Where Elves Come From

My line of all-green Green Elves, made from recycled and repurposed materials, can be seen at Enclave Interiors in West Concord (51 Commonwealth Avenue, Concord, Mass.). Here’s some of the new, one-of-a-kind green creatures on my workbench…

http://mattercollective.wordpress.com

A few highlights from today…

http://www.flickr.com/photos/c_wirth

Let’s go downtown!

Maynard Virtual Art Windows banner outside Bitslinger Systems on Main Street

Small sculpture and elephants at Ochre Blue

“Parable,” 76×80 inches, mixed media on paper and mylar

Ochre Blue Gallery in Maynard, Mass. is hosting my small bronze sculpture and new larger mural (at left) through the summer. Opening reception is Friday, May 3rd, 7-9pm with live music! Also join us the following afternoon for Maynard ArtWalk, 5-7pm and check out my town-wide online gallery: http://maynardartwindows.wordpress.com.

“Louise Nevelson: Black” at Wellesley College

“Luminous Zag” would seem to be a contradictory title for a sculpture that is entirely black, and stands in a black-walled gallery. But “luminous” really is the best word to describe the piece, one of three sculptures and five prints in “Louise Nevelson: Black” at the Davis Art Museum at Wellesley College.

The text for this exhibition states that low lighting and black gallery walls were Nevelson’s original environment for exhibiting her work.  Quotes from Nevelson’s dealers, including long-time gallerist Arne Glimcher, mention tantalizing details of her early installations. Nevelson arranged larger pieces so that they blocked the gallery windows, and painted the walls black. When possible, she used blue light. Her original intent is faithfully recreated here, and is a revelation.

Linger in the darkened, cloistered, gallery long enough to let your eyes adjust to the dim blue light, and “Luminous Zag” comes to shimmering life. The rough lumber, stained black, assumes an iridescent sheen. Greens, blues, and a range of gray tones play out across the rippling surface grain. Only shadows, the voids between the rough geometry of the wood, are entirely black.

Created in 1971, “Luminous Zag” is made up of 36 boxes arranged in six rows, each box containing jagged, rough-sawn shapes that form broadly horizontal patterns. The piece is not one of Nevelson’s largest, a mere 8 by 6 feet, but it has the monumental quality of a Mayan temple. Nevelson called herself “the architect of shadows,” and has declared that shadows are the “fourth dimension,” as important to her work as solid. Nevelson’s sculpture can look harsh and relentlessly monochromatic in a white-box gallery, but in this installation shadows create a compelling sense of mystery. The dark interstices become miniature portals that invite entry, like the low door in the wall that lured Alice from normality.

The other large sculpture in the show, “Dream House V,” is the height and depth of a person, but slightly wider, as if it might possibly accommodate two. An entrance is hinted at by hinges along one side. Made up of overlapping pieces of thin, laminated wood of various lengths and shapes, it is dotted here and there with larger chunks, faceted like gems that glow in the blue light. Once again, openings between the curves and slats of wood draw the viewer in. One peers through them into an interior that, Tardis-like, suggests the void of Space.

Also in the show are some surprising, figurative prints from the 1950s. It seems odd at this point in time to remember that Nevelson’s very early sculpture (now destroyed) was also figurative. The Davis’s installation is a reminder that Nevelson’s work could be very much about the body, or rather, the spaces it might occupy.

Photograph: Luminous Zag, 1971

https://www.davismuseum.wellesley.edu/whats-on/current/louise-nevelson-black

Giant head found floating in the Hudson…

http://www.latimes.com/news/nation/nationnow/la-na-nn-missing-head-hudson-river-20130426,0,6224703.story

Anne Whitney in Rome

Roma

Like many American sculptors, Anne Whitney made the important move to Italy in 1867, when she was forty-six years old. She settled in Rome, making contact with established American sculptors there like Emma Stebbins and Edmonia Lewis. Whitney spent two years in Rome, studying and perfecting her skills. Her bronze “Roma,” typifying the conceptual personification dear to Neoclassical sculptors, shows the city as a woman who is careworn but still trails remnants of magnificence. Always a sculptor interested in social justice, Whitney’s Roma is a plea for women’s rights.

Anne Whitney, Roma, 1869. Bronze, 27 x 15 1/2 x 20 in. Davis Museum, Wellesley College.

Flowers for Lucy Stone

The Boston Women’s Monument is a triad of bronze sculptures by Meredith Bergmann, representing Lucy Stone, Abigail Adams, and Phyllis Wheatley. The monument was roundly panned by Boston art critics when it was installed. There are many awkward things about the group, certainly (for instance, why does Abigail Adams lurk behind an obelisk that reminds me of 2001?) but even on the gray March day in my photograph, there were visitors. Dressed in raincoats and bundled against the chill, they posed with the sculptures–really posed with them, since Lucy, Abigail and Phyllis are at ground level. Someone else–earlier in the day or perhaps the day before–had left a bouquet of orange chrysanthemums in Lucy Stone’s hand. Representational sculpture serves an ancient need, to present us with a real person, and that elicits a physical, visceral response.

http://bwht.org/downtown/

http://www.meredithbergmann.com/pages/boston1.html

Janet Kawada at St Botolph

“Why string? Why wrapping? What is it that draws me to this? Having time on your hands with nothing to do. How often do we hear that phrase? What does it mean? Can we contemplate without feeling that we are empty?”
- Janet Kawada

Fiber sculptor Janet Kawada has a new show at Boston’s St. Botolph Club conservatory. Her approach to fabric construction is layered, repetitive, and represents a particular moment in time with an accretion of kaleidoscopic textures that becomes a documentation of consciousness. A professor at Mass. College of Art, Ms. Kawada was a longtime member and past director of Boston’s Kingston Gallery.

The St. Botolph Club was founded in 1880 and named after the seventh-century English abbot whose monastery was in the fens of East Anglia Botolph’s Town (later corrupted to Boston). Early members included John Singer Sargent,  Daniel Chester French, and architect H.H. Richardson.
199 Commonwealth Avenue, at the statue of Samuel Eliot Morison, through April 15th.
http://stbotolphclub.org/exhibit.php
Photograph: “Peek,” wool, fibers, photograph, screening.

Morison in Heavy Weather

Penelope Jencks’s portrait of Harvard professor and naval historian Samuel Eliot Morison looked particularly apt in the March 7 Nor’easter. Perched on a surfside boulder with binoculars in hand, the sculpture’s bronze Mackintosh shone with water, and snow gathered on its cap. A surprise bonus was the damp tidepool surrounding the base, in which sea-rounded rocks and bronze crabs, barnacles, and seaweed seemed to slither in wet and sandy-looking concrete.