I have been working on a new series of mixed media pieces as a more inexpensive option for those that like my work but can not necessarily afford (or have the wall space) a large painting. They will be a mixture of screen printing and painting on panel and I am sending the first set over to Lot F Gallery for their annual year end group show. The show opens on Friday December 9th (click here to join the event page on Facebook) and if you have ever been to an opening at Lot F, you know it will be a great night so be sure to stop in. Scroll down for more details and complete list of artist below.
SALAD 3.0
Closing out 2011 with a big group show, Salad 3.0 will feature a strong selection of mid-small sized works from artists local to Boston. The third in our series of ‘Salad’ exhibits, this one will have the most range and diversity. Painting, Photography, Sculpture, Glass, Custom Toys, Mixed Media. Come get a taste of the local scene, a preview of what may be to come in 2012 and enjoy some artwork and refreshments.
ADAM O’DAY
DANA WOULFE
DANIEL SHERMAN
DOMENICK CIMINO
ELIZABETH KIRBY SULLIVAN
FELIPE ORTIZ
GUUMON
JAMIE O’NEILL
JOSH FALK
JOSHUA DURANT
KENJI NAKAYAMA
MATHEW GILLIS HALL
NICK WARD
PERCY FORTINI-WRIGHT
SCOTT CHASSE
TODD ROBERTSON
WILLIAM LONG
For more info or pre-sale appointments please email: info@lotfgallery.com
For those that were not make it out to The Distillery for open studios last weekend, here is a great little pictorial tour of the highlights posted by our friend Liz at Flux-Boston.com:
If you are in the Boston area, be sure to stop by The Distillery for Open Studios this weekend. For those that have been in the past, remember to find me in my new studio, #405 (that we are affectionately referring too as “The Tower”). I am the first door on the left, just before the Distillery Gallery when you come in though the main entrance. For those of you on Facebook, if you check in on my artist page during your visit I will give you a free print (until I run out!). I have a few different prints to choose from, all hand pulled signed and numbered screen or block prints.
I have plenty of big new paintings and some beer from Jacks Abbey brewery to share so, be sure to stop by.
Open Studios weekend is almost here in South Boston. As usual The Distillery building (where I live and work) will be open with around 40 artists opening their doors to let you have a peek into their studios and processes. There are a lot of new faces around the building this year so even if you have been around in the past, it is a good time to visit and see some new art.
I have recently moved studios so, be sure to grab a map at the front door if you are trying to find me. I will be in Studio 405 which we are beginning to affectionally refer too as “The Tower”. It was a sad day when we had to break up our dysfunctional Studio 11 family but, I still plan on making my studio worth the trip.
Artists and craftspeople of South Boston will open their doors to the public Saturday and Sunday, November 5 & 6, 2011 as part of the annual South Boston Open Studios event. Visitors will be able to talk to and make purchases directly from the artists while touring the creative environments in which the artwork is produced. The weekend-long event also provides a great opportunity to sample many of this historic neighborhood’s restaurants, cafes, pubs, and retail shops.
Numerous disciplines will be represented throughout the dozens of participants, including: sculpture, painting, drawing, printmaking, installation, photography, video, jewelry, ceramics, woodworking, fabric and performance art. Much of the work will be in-process and the artists will be on hand for questions and conversations. Participating organizations and galleries include The Distillery artists building (which will showcase two galleries and over 40 artists) located at 516 East 2nd Street, and the studios at King Terminal (just a few blocks away) right next to the intersection of E 1st & Summer Street.
The event is free to the public, rain or shine, noon to 6pm each day. Public transportation is easy, take the Red Line to Broadway and walk East, or take the #7 City Point bus from South Station to Elkins St. (#7 doesn’t run on Sundays).
Generally I have been hesitant to loan paintings out for display in restaurants around town although, it seems like a pretty popular/easy exhibition option in Boston… or maybe it is restaurants around Boston that have been hesitant to hang freaky portraits and morbid nudes? Either way, Voltage is different. Not only is is an awesome coffee shop, it also has a great exhibition space. Pieces actually look good hung and have enough space to command attention. So when Liz of Flux-Boston.com asked me to participate in a show that she was organizing there, I jumped at the chance. It also didn’t hurt that Liz collected such a great group of artists for me to share the walls with. Check out the facebook event page for the opening reception, and keep reading after the image for more details and a complete list of participating artists.
“What better way to kick off the return of fall than with a crash course contemporary art lesson on the who’s who of upcoming Boston visual artists. Come to Voltage Coffee & Art on Friday September 9th for the opening of FLUX. Offline, a brick and mortar curation by digital art reviewer/sweetheart Elizabeth Devlin.
Step away from the glow of the computer screen, get gussied and slough off the work week at the opening reception, Friday September 9th, 7:00-10:00pm for an evening of art, libations, grub, tunes, and delightful conversation.”
It is coming up on Spring Open Studios time at The Distillery and Studio 11 will, as always, have our doors open. It is my (obviously biased) opinion that this building has one of the best open studios events in Boston, maybe second only to Somerville and its massive city wide weekend. The building is interesting, the participating artists are all friendly (and talented) and the beer flows freely.
So, if you are in or around Boston, make the trip out to Southie on Sunday, June 5th and be sure to stop by Studio 11 and hang out for a while. Below is the official press release and a list of participating artists (that is sure to grow as the date gets closer). If you are on Facebook, click the link to the event page and let us know you are attending and invite your friends!
South Boston based artists and craftspeople at The Distillery and King Terminal open their doors for the annual Spring Open Studios event on Sunday, June 5th. Visitors can mingle with creative types, tour the unique environments in which various forms of artwork are produced, and make purchases directly from the artists. Dozens of traditional art studios, live/work lofts, creative small businesses, and corridors serving as pop-up galleries will be open to the public, highlighting some of Boston’s finest creative talent.
Spring Open Studios is free admission, rain or shine, Noon – 6pm. Get here by public transportation via the Red Line to Broadway and the #9 bus. Locations are within a few blocks from each other, and signage will clearly mark the path connecting the two. Ample street parking surrounds both properties, and there are plenty of places to secure bicycles.
November 6 and 7 is the annual fall open studios weekend in South Boston and Studio 11 will be open with 9 artists giving you a glimpse into their art and lives.
I will be down on the first floor hanging out with Tony from Chroma Lab all day long, showing some new paintings and gossiping about the art world. So, if you have not visited my studio yet, or have wanted to see some of the paintings in person, come on down and say hello.
Upstairs, the newest member of Studio 11, Matt Bennett will be showing his photography next to Robert Davies and his intricately detailed drawings. Right outside their door our two guest artists, Val Eliason and Alycia Aube, will be showing off their bright enamel paintings and mixed media work. Finally, we will lure Elizabeth Grammaticas and Mary Holt down from upstairs (the Studio 11 penthouse?) to set up their work. Mary will even be putting on some musical performances throughout the day so your ears wont be too jealous of all the fun your eyes are having.
Studio 11 is in The Distillery building at 516 East 2nd street in South Boston. If you follow the open studios map we are the last stop in the Distillery so, be sure to make it all the way here (or live dangerously, sneak in the rear entrance and visit us first!).
Studio 11 will be opening its doors on Sunday June 6th for The Distillery’s annual spring open studios day. We have 8 artists participating from our studio and everyone has new work ready just for the occasion. We are all the way at the end of the open studios tour but we have the largest studio with the most art so, save plenty of time to hang out and meet everyone (or sneak in the back door and come here first (but you didn’t hear that from me)).
The Distillery in South Boston kicks-off the Summer Art Season of 2010 with its annual Spring Open Studios on Sunday, June 6th, noon-6pm.
As a long-standing focal point of the arts in Boston, The Distillery continues to support a community of high-quality artists and craftspeople. Twice a year, this amazing and unassuming brick building in Southie proves to be a one-stop destination for art-seekers as dozens of studio doors open up to invite the public in. Visitors can mingle with creative types, tour the unique environments in which various forms of artwork are produced, and make purchases directly from the artists. In addition to art studios, live/work lofts, creative small businesses, and corridors which often serve as display space to studio-dwellers, The Distillery is also home to The Distillery Gallery and Proof Gallery.
Spring Open Studios at The Distillery is free and open to the public, rain or shine, noon – 6pm. Public transportation is easy, take the Red Line to Broadway and walk eastward on West Broadway (less than a mile), left onto Dorchester St, right onto E 2nd St. Ample street parking surrounds the property. Click here for more detailed directions from the Distillery Gallery website.
Studio 11 in the Distillery building (where I live and work) has a long and sometimes sordid history in the Boston art scene. Over the years it has been home to an ever changing crew of the most creative and interesting characters to ever pass through this city. With that in mind we have gathered as many Studio 11 residents (past and current) as possible to fill the Distillery Gallery with work.
There will be an opening reception April 29th, 6-9pm which is free & open to the public so come on down and enjoy some colorful company (and a free beer). If you can’t make that the show will hang until June 1st.
Given the tumultuous nature of the Distillery, Studio 11 – A Retrospective, aims to bring together a vast collection of artists who are or were, at one time or another, tenants of the raw and ready live/work space.
Expanding and sifting through a total of five floors, the studio over the past 20 years has become notorious for all-night parties that have induced neighbors to tears through late night drunken trumpet playing, unpractical games of Log, and monstrous recreations of a Van der Graaff Generator.
The artists themselves, in a declaration of the social nature of the space, have had to experience a range of situations that flutter between the normal and absurd, including themed dinner events, major floods, ping pong championships, and roommates that participate in loud, monotypic bouts of copulation, or physically decide to alter their appearance to look like that of a mountain zebra.
Recently the Studio was featured in Justin Timberlake’s MTV reality show The Phone, and in 2008 was graced with the presence of Pulitzer Prize winner poet James Tate.
Its already that time of year again, open studios at The Distillery! Come down the last weekend in October, check out some of the best art Boston has to offer, talk about art with actual artists, eat our snacks and most importantly, drink our beer. Check out southbostonopenstudios.org for more info and, as always join the Facebook event page to get updates and maybe even a sneak preview or two.
Artists and craftspeople of South Boston will open their doors to the public Saturday and Sunday, October 31st and November 1st, for the annual South Boston Open Studios event. Visitors will be able to talk to and make purchases directly from the artists while touring the creative environments in which the artwork is produced. This weekend-long affair also provides a great opportunity to sample many of historic South Boston’s restaurants, cafes, pubs, and retail shops.
Each year, over six-hundred guests get an intimate glimpse into studios as they tour the unique warehouse and loft-style spaces. More than 65 artists will be on hand for questions and conversations as they showcase numerous disciplines, including: sculpture, painting, drawing, printmaking, installation, photography, video, jewelry, ceramics, woodworking, fabric and performance art. Participating organizations and galleries include The Distillery (which offers three galleries and over 50 artists) located at 516 East 2nd Street, King Terminal at 110 K Street & 570 E 1st Street, and Norman Crump Studio at 793 East Sixth Street.
The event is free to the public, rain or shine, noon to 6pm each day. Public transportation is easy, take the Red Line to the Broadway stop and walk East, or take the #7 City Point bus from South Station to Elkins St. All locations are within walking distance of each other and a map of the neighboring venues is available on the official event website: http://www.southbostonopenstudios.org
As usual, still refining this painting, but good enough for 1080 pixels. I feel like this composition is finally working with this attempt, third times the charm, I guess. Visually, it feels the most interesting and refined I have managed. Beyond that, the glitchieness is really starting to play an integral role in the piece, which feels important. Source image is just what it sounds like – I cut in some audio of the model saying the word “no” – as if it was another piece of video. That unexpected piece of information confuses the video player and gives us this moment of destructive chaos.
Anyways, let me know what you think, even if (especially if) you think this whole idea is garbage. It feels good to make one of these work, feels even better to finally make an interesting painting while devoting most of my mental energy to organizing a five-year old’s Zoom meeting schedule… More thoughts to come on this painting and the direction of this series as a whole.
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Around Boston
In order for artists to thrive in any particular place, they need three elements. They need to be near institutions on higher learning and culture – museums, universities, theaters – places where they can develop a foundation of history, expand their knowledge, and enjoy the great work that already exists. They need people interested in supporting the arts – collectors, patrons and others that can support the work financially, but also an audience. Finally, they need space to live and do their work. This includes work spaces, but also space to support the sales, performances, and community engagement that is crucial to creation. Small galleries, Artist run collectives, project spaces, performance halls – places that can support and nurture entire networks of artists.
At this point, my city is clearly lacking one of these elements, and it was uplifting to see the Boston City Council stepping up and calling a hearing to discuss affordable housing and work spaces for artists.
You can watch the hearing on YouTube here:
Like a lot of people, I was unable to make it to the hearing but, for reasons that I will assume are obvious, I care about this stuff. Since I couldn’t stand up and speak in the room, I wanted to write my thoughts about these issues here, in hopes that it would encourage some more of you to do the same.
In order for a city to thrive, everyone needs to have an affordable place to live, and the city leadership should really be doing everything they can to make that happen. That means building more houses, as well as developing programs that ensure current residents are able to remain in the places they call home. This city really needs to find ways to encourage both of those things to happen so that everyone that wants to call this city home – including artists – has a place to live. However, allowing private developers to chose to dedicate subsidized housing units to artists, while excluding other people who would otherwise be qualified, creates a system that is ripe for abuse. All that is to say, I am going to focus this on advocating for the other spaces that artists need. While it is not as fundamental as having a place to live, it is the area of this issue that is more intertwined with supporting the arts.
Based on the testimonies at the hearing, it would appear that this issue was brought to the attention of the city council by the artists that have recently received eviction notices from the Boston Center for the Arts. Before I go any further, I think its important to say that my initial reaction was to side with the BCA here. We know that there is a very limited number studio spaces available in this city. At the BCA there is apparently a group of established artists that have testified that they have the resources to pay market rate for work space, and they have instead stayed in highly subsidized spaces for decades. In my view, the BCA’s decision to restructure their studio program to force higher turnover in highly subsidized work spaces is fair in that situation. However, the real issue here is that we should not have to chose between supporting established artists in a way that helps sustain their work, or supporting less established artists in a way that helps them get their career started. There should be opportunities within this city for both to thrive.
There are more galleries in Boston now, than there have been at any other time in the last decade – but fewer project spaces, artist run galleries, spaces dedicated to experimental or difficult to sell work.
This is not a uniquely Boston problem, as cities have boomed, real estate prices have gone up, traditional galleries have struggled. They are able to take less risks, the work they support has become more conservative and easier to sell. We have seen most of the traditional galleries that attempted to support younger and more innovative artists – Samson Projects, Anthony Greaney Gallery, Carroll & Sons – dramatically downsize their efforts, or give up their spaces all together. At the same time, the artist run efforts that support those working even further out on the fringes have all but disappeared (for now, we know that artists always find a way).
I don’t have the solution to this problem, but I do know that without this support network, artists will leave.
I personally do not want to live in a city where there is no space for experimental and innovative art. I want to see new media installations that take on the internet. I want to stumble into performances that make me uncomfortable. I want to listen to local musicians without risking life and limb in some sketchy Allston basement. Obviously, I also want to have space to find some interesting paintings (and maybe even show my own). In short, I want this city to start supporting the sort of artistic conversations that lead to work that will one day find its way into museums, even if it is not quite ready yet. Right now, the kinds of spaces that support this kind of work, and give community to these artists, can not sustain themselves in this city.
Quite frankly, the current plan of giving some zoning relief to developers willing to maybe include some space dedicated for cultural use (that can also be rented by a tech startup) is just not going to cut it.
I am tempted to dig deeper into this but, ultimately I think the best approach is to encourage everyone to weigh in on this and speak up for the kind of art you make and the kinds of spaces you need. There was not a very wide demographic of artists represented at the hearing (and honestly nobody seemed to be pushing for the kind of work that I will miss seeing in this city) so, hopefully I can convince a few more people to join the conversation. Artists need space to work. We need space to come together and see what our peers are working on. We need places to get our work out for larger audiences to see. How to we make sure that Boston has a network of those spaces?
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Not the greatest picture but, full composition of a new one that is nearing completion.
In Progress
I intended this to be a quick portrait study but, I got a little carried away. Instead, I am just going to try as hard as I can on this one. Not that I don’t always try as hard as I can when I am painting. Even when a painting turns out looking like utter garbage, I am still working as hard as I can manage to make it right. I am just not always overly concerned with actually making the painting look super realistic. So, for this one I am going all in on the realism. Whenever this is done, it is going to be about as realistic as I can manage (without totally abandoning the way I like to paint). Not sure where this is going to take me but, it seems important to occasionally reset to some kind of baseline, if only to keep from getting too lost when you start off again in a new direction from there. In any case, don’t let me act like I know how to paint any better – in terms of realism – than this one. It actually feels pretty good to just make a nice portrait without worrying too much about some greater artistic mission. Maybe I will try to find some demand for these portraits. Potentially portraits priced on a sliding scale. I spend about 2 weeks making the best portrait I can, charge about what you make in 2 weeks. We will see. I am 4 days in, with a fair amount of painting left to do here. There is still time for this one to get weird.
