WICKED Group Show

Juried by Hope Turner and Zola Solamente of Arden Gallery, Boston

January 30 – March 2, 2014

Reception Saturday, February 8, 2014, 5 –7pm

Our third anniversary (can you believe it?) Juried Show, entitled WICKED, runs from January 30 – March 2, 2014. A Reception will be held Saturday, February 8th from 5-7pm.

The theme was deliberately wide-open to interpretation by artists, while taking inspiration from the way the way the word wicked is used here in New England. 

The Gallery aims to showcase contemporary art that is original and exciting, so we asked professional artists working in all media to show us work that was cool, excellent, and ‘wicked awesome.”

And they did! Nearly 200 artists, some from as far away as Texas and Oregon, submitted over three hundred works of art to this show. Jurors Hope Turner and Zola Solamente, of Arden Gallery in Boston, made some difficult decisions, and ultimately selected 36 pieces by 30 artists for inclusion into the show.

Reflections on Making: Sara Fine-Wilson talks about Sara Sze

This is another in a series of occasional blog posts, where we've asked a member artist to talk briefly about an artist who's profoundly influenced their work. Here, associate artist Sara Fine-Wilson talks about her fascination with the work of Sara Sze.

photo courtesy of : artsmarttalk.blogspot.com/2012/03/sarah-sze-our-artist-invenice.

html

Paying attention to what is there can often prompt questions about whats not there and why. This is where I begin. I try to take notice of what I might have missed, ignored or dismissed as irrelevant. Often times this act can lead me to discovery. As an artist I can set up parameters and manipulate materials that act as a map to guide the viewer but I donʼt tell the whole story. I am interested layered connections, how they form and what they look like.

Inspiration for the objects I make can come from a broken bit of something glossy, a collection of parts waiting to be purposed, a desire to manipulate a certain material and the way things interact with each other. Inspiration also happens when I have conversations with students, colleagues and other artists.

Most recently I have been paying attention to the work of Sara Sze. I am interested in the way she explores the idea of being thrown of center and out of one comfort zone. She creates situations in which the viewer has an experience of interacting that provokes questions and exploration. If you want to read more about her work check out this piece in the NY Times.

And now a bit about Sara Fine-Wilson...

Levitate, sculpture by Sara Fine-Wilson

Sara Fine-Wilson is an artist and teacher who works primarily in sculpture and also in photography and painting. She attended The Maryland Institute college of Art and earned a BFA with a Major in Ceramics.  She went on to the Massachusetts College of Art and earned a Master of Science in Art Education with a studio focus in clay. She then spent a year as a resident artist at The Worcester Center for Crafts. She completed her MFA in Ceramics at The University of the Arts in Philadelphia.PA. Her work has been shown at The Concord Art Association, Fitchburg Art Museum, Danforth Art, Gallery 540 at Urban Outfitters World Headquarters. She is an associate member of the Fountain Street Fine Art Gallery in Framingham Ma where her work is represented regularly. She currently teaches art at Lincoln SudburyRegional High School. She continues to work in her studio in Millbury Massachusetts where she lives with her husband Bruce and her dog Arlo. See more of her work at sarafinewilson.com.

Dubuffet and Nan Hass Feldman

"The Cow with the Subtle Nose", 1954, by Dubuffet.

In a series of occasional blog posts, we've asked a member artist to talk briefly about an artist who's profoundly influenced their work. Artist Nan Hass Feldman tells us about two artists who've profoundly influenced her.

I was introduced to art at a very young age.  My mother signed up for mother and daughter art classes weekly at the Brooklyn Museum when I was ages 3 though 10 years old.  When I turned 12 years old, my closest friend from middle school and I would meet at the subway station at Kings Highway in Brooklyn and travel to Manhattan where we would get off at 8th St. in Greenwich Village and walk up 5th Avenue to 53rd St. where we would visit the Museum of Modern Art.  Then we would walk over to Madison Avenue and visit the Whitney Museum, and on upwards to the Metropolitan Museum of Art. We did this almost every Saturday until we were 18 years old and off to college. During these years, I had a few favorite paintings I would visit each week.

 "The Goldfish", by Matisse

Ultimately, Dubuffet's and his painting "The Cow with a Subtle Nose" was my alter-ego and had the qualities I admired that I wanted more to have in my own work.  At the time I was writing my thesis, and my own work involved large mixed-media paintings which  were realistic (though made-up) of architecture, people inside and out, and lots of fantasy.  The works were representaional, though fictional, and took me months to create.  After writing this thesis about the cow, my work totally changed and indeed, the paper did end up being about me after all. 

The second artist I fell head-over-heels about was Matisse.  Of course, he is immensely loved world-wide, but I fell for him also as a very young child.  One painting I remember along with others of his is, "The Goldfish". Matisse's colors, shapes, and subjects are all about color and design without the baggage of correct perspective or true colors and I have been influenced whether consciously or otherwise by him all my life. 

Nan Hass Feldman, The Yellow Tablecloth

 I've attached my painting of "The Yellow Tablecloth" of my dining room which everyone mentions it reminds them of Matisse.  I am sure I did not think of Matisse while I painted this, but I too paint as I see, am focused on my subject as a vehicle for a love of subjective color, patterns, details, and a communication of a more interesting world.

Nan Hass Feldman

508.380.6222

NanHassFeldman.com

Artist Mary Spencer talks about Magritte

This is the second in a series of occasional blog posts, where we've asked a member artist to talk briefly about an artist who's profoundly influenced their work. 

Magritte has entranced me for much of my life. I first saw his work at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City, when I attended the Art Students League during a summer college break.

Rene Magritte, Le Double Secret,  1927; Musee National d’art Moderne, Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris.

, 

This painting, Le Double Secret, seen much later at the Pompidou Museum in Paris is an example of what I love. There are two female images, a wooden ‘balcony’ edge and the sea/sky behind them. The primary female face has split open to reveal a vocal chord of bells, the shifted cover face is to the left. Somehow secret music has cracked open a twin, a double. It is a very mysterious, haunting, edge oriented painting of inner space and facades.

Since I have a twin, this resonates! We have a secret: we present it differently. We are both very introspective lovers of the sea and sky. Life’s horizon always shifts to produce far off sounds.                 

-Mary Spencer

and now, a bit about Mary....

Mary Spencer, Kimberley Woman,
mixed media on panel.

Mary Spencer's recent series of paintings combine mixed media with oils on panel, bringing together fragments from cave drawing, news photos, architectural views, landscapes, folding the elements over themselves and one another to achieve intriguing and enigmatic visions, a unified world of disparate parts. Prehistoric cave drawings traced in dark winding lines untainted by steel edge or digital concept blend into stone mountains or fragments left by wind, water, fire. Her paintings refernece Bernard Rudofsky’s The Prodigious Builders. All life is a building contest that  can astonish and remain. MORE info...