ArtSake

Shelley Reed, a recipient of the Boston Museum of Fine Arts’ Maud Morgan Award and a Pollack-Krasner Foundation Grant has an upcoming solo exhibition at the Sears-Peyton gallery in New York opening May 6. Her work is also slated for a group show opening June 3 at Danese Gallery, curated by April Gornik. This show includes work by Ross Bleckner, Eric Fischl, and Julie Heffernan among others. ArtSake tapped this very busy artist on the shoulder to ask her a few brief questions:

What artists’ work do you admire most but paint nothing like? Abstract painters who use color gorgeously: Rothko, Brice Marden, Sol Lewitt. I would love to see my work in a show with a color-oriented minimalist.

If forced to choose, would you be a magic marker, a crayon, or a #2 pencil? Definitely a crayon, colorful and messy. Though you’d never know that by my work.

What is the most surprising response to your art you have ever received? Well, the most common response is that people very carefully and diplomatically suggest that I add at least a bit of color. The most surprising response was when someone contacted me from my Web site and asked me to design their tattoo.

The unauthorized biography of your life is titled: ‘Try and Try Again and Enjoy Every Minute’

Do you live with any animals? As a kid I wanted to be a vet, and was determined to have many animals as soon as I left my animal-free (though happy) childhood home. Since I ended up marrying a man with severe allergies, we’re pretty limited. We finally adopted a gorgeous greyhound named Trevor, who’s a great guy (and hypo-allergenic).

How do you know when your work is done? It’s never really done, I just can’t bear to work on it anymore. They generally take a long time. I could always go back in and make bits better, but it would be soul-crushing and intensely boring not to move on.

What do you listen to while you paint? A wide variety of things. NPR, Leonard Cohen, rock, and yes, Broadway musicals.

What are you currently reading? Just finished Old Filth by Jane Gardam and The Emigrants by W.G. Sebald. Nothing to do with art, but terrific reads.

Something is amiss amidst all this beauty and delight
May 6 – June 12, 2010
Opening Reception: Thursday, May 6, 5-7 pm
Sears-Peyton Gallery, NYC

Image credit: All images of paintings courtesy of Shelley Reed.

Powered by Bookmarkify™

We compile a monthly list of presentations, honors, publications, and events featuring past and present MCC Artist Fellows & Finalists. As you’ll see, the news is good – not just about these award-winning artists, but also about the breadth and vitality of contemporary arts throughout the Commonwealth.

Jane D. Marsching (Photography Finalist ’03) and Joshua Meyer (Painting Fellow ’10) are among the six new artists who have joined the artist roster of the Rice/Pollak Gallery in Provincetown.

Lisa Olstein (Poetry Fellow ’06) and Tracy Winn (Fiction/Creative Nonfiction Fellow ’08) have both been nominated for Massachusetts Book Awards, Lisa for her poetry collection Lost Alphabet and Tracy for her short story collection Mrs. Somebody Somebody.

Steve Almond’s (Fiction/Creative Nonfiction Fellow ’08) new book Rock and Roll Will Save Your Life has rocked, rolled, and saved (or at least made funnier) the lives of reviewers for BookPage, Publisher’s Weekly, and Time Out New York.

The Claire Andrade-Watkins (Film & Video Fellow ’09) documentary Some Kind of Funny Porto Rican?: A Cape Verdean American Story will have its broadcast premiere on Rhode Island PBS (Channel WSBE-TV 36) Saturday May 1, 7:00PM & Sunday May 2, 11:00PM. The screenings are part of the May 1-May 9 Whose History is it? Interpreting History, Memory and Culture schedule of events, programs, and activities celebrating Cape Verdean communities and history.

TRIIIBE, aka Alicia Casilio, Sara Casilio, Kelly Casilio, and Cary Wolinsky (Sculpture/Installation Fellows ’09), has a solo show of photographic works at Gallery Kayafas in Boston, through May 29, 2010. Dates to know: Friday, April 30, Crime Night, 6-9 PM; First Friday, May 7, Multiples Night (for look-alikes and like-a-looking), 6-9 PM; Friday, May 28, Last Chance!, 6-9 PM. Read a fascinating profile of TRIIIBE in the Boston Globe.

Patrick Donnelly (Poetry Fellow ’08) has a new website, which includes details about his latest news, events, and his poetry manuscript review service.

Rebecca Doughty (Painting Finalist ’10) joins Boston-based photographer Mary Kocol for a joint show at Davis Orton Gallery in Hudson, NY, May 6-30, with an artists’ reception Saturday, May 8, 6-8 PM.

Congratulations to Rebecca Kaiser Gibson (Poetry Fellow ’08), who was recently awarded a Fulbright Scholar’s grant. She’ll be teaching creative writing in Hyderabad, India. Bravo! Also, this month Rebecca joins Charlie Digges, Henri Cole, and possibly others for a reading celebrating poet Deborah Digges, whose poetry collection The Wind Blows Through the Doors of My Heart is being posthumously published this month. The reading takes place at Pierre Menard Gallery in Cambridge, May 16, 3 PM, sponsored by the Grolier Bookshop. Read Deborah’s poem Write a Book a Year.

D.M. Gordon’s (Fiction/Creative Nonfiction Fellow ’08) book The Fourth World has been released by Adastra Press.

Jewelry by Tricia Harding (Crafts Fellow ’09) is in a two person exhibition entitled Two of a Kind: Enamels by Tricia Harding and Michael Romanik, at the Luke & Eloy Gallery in Pittsburgh, PA, through May 22, 2010.

Work by Dawn Lundy Martin (Poetry Fellow ’02, ’06) is featured in the recent issue of jubilat.

Koji Nakano (Music Composition Finalist ’09) is one of the founders of the Asian Young Musicians’ Connection, which will hold its opening event on May 15, 2010, at Soochow University Performing Arts Center in Taipei. The Asian Young Musicians’ Connection commissions compositions from emerging Asian composers to be performed by world-class musicians at regular concerts in Asia and North America. The renowned Canadian string quartet, Borealis String Quartet, will premiere six string quartets (including one by Koji Nakano) at the May 15 event.

Caleb Neelon (Sculpture/Installation Fellow ’07) will present an artist talk at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston on Friday, May 7 in conjunction with his Signs and Symbols project (showing at the MFA through Monday, September 6). There will be a reception for the project, a collaboration between Caleb and children from after-school programs and community organizations in Boston, on Friday, May 14, 5-7 PM. Later this month, Caleb’s Imagination Wall, a mural project created for Children’s Hospital Boston, will be on exhibit at Fourth Wall Projects in Boston (May 12-28). There will be be a reception for the exhibition on Friday, May 21, 6-9 PM. The Fourth Wall show is the last chance to see the Imagination Wall mural in person before it moves to another city. Caleb will also have a new set of paintings on sale, and will debut some clothing items as well, and all sales benefit the arts program at Children’s Hospital Boston.

Monica Raymond (Playwriting Finalist ’07, Poetry Finalist ’08) will give a talk at the Cambridge Center for Adult Education at 56 Brattle Street on Monday, May 3rd at 1:30 PM. It’s called “A Carbon Neutral Life,” and it’ll be about the insights Monica gleaned from her experience of ten years of living without fossil fuel in Cambridge.

Nick Rodrigues (Sculpture/Installation Fellow ’07) is among the artists vying to see their concept realized for The Cambridge Street Project at CAC Gallery. Read about Nick’s Gossiping Birds, as well as those of the other Boston-area artists who are finalists for the contest, on ArtSake.

George Rosen (Fiction/Creative Nonfiction Fellow ’08) has a short story, “A Second Language” (incidentally, it’s the story George submitted when he won his 2008 Artist Fellowship), in the current issue (#37) of the Harvard Review.

Irina Rozovsky (Photography Finalist ’09) is among the artists featured in EXPOSURE: The 15th Annual PRC Juried Exhibition, juried by Mia Fineman. The show runs through June 20, 2010 at the Photographic Resource Center in Boston. Read Irina’s guest blog on ArtSake discussing her current project.

Salvatore Scibona (Fiction/Creative Nonfiction Fellow ’06) has received a 2010 Guggenheim Fellowship! According to the Guggenheim website, the average fellowship grant in 2008 was was approximately $43,200. (On a sidenote: we humbly note that Salvatore’s remarkable literary winning streak – he’s won the Young Lion’s Award, a Whiting Award, and was a National Book Award Finalist – started when he won an MCC fellowship in 2006.)

Jeff Zimbalist’s (Film & Video Fellow ’05) documentary The Two Escobars, a film about the convergent stories of murdered soccer star Andrés Escobar and Columbian drug baron Pablo Escobar, was selected by the Tribeca Film Festival (including two screenings in May). It is also slated to screen in the upcoming Cannes International Film Festival and will have its broadcast premiere on ESPN on June 22.

Past Fellows Notes
Apr. 2010
Mar. 2010
Feb. 2010
Jan. 2010

Are you a past fellow or finalist with an event, honor, or other bit of news you’d like to share? Tell us about it.

Images and media: Joshua Meyer, AND THE LOVE THAT LOVES THE LOVE THAT LOVES TO LOVE (2009) Oil on canvas, 35×46 in; excerpt from SOME KIND OF FUNNY PORTO RICAN? by Claire Andrade-Watkins; image from the proposed GOSSIPING BIRDS project by Nick Rodrigues.

Powered by Bookmarkify™

It’s April 30, the last day of Poetry Month. Or is it the first day in the rest of your POETRY LIFE? (Just agree it’s the second one; it’ll make me happy.)

We thought we’d cap our celebrations by sharing poems by two outstanding past Poetry Fellows: Patrick Donnelly’s Oxygen Catastrophe and Ben Berman’s Endings. Patrick is a Deerfield poet with one published collection, another to-be-, and a poetry manuscript review service to help poets prepare their work for publishers. Ben is a Boston-area poet/teacher, who, along with winning an MCC grant, has won an Artist Fellowship from the Somerville Arts Council and a Really Great Guy Award (from me). Enjoy.

OXYGEN CATASTROPHE by Patrick Donnelly

Mon vieux, you say cremation,
you can’t help feeling, is a gesture
ungrateful to the body
and the giver of the body.

But I (who have for years at a time
lived, reclined, frolicked, pranked, played the fool
in low, unworthy rooms, far too full
of gratefulness, of a kind, for my body) wonder:

do you mean the same dear giver
of the sweet sweet air
that is already burning
your body, mine, our memory, my memory of

a black and white collie in the spring,
the spring,
the seraphim,
these letters,

everything?

Originally published in The Laurel Review

ENDINGS by Ben Berman

Last night, I dreamt
of returning to Zimbabwe.
Busses were running,
women were selling
tomatoes and I kept telling
Mavhundutsie he couldn’t
be beating me in darts,
he was dead. And when
his wife brought me tea,
I refused because she, too,
was dead. Where was Dolly
Parton and the six-six mute?
Where were the overweight
ladies of the night? I remember
one monsoonish evening,
coming upon a shop that sold
soap and dried fish. The owner
offered me a blanket and corner
until the rains died down.
He brought out orange drink
and chunks of bread. The ground
is wet, he said. And I agreed.
Too wet, he continued. I agreed
again but didn’t understand
what he meant until he dragged
a long, wooden box into the room.
My brother. And then again,
the ground is too wet.
And because I used to believe
it was the escalating hardships
that elevated us towards the sacred,
that the struggle, alone, validated
a voice, for a long time I thought
the story ended there – moving off
the blanket to lie on the cold floor,
wresting, rapturously, to sleep.
But the truth is I also woke up
the next morning and walked home.
And when I arrived, Maxwell
needed help with his homework
and Chikasha reminded me that
someone has to chop more wood.
And someone has to weed the field.

Originally published in Cream City Review

Patrick Donnelly (Poetry Fellow ’08) is the author of The Charge (Ausable Press, 2003, since 2009 part of Copper Canyon Press) and Nocturnes of the Brothel of Ruin, forthcoming from Four Way Books, and is an Associate Editor of Poetry International.

Ben Berman (Poetry Fellow ’08) has received a Somerville Arts Council Fellowship, among other honors, and teaches at Grub Street and at Brookline High School. Read a nano-interview with Ben on ArtSake.

Powered by Bookmarkify™

When we commemorate Poetry Month with poems by Massachusetts-honored artists, we’re really commemorating all art forms. By artists everywhere. With poems.

My proof? Well, I don’t really have proof – can such a statement be proved? – but what I have, as Exhibit A, is Kristin Bock (Poetry Fellow ’06), who said in an ArtSake interview that the origins of her poetry could be drawn to her father, a still-life painter:

His paintings made me aware of texture, the qualities of light, and the language between objects at a very early age. They facilitated my understanding of symbolism and metaphor and nurtured my love for dark imagery. In short, art taught me the vocabulary of poetry.

Here is Kristin’s poem Pastoral, from her collection Cloisters.

PASTORAL

Fanned out in the night, I hear
the windmill give its life to the wind.

A satellite drifts by, recording
my inner dials.

I think I’m not alone.

All over the world, people lay down
in fields and wait for the sky to open.

Somewhere, our devotion
is being compared on an infinite chart.

Somewhere, we resemble spoons
laid across a table.

Kristin Bock is the author of Cloisters, winner of the Tupelo Press First Book Award.

Powered by Bookmarkify™

Printmakers
National Juried Monotype/Monoprint Exhibition, Monotype Guild of New England, Fitchburg Art Museum, Fitchburg, MA. September 26, 2010 – January 2, 2011. Juror: Joann Moser, Senior Curator of Graphic Arts, Smithsonian American Art Museum. $1,000 First Prize, Additional Cash Prizes. Go here for a prospectus. For more information contact Alice Merlone.
Deadline: June 4, 2010

Poets
Kent State University Press offer the Stan and Tom Wick Poetry Prize
This first book prize awards the winning poet with $2,000 and publication of their first full-length book of poetry. The competition is open to any poet writing in English who has not yet published a book. A nationally acclaimed poet is selected each year to judge the competition. For more information go here or email WickPoet@kent.edu.
Deadline: May 1, 2010

Visual Artists
South Arkansas Arts Center’s 2010 Annual Juried Art Competition has a national call for artists. This year’s juror is David Houston, chief curator The Ogden Museum, New Orleans. Send SASE to Juried Show Prospectus, South Arkansas Arts Center, 110 East 5th St., El Dorado, AR 71730 or email juriedart@saac-arts.org.
Deadline: May 19, 2010

Dance Presenters
NEFA’s National Dance Project (NDP) announces a call for presenters with extensive knowledge of the U.S and international dance community.
Deadline: April 30, 2010

Image credit: Photograph from Web site fromoldbooks.

Powered by Bookmarkify™

Congratulations to all books nominated for a Massachusetts Book Award, an honor for books by Massachusetts writers or about Massachusetts themes, ably administered by the Massachusetts Center for the Book.

In particular, bravo to Lisa Olstein (Poetry Fellow ’06) and Tracy Winn (Fiction/Creative Nonfiction Fellow ’08): Lisa’s poetry collection Lost Alphabet was nominated in the poetry category, and Tracy’s story collection Mrs. Somebody Somebody was nominated in fiction (read about Tracy’s Three Stages in the writing of this collection).

A ceremony to announce the 2009 winners will take place on Wednesday, April 28, at an opening night cocktail reception at the Massachusetts Library Association conference, in Hyannis.

Wednesday, April 28, 2010, 6 to 7:30 PM
The Resort & Conference Center at Hyannis
This event is free and open to the public.

RSVP here.

To see what else past fellows/finalists are up to, check out the Fellows Notes.

Powered by Bookmarkify™

As you may have noticed, we’ve been celebrating National Poetry Month by periodically sharing poems by some of our past honored artists. But some local poets are being much more literal about their Poetry Month. Take Simeon Berry (Poetry Fellow ’06): he’s undertaking the NaPoWriMo challenge – that is, to write at least one poem a day, all month.

You can follow his intriguing trajectory on his blog, where he’s been posting a series of poems about a character named “the doppelganger” and his adventures (of a kind) in a world seemingly shaped by poetic forces.

Here’s one posted April 19:

The doppelganger discusses his will with Miss Anaphora

You can’t
take

my hair.
Even

a lock is
enough

to regrow
me and I

have
too

many tax
problems

as it is.
A jazz

funeral’s
right out.

I don’t
want to

come back
in a stride

piano.
That’s

just pained.
In fact

it would
be better

if you
buried

me inside
a bullet

or a time
capsule.

Really
there’s no

difference
between

the two
if you

think hard
enough.

And I
want you

to put on
that

never dress,
the one

you were
wearing

when I
said

The three
things

I believe
in are

me, my
shadow,

and that
hemline.

Everything
else is

just a
substitute

measure.
I wasn’t

wrong.
Not very

Simeon Berry is an Associate Editor for Ploughshares and has won a Career Chapter Award from the National Society of Arts and Letters, the Dana Award for Poetry, and a Massachusetts Cultural Council Individual Artist Fellowship.

Powered by Bookmarkify™

When the ceramics artists and artisans of Potters Place in Walpole, MA open their doors to the public for a Spring Show and Sale on April 30-May 2, they’ll be paying tribute to a singularly influential figure: Mom.

The cooperative, non-profit pottery studio has an open studios twice a year, and the current theme is “Mom’s Favorite Dish” – a way to celebrate Mother’s Day as well as the 90th birthday of the mother of Potters Place co-chair Carol Bradley.

How are members interpreting the theme? Sue Brum of Walpole is making beautiful ceramic water cans (her mother is an avid gardener). Susan McFarland of Norwood is using her mother’s dishes for molds and also making little black purse vases for her daughters. Lisa Walker of Westwood has adorned her vase with some of her mother’s favorite flowers. Jane Wojick of Westwood makes chip and dip bowls because she’s a mom, and that’s her favorite dish.

There will be a free artists’ reception on Friday, April 30, 6-9 PM. The show continues on Saturday, May 1st from 9am – 5pm, and Sunday, May 2nd from 10am – 4pm. Both functional and non-functional pottery will be available for purchase directly from the 22 Potters Place artisans. See more images here.

Check out the Potters Place website for more info, as well as details about the organization’s upcoming workshops and class schedule.

Images: Ceramics featured in the Spring show and sale at Potters Place (top to bottom): group shot; Susan Leblanc Brum; Susan Shields McFarland; Lisa Walker. Photos by Dave Bradley Photography.

Powered by Bookmarkify™

Irina Rozovsky (MCC ’09 Photography Finalist) is in the process of publishing a book of a new project called One to Nothing. Some of the photographs will be on display at the Photographic Resource Center’s exhibition EXPOSURE:The 15th Annual PRC Juried Exhibition. We asked Irina to tell us more about her recent work depicting images of Israel. 

“One to Nothing hints at an existential battle: a confrontation between the individual and the abyss, where “nothing” is much bigger and greater than any single “one” could be.”

“These photographs were made in Israel, a place of historic conflict where it is not always clear who is the victor and the victim.”

“But these images are not political. Instead, Israel here serves as an abstract, mythological background.”

“Depicted is a land charged and tangled by questions that cannot be answered.”

“Echoes of the origins of man murmur in the desert sun, and once in a while, from beneath the weight of dusty struggles wafts a breeze and alleviates the tension.” 

EXPOSURE:The 15th Annual PRC Juried Exhibition
Dates: April 23 – June 20, 2010
Opening reception: Friday, April 23 – 5:30-7:30pm

Image credit: All photographs courtesy of Irina Rozovsky

Powered by Bookmarkify™

In December, we wrote about Shedding Light, a public art project centered on a lit-from-within tobacco shed in Amherst. Scott Tulay, one of the artists who exhibited in conjunction that project, is about to have a solo show at Boston’s Gurari Collections, May 7-31, 2010.

Scott creates haunting, evocative ink, pastel, charcoal and watercolor drawings that explore light, shadow, and built and natural structures. Here, Scott undertakes an ArtSake nano-interview about his art, his kids’ art critiques, and his bygone (thankfully) cigarette stamping days.

ArtSake: What’s the most surprising response to your art you’ve ever received?

Scott: My daughters, who are eight and five, consistently complain that my drawings are “too scary.” They will ask me “Why can’t you draw something nice, with color, like with a rainbow?” Once in a while, however, I’ll do a drawing, and they’ll tilt their heads to the side and say “Not bad, Dad.” This scares me.

ArtSake: How do you know when your work is done?

Scott: With some larger diptychs or a recent tetraptych, which is about 6′-0″ x 7′-0″, I have to work on our large dining room table and rig extensions to the table on the sides to see the whole piece at one time. Usually I start these at night and keep drawing until I can’t stay awake any longer. Because I know we need a place to eat the next day, the drawing is done.

ArtSake: What’s the worst day job you’ve ever had?

Scott: My worst day job was in a cigarette distribution facility. The only reason anyone worked there was to get free cigarettes and to be able to smoke while working. I was the only non-smoker, and there were no windows. My job was to put the Massachusetts cigarette tax stamp on each carton of cigarettes, sometimes by hand. I was horrible at running the stamp machine, and would sometimes get the cartons jammed until they exploded in a fountain of cigarettes. My co-workers would then come over and pick them up to smoke, sometimes asking “Hey next time, could you screw up with the Paul Mall Light 100s?” Needless to say, my comrades loved the “rookie,” but my boss was not impressed. I didn’t last long.

Scott Tulay‘s solo show at Gurari Collections in Boston runs May 7-31, 2010.

Images: ink, pastel, charcoal and watercolor drawings by Scott Tulay; LIGHT SCREEN (Finalist in the 2009 Ken Roberts Architectural Delineation Competition); GHOST SHIP; INFRASTRUCTURE; LIGHT STUDY; COAL FIRING.

Powered by Bookmarkify™