows ceramic cups can do more than hold coffee in his “Dead Starz” series; and Quinn Corey’s found trash sculptures are promised to “make you squirm” from November 6 through 29 at 41 Central Street, Providence.

Late Cuban-born Felix Gonzalez-Torres converted everyday materials like posters, light bulbs, candies and beads into thought-provoking works that took the innocence of the those objects and turned them into a heart-warming and heart-wrenching reflection on the AIDS crisis (which took his life). The work, featuring "Untitled" (Placebo-Landscape-for Roni), 1993; Candies individually wrapped in gold cellophane, endless supply,” will be arranged in a way that it carries out a dialogue with the architecture of the LeCorbusier building from November 8 through January 4 at the Carpenter Center for the Visual Arts, 24 Quincy Street, Cambridge.

Jason Travers sought to transfer a self-reflective experience from himself to the viewer in his latest collection of paintings in which he reflected his body’s scale and proportion onto multi-paneled canvases that amplify its sculptural form. While they may seem simple at first, elongated viewing reveals these “quiet, meditative, often humorous and poetic” paintings hold subtleties the celebrate all of our body’s quirks – exposed bones and all. Works by Boston painter Martin Mugar are showing concurrently through November 30 at the Kimball-Jenkins School of Art, 266 North Main Street, Concord, New Hampshire.

“Uncovering Identity: A Bulgarian Photo Project” features photographs taken by eight Bulgarian orphans aged 16 to 23 at the direction of Montserrat College of Art assistant professor Kate Jellinghaus to help them make the difficult transition to adulthood. The works, which serve as a rare view at this former Iron Curtain country, can be seen from November 5 through 20 at the Schosberg Alumni Gallery, 23 Essex Street, Beverly.

Montserrat graphic design program chair John Colan curated the Dorchester Arts Collaborative Open Studios Juried Show. Spotlighting the work of 18 artists who live, work or learn their craft in Dorchester, the exhibit can be seen Fridays and Saturdays from 3 to 6 p.m. or by appointment at (617) 429-9597 through December 31 at the Ahimsa Gallery, 11 Pearl Street, Dorchester, Mass. More details can be found at ahimsastudio.com.