reviews, artists, Authored Articles

"10 YEARS. 11 ARTISTS. 2 GALLERIES.: FOUNTAIN STREET CHECKS IN WITH ITS ROOTS" for Artscope Magazine (March/April 2021)

"10 YEARS. 11 ARTISTS. 2 GALLERIES.: FOUNTAIN STREET CHECKS IN WITH ITS ROOTS" for Artscope Magazine (March/April 2021)

TENACIOUS

 

Fountain Street Core Member Exhibit

Fountain Street Gallery

South End, Boston

March 3-28, 2021

 

By Meredith Cutler for Artscope Magazine

 

Article Excerpt:

 

I have to be honest. Thinking back across 10 years is a taxing exercise after the grinding, Groundhog’s Day-esque suspended animation of the past 12 months. But this is an anniversary issue, after all, and Artscope is not the only one celebrating in 2021.

 

Founded by artists Marie Craig and Cheryl (Cherie) Clinton 10 years ago in 2011, the Fountain Street Fine Art gallery in Framingham’s Bancroft Building brought an unexpected variety of exhibits and artists into an area known more for industrial parks than the art market. With a focus on emerging and mid-career artists, the membership gallery quickly grew to anchor the sprawling, circa-1910 warehouse building which already housed over 30 artist studios, a birdseed store, and secondhand furniture and appliance showrooms just west of the Framingham Center train station.

 

On April 6, 2017, the very day an exhibition was slated to open, the Fountain Street community was stunned by an abrupt shutdown per orders of the Framingham Fire Marshall. The city closed the building to the general public, citing fire hazards due to exposed combustibles, blocked corridors and an out of permit sprinkler system, among other offenses. The harsh edict came in the aftermath of the devastating Oakland, California, Ghost Ship warehouse fire of December 2016. That fatal conflagration prompted firemarshals across the country to crack down on independent art spaces that heretofore had slid by under the radar of local officials.

 

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Image Caption: Tracy Spadafora, "Dumpster 440," oil and encaustic on braced wood panel, 24” x 24” x 1 1/2”.

"JUST PASSING THROUGH: THE DANFORTH CELEBRATES THE NATURAL WORLD" Artscope Magazine (Nov/Dec 2020)

"JUST PASSING THROUGH: THE DANFORTH CELEBRATES THE NATURAL WORLD" Artscope Magazine (Nov/Dec 2020)

JUST PASSING THROUGH: THE DANFORTH CELEBRATES THE NATURAL WORLD

 

Katherine Gulla: Passage

Rebecca Hutchinson: Midnight Blooms

Catherine Smith: A Cabinet of Curiosities

 

Danforth Museum

Framingham, Massachusetts

September 19, 2020-February 28, 2021

 

By Meredith Cutler

 

Article excerpt:

 

What a singular sensation it is to walk into a museum gallery, thoughtfully painted in just the right hues, with just the right lighting, to confront art on its own terms. The great outdoors has served us well as the ultimate catch-all venue for most of 2020, but with the weather turning less hospitable, art lovers may yearn for something more traditional … like, walls.

 

If you are seeking a museum to visit with safety precautions in place, at a scale perhaps not so large as to overwhelm pandemic and politics-jangled nerves, the Danforth at Framingham State University checks all of the boxes.

 

Since opening in August, the staff has had ample time to fine-tune safety protocols. Advance reservations are required, and the number of visitors is limited so as to ensure adequate physical distance.

 

Three exhibits on view this Fall/Winter “speak to each other and how we commune to the natural world,” explained Jessica Roscio, curator and director of the Danforth Museum..."

 

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Image caption: Katherine Gulla, Fossil #283 , 2015, archival pigment prints, Edition 1/5. Courtesy of the artist.

"REVEALING THE WILL OF WATER: ANDY GOLDSWORTHY’S WATERSHED OPENS AT DECORDOVA" Artscope Online (Nov. 2019)

"REVEALING THE WILL OF WATER: ANDY GOLDSWORTHY’S WATERSHED OPENS AT DECORDOVA" Artscope Online (Nov. 2019)

REVEALING THE WILL OF WATER: ANDY GOLDSWORTHY’S WATERSHED OPENS AT DECORDOVA

by Meredith Cutler for Artscope Online

It’s one of the first truly brisk days of autumn at the deCordova Sculpture Park and Museum. The sun sparkles as icy gusts of wind drive fallen leaves into wild, calligraphic trajectories across Waleska’s Way. The ADA-compliant, accessible stone path leads down the park’s pond-side hill to Andy Goldsworthy’s Watershed, a permanent, site-specific installation which opened to the public on November 9, 2019.

The acclaimed British land artist has made his mark on this planet by working directly with natural materials, natural forces and the landscape – creating works that challenge the viewer’s perspective on nature, time, weather and permanence.

Built partially embedded into the hill just below the deCordova’s rear parking lot, the functionality and engineering behind Watershed is, like many natural processes, hidden from view. It’s a modest space – a shed true to its name and from the outside, it is meant to seem just so.

A clutch of us wind-chapped reporters press into the shed’s roughly 9’ x 15’ interior. We blink in the stone-cooled dimness, taking in the hand-hewn granite block walls, two built-in viewing benches and their centerpiece, a 10” diameter drain outlet nestled like a dark star within meticulously engineered, concentric stone rings that make up the shed’s entire rear wall.

Goldsworthy and his team of stonemasons pulled this granite from the family-run Le Masurier Quarry in North Chelmsford, MA back in April 2019. Every piece of stone was hand-cut and trimmed, and the rear wall was assembled on site at the quarry. Although the granite is the same type used for street curbs, in the pastoral setting of the sculpture park, the material reflects the area’s farmland heritage and the wandering stone walls that crisscross this part of Metro West.

While the outlet remained dry for us on the clear, cold day of the press preview, hidden engineering embedded in the hillside is designed to channel groundwater from the parking lot to pour noisily forth during wet weather. Over time, mineral deposits and traces of mold will accumulate to speak of the mysterious process by which mountains are worn down to riverbeds.

“There’s this way in which Andy Goldsworthy shows [us] some of the invisible textures and patterns of the natural world – not only nature’s pastoral and therapeutic qualities – but also nature’s dark side,” remarks Sarah Montross, Senior Curator, deCordova. “In a heavy downpour… what would be a very sturdy, safe place to be is also a place where you might feel nervous with all this water gushing around you.”

I’m of two minds – simultaneously wishing that I had been present the night prior during a particularly powerful rainstorm to hear, feel and smell Watershed’s full potency and strength – and at once grateful that I hadn’t!

As unassuming as Watershed is from the outside, the project was over 10 years in the making – long preceding this year’s integration of the deCordova with the land conservation non-profit Trustees of Reservations. As part of the park’s permanent collection, Watershed is the only publicly accessible permanent Goldsworthy work in New England.

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"ART AND NATURE, NURTURED" for Special Places (Fall 2019)

"ART AND NATURE, NURTURED" for Special Places (Fall 2019)

ART AND NATURE, NURTURED

deCordova Sculpture Park and Museum secures a sustainable future as part of Trustees

 

by Meredith Cutler for Special Places Member Magazine, Vol 27 No. 3

 

Article excerpt:

 

On a wooded mound overlooking a rolling green lawn, a pre-school aged child and her mother approach a white marble sculpture depicting an elongated female face. “What’s it made out of? Can you make that face?” the mother asks. The child contorts her expression, mimicking the exaggerated form of artist Jaume Plensa’s Humming. “Stone!” she answers proudly.

 

Some 20 miles from Boston, the grounds of the 28.4-acre deCordova Sculpture Park and Museum in Lincoln are dotted with visitors. From the museum’s rooftop Rappaport Terrace overlooking deCordova’s bucolic grounds abutting Flint’s Pond, families, seniors, students, and other visitors from all corners of the globe can be seen rambling among the park’s 60-plus modern and contemporary sculptures. Zooming out on the grounds from this lofty vantage point, the giants of the park become elemental—the neon pop of powder-coated steel in dialogue with the fluidity of an enormous horsehair curtain moving in the breeze. Some works are on permanent display; others rotate in periodically. “People who visit once or twice a year often say, ‘Everything looks different! How is that possible?’” remarks Senior Curator Sarah Montross. “It’s because as we move in loans and commissions, the place looks different every time.”

 

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"REFLECTING THE LANDSCAPE" for Special Places (Summer 2019)

"REFLECTING THE LANDSCAPE" for Special Places (Summer 2019)

REFLECTING THE LANDSCAPE

DOUG AITKEN’S NEW HORIZON TAKES FLIGHT

 

by Meredith Cutler for Special Places Member Magazine, Vol 27 No. 2

 

Article excerpt:

 

When summer finally arrives in Massachusetts, unfurling long days of seemingly endless possibilities, we disperse to our state’s sandy beaches, verdant hiking trails, bountiful gardens and farms to escape the mundane, to reconnect, and to expand our horizons. This summer, as our eyes turn to the skies above the Massachusetts landscape, we may very well see our own reflection looking back.

 

This July, a reflective hot air balloon and gondola conceived by artist Doug Aitken will make an unprecedented aerial “road trip”—launching from the sandy shores of Long Point Wildlife Refuge in Martha’s Vineyard and concluding at Field Farm in Williamstown two weeks later. During scheduled stops at seven Trustees sites along the way, the flying studio will become a platform for social happenings featuring live music, food, and inspired dialogue—all centered around the theme of “the future.”

 

Titled “New Horizon,” this fourth installment of The Trustees’ Art & the Landscape initiative was once again curated for The Trustees by independent Boston-based curator Pedro Alonzo. As the founding curator for the Trustees’ ambitious public art series, Alonzo most recently brought Alicja Kwade’s sculpture “TunnelTeller” to the former hedge maze at the Crane Estate this past year (on view through March 2020). Previous installations came from artists Sam Durant at The Old Manse in 2016 and Jeppe Hein at World’s End in 2016-17.

Elevating the Art & the Landscape concept to a whole new level, New Horizon seeks to give all who encounter it a platform for creation and unique opportunities to connect around big ideas, whether in flight above the dynamic Massachusetts landscape or displayed against the backdrop of diverse Trustees sites, from the gardens of Naumkeag in Stockbridge to the fields of Holmes Reservation in Plymouth.

 

“When we began the Art & the Landscape initiative four years ago, we were seeking to create new traditions, and to cast the familiar in new light—to enliven our iconic landscapes through the imaginations and wild perspectives of our artists,” says Barbara Erickson, Trustees President & CEO. “Aitken’s shiny metallic orb literally holds a mirror to our landscapes, reminding our visitors to stop, to look up, to look around, and to be filled with wonder.”

 

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