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Nearly five years ago, within the span of a year, painter Wendy V. Edwards lost her father to Covid and welcomed her first grandchild. “I was dealing with the death, but at the same time,” she says, “having a grandson is such a wonderful gift. It’s like a new life, new world.” The experience jolted her into creating a series of largescale paintings that explore the cycle of life and death. Poking around her bookshelf at home, she came across a midwifery textbook from the 1840s. The illustrations of embryo and fetus development struck her both as morbid and profound, so she used them as source imagery for her paintings. “My work is really very colorful and vibrant, and people often view it as being positive, kind of upbeat,” Edwards says. “But in reality, I’m dealing with some more serious issues as I get older.” These paintings, and several from a past series inspired by Vincent Van Gogh’s late works, are part of Edwards’s new solo exhibition, opening this month at the Currier Museum of Art in Manchester, New Hampshire….

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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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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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The gallery has been fortunate to have exhibited John’s work in Diagrams, 2013 and again in Sleep 2019. We are huge fans of John’s smart, idiosyncratic drawings and applaud him for this much deserved distinction.

above image:
John O’Connor
series of dated sleep prints
digital print and colored pencil

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March 1­–April 22, 2023

Saturday, March 4 | Artist Reception, 5–7pm | Artist Remarks, 6pm

Municipal Bonds
Minnesota Street Project
1275 Minnesota Street, San Francisco, CA

Municipal Bonds is pleased to announce “Fritz Horstman: Folded Light” on view March 1–April 22, 2023. The gallery’s first exhibition with the artist features a selection of Horstman’s Folded Cyanotypes. The work comprises deep blue images of shapes that emerge from the confluence of folded paper and sunlight.

Folded Cyanotypes are a series of two-dimensional objects, which carry the memory of light, three-dimensional space and manual manipulation, and which stem from Horstman’s interest in natural structure. They are at once sculptures and drawings, which also fit comfortably into the history of cameraless photography. Made by first folding paper by hand into an intricate pattern, they are then unfolded. Cyanotype photographic fluid is applied by brush, and then working in the dark to protect the light-sensitive material, the paper is refolded and placed in natural light, which the artist sometimes manipulates using mirrors and lenses. The paper is then rinsed in water, and pressed flat to dry. What was exposed to light in the process turns blue when developed, and what was not remains white, furthering the spatial complications by reversing lightness and darkness.

The folding patterns are Horstman’s own adaptations of tessellating patterns. Following the same physics that impels crystals to grow at certain angles, dried mud to crack in chaotic-yet-predictable ways, and produces the familiarity of the creases in a particular smile, the tessellating folding patterns interlock in ways similar to geometric tiles. Their shapes and the materiality of paper present both firm boundaries and enormous potential. Though the act of physically dealing with paper beyond a certain dimension becomes unwieldy, any of the patterns could in theory extend forever, charting the artist’s own understanding of being and space.

Municipal Bonds
Minnesota Street Project
1275 Minnesota Street
San Francisco, CA 94107
917.450.0583
info@municipalbonds.art
Wednesday–Saturday, 12–5pm

Above image: Folded Cyanotype 201, 2022, 9 x 9 in. (24 x 24 cm), cyanotype fluid on paper

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The show at Drive-By Projects in Watertown features works by painter Michelle Grabner and ceramic artist Andrea Marquis

By Cate McQuaid Globe Correspondent,Updated January 4, 2023, 11:25 a.m.

WATERTOWN — There’s a solace in the familiar designs of household textiles. Painter Michelle Grabner finds fresh edges in their timeworn imagery and honors the history and labor behind them. Patterns in upholstery and tea towels, after all, reflect the rhythms, structures, and repetitions of our ordinary days.

“The Glory of Handiwork,” at Drive-By Projects, featuring works by Grabner and ceramic artist Andrea Marquis, was inspired by Grabner’s show “Unremarkable Handiwork: Translations and Collections” at Alice Austen House on Staten Island. Austen (1866-1952) was a pioneering photographer of New York street scenes. A lesbian artist, she also documented relationships between women.
Austen’s domestic lace captivated Grabner, and it became fodder for her art. In a photograph and digital prints of doilies, she simultaneously spotlights their mundanity and their intricate artfulness. A grid of them reads like a chart of snowflakes — each one different, each a spectacular, spinning fractal pattern, but made imperfectly by hand and weathered by time.

Michelle Grabner, “Untitled,” digital print

While decorative art can be comforting in its permanence, Grabner brings a painter’s sensibility of “how can I make this fresh and new?” to her subjects. Two magical paintings, impossible to reproduce effectively in a photograph (go see them in person!), are white fields of tatting and crochet patterns. To make them, she used old handmade textiles as stencils, painting over them to reproduce their wheeling patterns, and then adding breaths of yellow and gray. The canvases are at once domestic, microbial, and snowy — endless, humble, yet shot with light. Like our ordinary days.

Andrea Marquis, “Candlestick Holder (Syrup of Figs),” hand-cut stoneware with mid-temp crystalline glaze with candles

Marquis, too, works with fractal patterns, although hers originate in her yard. She traces shadows of fig branches onto slabs of clay, then cuts them and constructs Gothic-looking structures. Because she carved the elements of “Candlestick Holder (Syrup of Figs)” and “Supersymmetry” from slabs, they retain their flat faces, but she builds them into ornate volumetric forms. The angelic “Supersymmetry” has a skirted center and lifting wings. The delicate glazes, drifting with subtle tones, nod to Grabner’s paintings.

Andrea Marquis, “Supersymmerty,” hand-built stoneware and mid-temp glaze

Fractals make up the architecture of microcosms and macrocosms. Grabner and Marquis remind us that handiwork’s rhythmic gestures and labor over time is of similar design. Our lives are formed by such patterns. To see them anew in this art is to reawaken.

READ IN THE BOSTON GLOBE

THE GLORY OF HANDIWORK
At Drive-By Projects, 81 Spring St., Watertown, through Jan 14.

Gallery Hours:
Thursday, January 14th from 12-4pm and by appointment: 617-835-8255.
__________

Cate McQuaid can be reached at catemcquaid@gmail.com. Follow her on Twitter @cmcq.

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Curator: David Duddy

The medium of clay is a tremendously malleable and expressive material. This group of talented and inventive contemporary artists bring their vision and skill to the creation of stories and worlds for viewers to interpret and reflect upon.

Our own Kathleen O’Hara is included in this exhibition. Her hand-built Pilgrim Flasks are faux relics, replicas of ancient vessels embellished with shoe impressions from a variety of shoes to honor the hopeful treks made by all peoples seeking salvation.

Image: Pilgrim Flask/Nike, 2020, stoneware, iron oxide and rutile wash with leather thong, 3 x 3.25 x 1.75””

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