Missed Open Studios? No worries, 8x8 runs through May 19!

8x8 pieces by Eugenie Lewalski Berg and Sarah Alexander

 Closing Reception May 19 from 3-5pm

Just a few examples of the incredible variety of pieces in this show.

This exhibit features over 70 pieces by our member artists as well as artists who work at Fountain Street Studios. Each work of art, 8" x 8" in size and $150 in price, has been created especially for this exhibit - a great way to discover a new favorite artist, and to acquire an original kind work of art at a very reasonable price.

Here's a sample of what's in store. If you would like to find out more about a specific piece/artist, or make a purchase, please email us at fountainstfineart@gmail.com.

Or visit in person- the gallery is open every Thursday-Sunday from 11-5 (directions)

Sarah Alexander

Eugenie Lewalski Berg

Eugenie Lewalski Berg

Lisa Barthelson

Julia Berkley

Suzanne Booth SOLD

Pamela DeJong

Pamela DeJong (detail)

Pamela DeJong

Jim Eng

Jim Eng

Sara Fine-Wilson

Amy Furman

Amy Furman

Felicia Tuttle

Bob Grignaffini SOLD

Karen Jacobs

Karen Jacobs

Richard Kattman SOLD

Dottie Laughlin

Dottie Laughlin (detail)

Mimi Macksoud

Mimi Macksoud

Ginger McEachern

Ginger McEachern

Roy Perkinson SOLD

Felicia Tuttle

Anne Sargent Walker SOLD

Amy Weader

Jeanne Williamson

Kate Heyd

Kate Heyd

Sarah Alexander

Scout Austin and The Rubber Raft

Scout Austin talks about a painting that particularly resonated with her during a recent visit to the Worcester Art Museum- The Rubber Raft

Fellow encaustic artist Kellie Weeks and I recently wandered around the Worcester Museum of Art and viewed paintings until we could no longer input any more information. During our supervised meandering - guards followed us into every gallery - my attention was captivated by Philip Evergood's painting The Rubber Raft. Philip Evergood was an American painter (1901-1973), who apparently was as well known for his politics as for his painting style. A great supporter of workers' rights, he was not adverse to getting arrested numerous times. I was not familiar with his work or his life.

Philip Evergood's painting The Rubber Raft, collection of the Worcester Art Museum.

The Rubber Raft was first shown in the summer of 1945 and was seen as a footnote to World War II - a fact I did not know when I studied the painting, because, as usual, I did not read the entire blurb next to the painting due to my bias against having a painting explained to me before I make up my own mind about it.

I was first drawn to this painting because of its bright colors. The surrounding paintings were much lower key. In addition, I tend to be drawn to works that have at least some representational content because, for me, they contain stories. (And yes I had recently watched the movie "The Life of Pi" so I had the whole possibly being eaten at sea thing already going on in my brain.) I confess to paying little attention to the unfortunate men in the raft. Rather I was intrigued by the grinning sharks who seem to have gotten into the lipstick my mother wore when I was a child. To me they appear to be smiling and singing - possibly some shark show tune. I may actually have subconsciously ignored the men in the raft at first, because I did not see them until I looked closer at the painting. I am not entirely without sympathy for people who end up in a raft in the middle of the ocean, but the sharks are scene stealers.

The Rubber Raft portrays a human tragedy in bright happy colors. I like that type of contradiction and how it encourages a double take or second look at the image.The colors and dynamic brush strokes drew me in, and once there I was confronted with the darker reality of the situation. It is one technique that gets viewers to look at valuable subject matter they might otherwise choose to ignore. 

-Scout Austin     

And now a bit about Scout-

Scout has had many travelled many paths- photographer, graphic designer, practicing attorney- along her journey to becoming a full-time artist.She now resides in Massachusetts and produces encaustic paintings, artist's books, assemblage boxes, prints and other mixed media work.She is a Core Artist member of Fountain Street FIne Art, and shows her work locally and nationally. Find out more about her and her work at scoutaustinfinearts.com

Richard Kattman talks about Jules Olitski’s “Green Hands”

Jules Olitski’s Green Hands, on view through May 5, 2013 at the Davis Museum, Wellesley MA

As an artist and abstract painter, a Spring journey to the Davis Museum at

Wellesley College to see “April Brief: Notes from the Color Field” afforded no

less than Enlightenment.

Green Hands, the dominant artwork in the exhibit, by Russian born artist

Jules Olitski, is an astonishing, ebullient, immense, elegant, surprisingly simple,

and complex canvas. Daringly beautiful, overwhelming, psychological,

searching, and masterfully composed, it is painting of the highest physical

objectness, and intellectual order.

Created in 1969 (Vietnam, Woodstock, The Godfather, Chappaquidick,

Waiting for Godot), the painting is representative of Color Field’s most

advanced abstraction practiced by Helen Frankenthaler, Jack Bush, Mark

Rothko, and Barnett Newman.

Rafael Mineo, Architect of the Davis Museum, stated in 1993: “Therefore, I

very much wanted the Museum to be understood as a treasury, a treasury that

speaks about the lives of the people who received their education here”. 

To arrive at Olitski’s Green Hands requires endurance, wonder, and an ever

upward spiritual climb through the “Treasury” to end in a vast, white, skylight

flooded room at the upper recesses of a magic place, situated above the campus

treetops, viewing a serene lake, with Gothic architecture and wilderness

beyond.

Green Hands is a grandiose work by any sense of the imagination, by sheer

scale alone, as a golden ratio 2:1 canvas measuring nine feet high and seventeen

feet long. Upon arrival, a sense of presence of the artist and the work is

immediate and all consuming.

But the Colors! The colors are opulent, staggering to the senses, full, rich,

exotic, lush, radiant, glowing, layered, and constantly shifting, evaporating, ever

changing. A grand green-yellow field fills the center and explodes outward to

the distant edges, modulated there by softened pale cobalt blues and violets at

opposite corners, up and down, all dissolving before the eye. The central marks

of spray reveal a dense overall pattern of lovely saturated permanent greens

underlain with riotous cadmium yellow. The right hand end moderates to sea

green and viridian as the natural light bounces red violet on the adjacent white

wall!

The field is endless yet self-contained, demanding meditation, heightened visual

awareness, quietness and peace.

It is difficult to imagine controlling the execution of the work for its airport

hangar dimensions. Green Hands must have been painted on the floor but is

viewed on the wall! Is this Spring green or grass green? But no, this is paint! A

Painter’s Paint and nothing more than Paint Paint Paint! Harmony and balance

are ever present. Stability challenges the senses.

Stepping back to take in the entire composition, the field is discovered to be

subtly enclosed at the edges by hand drawn, meandering, painted thin blue,

umber, and violet lines. A burst of raw sienna as perhaps Sun occurs in the

upper left solar system. The trails define the boundaries and bounce the

composition back to its origins the center, in a constantly moving, back and

forth, round and round, spiraling adventure. “Green Hands” glows from within

from great depths on a flat surface.

“What does it mean”, you ask? The answer lies in the Art.

Jules Olitski is a modernist artist with classical training, practicing in the

Renaissance tradition, applying twenty-first century ideas to the age- old

traditions of painting. 

Surface, depth, edge, drawing, color, idea, Paint.

-Richard Kattman

And now a bit about Richard Kattman-

An award-winning artist, landscape architect, and photographer from Holliston, Richard bases his abstract acrylic paintings on landscape and the intuitive, emotive mind. Along with brilliant color, the sheer size of his paintings (many are over 6 ft. wide) is impressive. See more of Richard's work at richardkattman.com 

Richard Kattman's exhibit, Painted Abstracts, at Fountain Street Fine Art, Framingham MA, in March, 2013

It's all in the Details

The three artists whose work is featured in Sight Lines, our current exhibit

-Roy Perkinson, Andrew Haines, and Greg Heins-

have been characterized as “poets of the commonplace.” The artists, each in their own way, transform the mundane details of everyday life.

Roy Perkinson, Moon, Farm Pond, oil on canvas

Take Roy Perkinson's 'Moon, Farm Pond', for example. The painting captures that moment just after sunset, on an evening where low clouds blur the moon. But the quiet reverie is punctuated by street lights in the distance, a reminder of the bustle and noise not far away.

The juxtaposition of the graphic elements in of Greg Heins' Dior at Nanterre are central to this photograph. But the subtler details, the way the patterns in the angles of the streetlights and circles of the signs repeat are what make the photograph work on many levels. 

Greg Heins, Dior at Nanterre, photograph

The bird's eye vantage point of Andrew Hains' Old State House,  draws the eye into the heart of the drawing. But it's the tiny world he creates down there that holds your attention.

Andrew Haines,  Old State House, drawing.

By focusing on those seemingly unimportant details, the artists call our attention to things most people would pass by without a second glance – and celebrate the way the ordinary  can be evocative and beautiful.

Please join us for an artist talk for 
Sight Lines,
Sunday April 14 at 3 pm, 
and see for yourself-
up close, and personal.

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 Bob Evans talks about the work of Karl Blossfeldt, and the effect it's had on him. 

Karl Blossfeldt, Plate 58 Art Forms In Nature, 1928

My dithered digital photographic prints have been influenced in an interesting way by the photogravure photographs of Karl Blossfeldt (German 1865-1932). In my career as an artist teacher I have taught Basic Visual Design classes and always showed examples of Blossfelt's photos to my students as examples of images having visual strength. Blossfeldt's work is known primarily from three books of high quality photogravure photographic reproductions published between 1928 and 1942. Very few of his actual photographic prints have ever been exhibited. But his work is widely known and his books are still in print in many lower quality halftone republications including several by Dover books. Because of my strong interest in his work I have been fortunate enough over the years to acquire first edition photogravure copies of all three of those books.

Bob Evans,  Dithered Fern Frond

When I was preparing to retire from active teaching in the past decade, I was looking for a project to keep me busy in addition to my normal art making activity. Having taught digital photography since the mid 1990s I was skilled in Adobe Photoshop and had always known the power of black and white images when dithered (random black dots of varied size). In looking at Blossfeldt's photogravures, which are made up of random dots created by the photogravure process from rosin dusted onto a metal plate, I thought you could create one bit (i.e. photographs using only black ink dots) images using digital dithering. Dithering is the process that all computer printers use and is a way to generate a range of tones and colors without the use of rigid halftone screens that look very mechanical. Color dithers by putting colored dots on top of each other produce continuous tone smooth looking images. One bit dithers when examined closely show the dots up clearly and give the resulting images a crispness and clarity very much like aquatint etchings. After many experiments with Photoshop and other dithering programs I developed a digital technique that allows me to create the look of photogravure using a standard office monochrome laser printer. The images can be soft or hard depending on the approach one takes and a wide range of tones are possible. Because the laser printer uses metallic oxide pigment the images are completely permanent unlike many colored digital photos that use dyes. Blossfeldt's technique has thus influenced me into wide experimentation of the expressive uses of the dithered random dot in digital photography.

GIve it your best shot! (literally)

With the arrival of Spring, we've noticed a new crop of juried show opportunities. 

(Full disclosure, ours is among them- details HERE).

Many of these require submission online.
(More  exhibition opportunites are listed at the bottom of this post.)

As artists, we submit our strongest pieces, work that has been carefully conceived, expertly crafted, our best efforts. We labor over the artist statement, navigate the online forms. 

But WHAT MATTERS MOST in the selection process is how the work is seen by the juror- In our experience, submitting TOP QUALITY IMAGES is critical. 

True Story-  During the jurying process for 'COTTON,' our last juried show, a piece came very close to being rejected simply because of the poor quality of the artists' images. Fortunately, we were able to ask the artist for a written description and better photo, and ultimately the piece was included. We don't know for sure, but others may not have been so lucky.

The higher the stakes (in short, the ones you REALLY want to get into), the less likely it is for anyone to go to these lengths to insure that your work is appropriately considered. AND the less likely that the juror will recognize your work and give you the benefit of the doubt.

Don't sell yourself short! 

Submitting top quality images is not rocket science. You can learn to do this yourself; many classes and workshops, online or at local institutions, can help you learn the basics. (Try googling 'how to resize photos' to see just how many resources are available online!)

We're hosting just such a workshop in the Gallery, Wednesday April 3, 2013 1 - 3PM, taught by member artist Bob Evans, a photoshop expert for over 20 years. Called ESSENTIAL PHOTOSHOP FOR ARTISTS, it's one-stop shopping; everything you need to know to get the most out of your submission photos.

Key points which will be covered by Bob are
• Sizing Images for entry, web placement etc
• Preparing your images for printing / web use / invitations 
• Basic Image Correction or improvement
• Sharpening 
• Converting Color images to Black & White 
FInd out more and register HERE

If you're one of the many artists who've got this down, pat yourself on the back, and share this post with fellow artists-  after all, Friends don't let Friends submit bad pictures!

FYI- links to lists of upcoming juried show opportunities.
This is by no means a complete list-
Please share opportunites you're aware of, on our facebook page or in the comments. Thanks!
artdeadlineslist.com
callforentry.org
artsake.massculturalcouncil.org/blog/artsake
.multiculturalartscenter.org/call-to-artists/
danforthmuseum.org/juriedexhibitions2013

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