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Arrival Art Fair

June 13 – June 15, 2025

Tourists Hotel – 915 State Rd, North Adams, MA

We are very excited to be selected for the inaugural Arrival Art Fair in North Adams!
It’s a great opportunity to see art and visit three top tier museums as well as explore the beauty of the Berkshires.

Arrival is an invitational, biannual art fair situated in the Berkshires mountains of western Massachusetts, equidistant from New York City and Boston. Founded as an antidote to the frenetic pace of the art fair circuit, the inaugural edition features exhibitors from across the United States, nominated by an esteemed team of Curatorial Ambassadors. Cultural partnerships with nearby institutions – MASS MoCA, Williams College Museum of Art, The Clark Art Institute, and more – are central to the experience of Arrival.

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We are thrilled to announce the release of visual artist and author Anna Von Mertens new book – Attention Is Discovery: The Life and Legacy of Astronomer Henrietta Leavitt (MIT Press 2024), a recognition and celebration of the woman whose discovery founded modern cosmology and the power of attention in scientific observation, artistic creation, and the making of meaning. The book combines essays examining the revelations and relationships that emerged from Leavitt’s commitment to looking with a wealth of imagery: details of artworks the artist made in response to Leavitt’s legacy; examples of the glass plate photographs of the night sky Leavitt studied; and historic photos of the unique community of women, now known as the Harvard Computers, who worked at the Harvard College Observatory at the turn of the 20th century.

“Von Mertens chronicles the wondrous quest to understand the cosmos while also telling a fierce story of uncharted feminism. Bringing Leavitt’s unexamined work into focus in relation to the author’s own artistic practice makes for a riveting read.”
—Denise Markonish, Chief Curator, MASS MoCA

Find it at Amazon and also at The Toadstool Bookshop (signed copies available).

Excerpt published in The Boston Globe.

Review in Scientific American.

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In honor of the long-term exchange between American and Chinese painters, Wendy Edwards’ and Jerry Mischack’s
works were projected in Times Square on September 25, 2024.

The huge Times Square Projection was an exchange between American and Chinese painters that had developed over the past eight years. Wendy Edward’s paintings were produced after her first trip to China in 1984.

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Ceramic artist Judd Schiffman on creating “Heir to the Glimmering World”

by Cate McQuaid
October 1, 2024
Above: Judd Schiffman. Photo Sasha Israel.

I first saw Judd Schiffman’s work at ODD-KIN a year ago – an ambitious narrative wall installation of tiles depicting Mothman, a moth-like humanoid first seen in West Virginia in 1966. “The Self That Touches All Edges” shows the cryptid embracing a tree with eyes. The piece suggests a tenderness for life in the face of our fleeting minutes and a changing biosphere. The artist has work in a local exhibition, Encircled, right now at Drive-By Projects. His solo show, “Mothman in the Bardo”, runs at Emerson Dorsch gallery in Miami through Nov. 2.

I took Mothman to be an avatar for us humans, and perhaps for the artist himself. Reading what he writes about his creative process, I can see how he would identify with such a creature; his work itself is an amalgam of nature, the mythic dimension, and the soulfulness of knowing life’s richness and brevity. Judd’s work seems to say: Our time is over in a flash, and yet everything we have lived so far colors and shapes the present moment. Eternity is a river where all experience collects. It moves, yet we will always find it in the same place – but deeper, if we look.

“Sometimes I have a dream or an experience, and it takes a couple of years to come out in my ceramic work,” Judd writes. “The framed pieces at Drive-By Projects are an amalgamation of different experiences 20 or 30 years old. Backpacking in the Southwest, going to a funeral in Zimbabwe, and meeting with a therapist in Providence. The works help me to understand vibrant experiences and create a map of them. I think about all these things and make drawings,” which lead to his sculptures.

Here, he details the creation of a Mothman work in the Emerson Dorsch show, “Heir to the Glimmering World.”

Judd writes:

I mostly make ceramic wall relief sculpture; my works are composites of multiple experiences but are pushing forward a singular idea. In “Heir to the Glimmering World,” the idea is that life has a rhythm, and is synchronistic as things are born, live, and die. As the skunk mother tends to its young, Mothman is pondering his own mortality. The frame consists of moths, candles and skunks, suggesting a ritual.

I’m involved with building of worlds, taking things from dreams, meditation, fiction novels, art history, lots of Buddhist and sometimes Jewish ideas, my own life experience related to nature, and mixing them together. I am fascinated with the power of the natural world and I think that comes through in the work. I am fascinated by our human cycles of emotion, thought, and growth. I love how writers can capture this in a book, or a poem, and often a title, sentence or phrase drives the concept behind the work.

“Heir to the Glimmering World” is a novel by Cynthia Ozick, about a family that emigrated to the United States from Germany during World War II, just as things were starting to turn nightmarish. My grandmother had a similar trajectory from Poland – maybe that is why I was drawn to the book. The title appeals to me because it suggests that we are alive for a short period, and we inherited the world in all its beauty and terror.

This concept can be taken further through a Buddhist lens: Our inherited lives are temporary, and we will all die at some point. I don’t think this statement is sinister, it’s very pragmatic, and it can be joyful to reflect on the temporary nature of things. Everything is so vibrant and transient, like autumn leaves. I love this quote by the buddhist teacher Chögyam Trungpa:

“Look. This is your world! You can’t not look. There is no other world. This is your world; it is your feast. You inherited this; you inherited these eyeballs; you inherited this world of color. Look at the greatness of the whole thing. Look! Don’t hesitate – look! Open your eyes. Don’t blink, and look, look – look further.”

This quote is the backbone of “Heir.” There are other experiences that informed the concept. Seeing a skunk carrying a baby in its mouth while driving down the street with my wife astonished me. The skunk’s body in “Heir” is covered with eyes; it’s all-knowing and selfless. Mothman is a character I have been working with for a few years. He is strong, delicate, and drawn to the flame. He is contemplating his own death, and the mask of his identity.

“Heir” is the biggest ceramic wall sculpture I have made and I am happy with it. I hope it communicates on some level the things I am describing. It is installed in Miami right now as part of a solo show at Emerson Dorsch gallery, which has several sculptures illustrating cycles of life and death as described in various Tibetan Buddhist teachings.

Thinking about all these ideas, I make a lot of drawings of various sizes, using ink, brushes, and calligraphy pens. I copy the figures and gestures of old painters. I roll out a bunch of clay slabs and smack them against the wall together. It’s nice when the sculpture is about my height as it is with “Heir.”

I draw on it, and build it up with coils, and then create texture, and draw on it more. This part usually takes about a week. There is a mysterious communication happening between me, my ideas, and the material at this stage. Then I cut it into pieces and lay it out on the floor and keep working, drawing, carving, polishing. This usually takes about a week as well. Everything needs to dry slowly and carefully for a couple more weeks.

I put the dry tiles into bins and drive them over to Providence College to use their kilns. I lay it all out again. Sand it. And then load everything into the kiln. The firing takes about 12 hours, and then 12 more hours to cool. I take everything out and install it on the wall. Wipe the dust off and spend a few days glazing.

Glazing is completely intuitive, it feels like dancing or flying. I have test tiles and I have an idea of what things will look like but I try to enter the state of mind where I have no idea what is happening. It takes another day to load everything back in the kiln, then I fire it again, pack it up and drive it back to my studio in Pawtucket. I make a template for installation, and install in my studio. I try to get a good photo. It’s nice to have time just to be with the piece after that. Sometimes things move a little fast for me packing things for shows, and hanging the show, etc. But it’s amazing to have people look at the work with fresh eyes. It completes the work. I love to share it.

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by Cate McQuaid
Apr 23, 2024

Kenji Nakayama and Damion Silver, “Alter State no. 1,” 2024. 12×9 inches, ink and acrylic on paper. All photos courtesy the artists.

“RULES? What are those?” Damion Silver writes about his collaborative process with Kenji Nakayama. Together and individually, the artists are spotlighted in “Alter State” at Drive-By Projects through May 25.

Damion juggles printmaking, assemblage, and sculpture – and he’s a design director at Converse. Kenji’s a painter with a practice grounded in traditional sign painting. They each bring commercial design sensibilities to the studio. Here, they work together to please only themselves, building from scraps, shuffling and layering letter-work, gesture, form, and texture.

They’ve collaborated before. There’s an element of letting go in the process they describe – the studio, the partnership, and the creative process are all containers for lightning bolts of serendipity. So their joint project at Drive-By – the ink and acrylic “Alter State” series – is built on only one rule for engagement: Trust.

“Trust our intuition and let the materials do the work. Trust the process. Be spontaneous and go! Run with the idea,” Damion writes. “I am always learning from Kenji. His approach is always open and optimistic. It’s inspiring. He starts quiet and warms up, and then just springs into action–all the while having fun.”

And this from Kenji: “Damion’s open-minded approach lets me feel comfortable to go without fear of failing. When I hand off my work to Damion I feel comfortable and I am often excited to see what he does. This series of collaborations set me in a direction that I didn’t get to experience in my own work.”

Damion writes:

Kenji and I went back and forth via text and phone calls about getting a show together that celebrates our similarities in process, and the mind-state of creation that ultimately leads us to resolve and balance. We decided to collect scraps of work we had – prints, test sheets, miscellaneous paper and so on. Then we came together in the studio to see where the materials would take us. We had the resources to get busy.

It wasn’t long, maybe five minutes, before Kenji intuitively picked up one print, overlaid his film, traced – and the line and the brush were in motion. Meanwhile on the other side of the table I was cutting apart some of Kenji’s practice sheets and juxtaposing them with some of my prints.

Once Kenji put the wheels in motion, things took off. Nothing was off limits material-wise, and we just went with the flow and energy, feeding off of the materials. One of us would look over at what the other was doing, maybe toss another material over we thought would fit in the composition at hand… but no pressure.

When the session was done, I took a bunch of Kenji’s work with me back to my studio and left some of my materials behind, so we could keep the momentum going in our own separate spaces.

Our biggest snags were outside factors like conflicting schedules and travel, which in hindsight was good from an inspirational standpoint. Kenji went to Copenhagen. I traveled to Mexico City, Vietnam, and Japan. When we got back together we got busy in the studio again.

Double-sided collaboration piece.

We did a lot of back and forth on the collaborative pieces. One would start, the other would add some bits and pieces, We did a mail exchange of materials and incorporated those into the work. We made a 10-foot long double-sided piece that is very much related to our process and miscellaneous debris we collected while working on the show.

I used the time during my morning commutes from New Hampshire to Boston to rough out ideas and sketch. These warmups allow me to get ideas down quickly and provide a foundation to expand upon. I often start with a box and draw within it, since more often than not I follow up by making the works out of wood.

Damion Silver, drawing exercises.

My process is nonlinear. I often find myself a good distance from where I began. The woodcut form below was spawned from an initial sculpture drawing. I wanted to explore the idea of “printing sculpture,” and this led me to reproducing the forms in plywood and inking them up. It was a great experience to see how the language translated, the surprising textures that would reveal themselves, and just to get lost in the process with no real expectation or understanding where it would go.

Damion Silver, woodblock.

Here is one of the newsprint test prints of the above block. I really love the grain and texture. It celebrates the materials and process allowing me to add another level to visual language:

Damion Silver, newspaper prints.

Kenji writes:

When I practice letters like the ones below, I form each letter by making the shapes between the characters and within each character (negative space and internal counter space).

The idea inspired balancing positive and negative lives in the collaboration with Damion, who also explores the same subject in different forms.

Kenji Nakayama, forehand letter practicing sheet.

Damion: Figuring the composition (full of possibilities) on Day One, we more or less emptied our pockets to see what we had to work with. The lower left part of the picture was the immediate  “oh yeah” moment before Kenji put paint over the top.

I layered the practice sheet and painted black on top of it, following the shape underneath. When the practice sheet was positioned, the process was simply eyeballing. Now I see the way I placed the practice sheet emphasizes the asymmetrical shape of the print, and the overlay of the practice sheet highlights the most interesting/exciting part of the printed shapes at that moment of the process. Also, the red letters on the practice sheet respond to/counterbalance the round-shaped red of the print.

Eventually, the cutting-in black, which I added at the end, re-exposes the shape of the print underneath and ties everything together; now, the positive and negative are reversed.

Kenji Nakayama and Damion Silver, “Alter State no. 1” 2024. 12×9 inches, ink and acrylic on paper.

Another woodblock experimentation… repeating sculptural forms:

Damion Silver, wood blocks.

I layered the practice sheet and painted black on top of it. Unlike the example above, for this one, in which the design is rather symmetrical, I positioned and layered the strip of the practice sheet as though it cut through the shapes and was slightly off-center. The blue letters on the practice sheet overlap the blue ovals in the print and extend above and below them.

Black was painted afterwards so the added layer (lettering practice sheet) and the print blend in well.

Kenji Nakayama and Damion Silver, “Alter State no.4,” 2024. 12×9 inches, ink and acrylic on paper.

Cropping the work is always difficult as the original collaborative pieces were not made to scale. The first crop is always daunting. You have to go with your intuition for the composition. Once the final pieces were cropped down and placed on the white backer, it gave the works room to breath and really highlighted the key details.

Kenji Nakayama and Damion Silver, “Alter State” installation at Drive-By Projects.

Finally, we made a collage of the scrap pieces from the “Alter State #1-#8” and a few other random scraps. The intention was to spontaneously create something pleasing to our eyes. The result shows snippets of both Damion’s and Kenji’s flavors. It’s just like making a lovely dinner table for a group of friends, except this is not edible…hopefully digestible, lol.

Kenji Nakayama and Damion Silver, “Alter State no. 10,” 2024. Collage.

—

© 2024 Cate McQuaid
548 Market Street PMB 72296, San Francisco, CA 94104

Read on “Ocean In A Drop” on Substack

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Life can kind of suck sometimes. The art world can, too. You put your heart and soul into an artwork and trot it out for the world to see, and … will people like it? Will they get it? Is it any good to begin with? And jeez, how do you set a value to your life’s blood poured onto a canvas? Then again, suppose your work is seen, suppose it catches on? That’s got to feel great, right? Until, well, maybe it doesn’t. Maybe it’s confusing as hell. Not to mention everybody takes high-valued art so seriously. And the legacy of painting – of art history, for crying out loud – how do you live up to that? Maybe it’s better to just keep the work in the studio, for your eyes only. And your dog’s. The dog loves you.

In “Zane+Ostendarp” at Drive-By Projects, Carl Ostendarp and Joe Zane take all the anguish of being an Important Artist into consideration. Each has a history of skewering the art world – Zane takes down the precariously over-inflated ego of the genius artist (and in this case, art critic. We’re also geniuses, did you know?). Ostendarp’s paintings throw a wrench into the works of painting’s grandeur. The humor is sly, dry, and wry, and it goes down well, with a slight burn. Here’s my Globe review.

And, yes, there’s even a poop bag. It’s bronze, so it’s also Very Important.

https://catemcquaid.substack.com/p/its-a-dogs-life

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By Cate McQuaid Globe Correspondent,Updated December 26, 2023, 3:28 p.m.

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By David Walega
New Bedford Light – November 30, 2023

Isabel Riley’s large abstract paintings, in various stages of completion, fill her Hatch Street Studio space with layers of bright colors, applied plaster and line work.

“I’m interested in excavation and the passage of time in an artwork as well as in our life,” she said. “I like things that are disrupting your vision or disrupting your understanding or assumptions.”

Riley studied representational painting before evolving into an abstract artist. She also has a deep understanding of the methods used to create depth in her works.

Her painting surface is manipulated by the application of a sander, revealing glimpses of the layering process underneath.

“I use an orbital sander as my secret weapon to grind down the surfaces. Then I can put another one on,” she said. “The depth, it goes back to really Renaissance painting, like how there was always this deep background of a landscape in the distance.”

The physicality of her process is integral to her art.

“It’s like a workout, sort of shedding anxiety, trying to work through something with my hands instead of my mind,” she said.

Riley also works as a scenic artist, painting sets for film and television. It’s a profession that demands constant mental and physical activity.

”I do align myself with laborers and working class,” she said. “And, so it feels comfortable to be in this space. That was once that.”

Her work ethic fuels a mutual admiration for the history of laborers that once worked in the mills like Hatch Street.

“I’m really interested in the history of the textile industry. I’m fascinated by it. I mean, it was not a glamorous or romanticized lifestyle at all, but being somebody [who] works with my hands, it’s so inspiring,” she said.

Fishing nets, large-scale machinery and the architecture of the area surround her New Bedford studio. A 180-degree view of the Acushnet River fills the floor to ceiling windows to the east. One can see the roofs of numerous historic factory buildings beyond.

“Being in this building inspires my work directly from my view,” Riley said. “The colors change with these oranges and the blue of the river and the factories and the arches. So that stuff just seeps in more than you know. It’s a huge inspiration.”

The environment of the coastal life, as well as the local community, permeates her creations.

Read on The New Bedford Light.

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You don’t have to be a boxing fan or cinema studies buff to enjoy this delve into how these two very different mediums, which developed concomitantly in the last years of the Victorian era, came to reflect America’s ever-shifting social and political mores throughout the twentieth century.

Some advance praise:

“David Curcio’s ‘Smash Hit’ is a first round knockout – filled with strong writing and deep insight. He dives into the tumultuous history of boxing films, revealing their power as a lens for examining contemporary America.”
–Bob Batchelor, author of Roadhouse Blues: Morrison, the Doors, and the Death Days of the Sixties and Stan Lee: A Life

“David Curcio’s absorbing, fascinating book sent me down a rabbit hole of so many memorable movies….and ‘Smash Hit’ belongs in the company of the best of them. Curcio wears his erudition and knowledge lightly and captures the essence of boxing in film.”
–Donald McRae, The Guardian

“‘Smash Hit’ is not about the sport of boxing so much as a view of American society in the context of boxing culture, film history, and Hollywood gossip. An entertaining, informative, lively read.”
–Glen Sharp, author of Punching in the Shadows

Find it at Barnes & Noble or Amazon or wherever fine books are sold.

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