meredith cutler :: arts marketing :: artist

If you happen to be in the Boston area today, take a drive up to the harbor near the new Convention Center, and stop by the Boston Design Center. There, until 4pm today, the Boston Sample Drop/Shop event is open to the public. This event is a fantastic way for design firms to recycle their unwanted sample library materials; from fabrics to papers to 3-ring binders. Visitors are welcome to take any of the pre-sorted materials for use in their own creative projects.

"Keep perfectly usable building and finish materials out of the dumpster and give them a good home!"

The event takes place at the Boston Design Center on Drydock Ave. Post "shop", they will be having a barbeque to celebrate their creative and eco-friendly community-mindedness. Cheers!

Also of note in the creative supply realm, I am offering great discounts and special bonus offers in my crostini*VS Vintage & Supply shop. In honor of my upcoming honeymoon, all items will be on sale for the entire month running May 10th-June 10th. Many items are unique and will run out, so get a head start on your creative summer projects with my unique vintage & supply materials before I close shop and head to Italy!

The calendar page has turned, which brings an exciting new crop of gallery shows to focus those springtime wanderings. Time it right and you'll hit an opening reception, all the better to fulfil your early evening aperitif needs!

Make sure to visit 5 Traverse Gallery, where tomorrow evening, Rhode Island artist Allison Paschke will be opening a new exhibition of her mixed-media works in porcelain, cast-resin and layered pigments. Named after imaginary cities described in author Italo Calvino's 1972 novel: "Invisible Cities", Paschke's "Portable Pieces" invite handling and exploration; an adventure required to unlock the magical, invented spaces insinuated within their modest materials.

Above: Allison Paschke's "Despina", (7.25" x 5" x rice paper, varnish and pigment

Visitors to 5 Traverse will have a chance to encounter Paschke's newest work, scaled back into the "second and a half" dimension, which incorporates a bolder tier of the spectrum to invoke the quiet, imaginary perspectives inherent in the neutral pallete of her 3-D work.

Above: Allison Paschke's "Tabriz Study 1", (7" x 7"), resin and pigments on Mylar

Click here to read my full review, available in print in the May/June issue of Artscope Magazine. The exhibition will be on view from May 9th through June 14th.

On view in the Inner Space: Father and son Bill & Ben Shattuck, "2 Generations Aloft"
5 Traverse Gallery: 5 Traverse Street, Providence, RI 02906. 401.278.4968 / info@5traverse.com

It's a rainy, slow Sunday, made ever more so by the brakes of waiting; a delivery appointment for our long coveted Tempurpedic bed scheduled to arrive between 1pm-5pm. With our doors removed from their hinges and furniture carefully pushed aside, there is nothing more to do except stew in anticipation.

Time for a good read, and while in house-mode, an errant pile of documents reveals a treasure: my long-deceased grandfather's hand-written auto-biography, "Poor Little Me", penned politely in March of 1926, when he was just fourteen years old. Having re-read it for the first time since my own adolescence, I finally realize its true value. I never knew Grandpa Henry, he died when my own father was only 10 years old.

It's a sweet, genuine read, a true time-capsule, revealing a boy who aspired to become a mechanical engineer or draftsman; with a special ambition to design airplane engines in what he predicted to be known as "the motor age". I have decided I should at least make an attempt to adapt the carefully pencilled script into an illustrated book format. After all, Henry wondered aloud whether "an autobiography of a fourteen year old boy would sell as well [as that] of one of our famous men?"

Since I'm currently in the wretched state of not being able to process food, I thought I'd torture myself by sharing a few new snapshots from my playing with food photo-documentary "roll" (no pun intended, I really would prefer the ability to consume something other than ginger ale and Saltines!)

Above (Top): "Concerned cutting board - Okra Masala"
Above (Bottom): "Miraculous steel-cut oatmeal heart"

Art has finally slept...I had to slow it down a bit this week, given that my domestic unit has obtained the mysterious, mid-spring flu (plague). After a solid week of summer weather (the devil's trickery), the sky transitioned to cold, miserable rain for two days straight. With it pounding on my skylight, I awoke early yesterday morning with my bones rattling with fever and the evil one climbing out of my stomach. (Sadly, because of "once sick, never again" rules, it will be a cold day in hell before I am able to enjoy my husband's mushroom risotto.)

The truly "sick" thing about a household stricken is the dilemma: who will care for the ill if all are indisposed? Maybe this guy can help, he seems to be parked on the emergency defibrillator...

Above: "Bunny": First Aid Station, East Side/Mt. Hope YMCA, Providence, RI