Posts Tagged “Newbury street”

Last week the Young Members of DeCordova (YMOD) massed on Newbury street for a gallery walk.  Both L and Professor M joined me and up to 75 other YMODers for a tour of nine Newbury street galleries.  Honestly, we managed to visit only eight of them, and I’ll write about even fewer here, but it was a grand night out by all accounts.

At Gallery NAGA we saw Joseph Barbieri’s “New Ducks and Scenic Scenes” and got a great kick out of the ducks, especially the artist themed ones such as “Rich Artist” and “Another Day Another Dollar” Barbieri’s landscapes (of Italy, I think) were pretty enough but lacked a certain duck content, although one of the trees did look a bit like a chicken in silhouette.

At the Arden Gallery M was transfixed by the translucent rubber sculpture of Niho Kozuru in the front window and we all enjoyed Bob Jackson’s Dogs Playing Poker in the back room, furthering in the rubber theme.  My favorite was the one with a cigar in its mouth.

The Nielsen Gallery mounted a handful of different artists’ works, including Forrest Bees, Porfirio DiDonna and Martin Ramirez.  Ramirez’s work was very reminiscent of that of Adolf Wolfli, and apparently both were institutionalized much of their lives and drew with what meager supplies were made available to them by guards and doctors.

Finally, (well, it wasn’t the last place we visited, but it’s the last one I’m writing about today), at Barbara Krakow Gallery we saw Stephen Prina’s show, The Way He Always Wanted It, which was just installed and we could still smell the paint on the rolling shades hung from the gallery ceiling.  In addition to the blinds (which we were told had come with chains that were too short but the new, longer chains would be installed in time for the opening the next day), Prina also showed Untitled/Exquisite Corpse: The Complete Paintings of Manet, illustrated as a rectangle at the scale of 1mm=11.39cm for each of Manet’s 556 paintings, and larger ink on paper representations of three.  The Harvard Film Archive is showing two of Prina’s films in conjunction with this show.

In a back room I spied an excellent Liliana Porter piece, Forced Labor.

Galleries are a lot like tiny museums, but they are also a lot different.  Comparing this free evening to an afternoon at someplace like the ICA certainly makes one think.  I’ve only mentioned four of the nine YMOD destinations, which are only a fraction of the total Newbury Street galleries, themselves only a part of all the galleries in town.  I encourage you to get out there and see what there is to see.

Looking for something to do after work Friday, I perused the listings at Boston Photography Focus, a local photo scene blog produced by the fine folks at the Photographic Resource Center. I decided to visit Gallery NAGA which was open late due to the general First Friday observance around town.

On view at a NAGA were self-portraits and holograms by Harriet Casdin-Silver and Collodion Portraits by David Prifti. I was immediately drawn to Prifti’s work in the front room of the gallery, where guests were sitting on stools by John Eric Byers.

The prints were tintypes, unique direct positive prints made by coating metal plates with collodion emulsion. This 19th century process is difficult and even dangerous but is still practiced by many contemporary photographers, and the tonal depth and beautiful imperfections of Prifti’s work reminds me why. This video gives some sense of what the process entails.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gyf8fQOdvDs

But this work is not all about the chemistry process. The models, some with extensive body art, break out of the antique look of the process by staring into the camera. The shallow depth of focus and orthochromatic color balance add to the mystery of the poses and the people. Especially alluring are the works featuring a model called Hannah, whose freckles are thrown into sharp relief when in focus and disappear beyond that plane. Sure, you could do this sort of thing digitally if you were so inclined, but somehow that’s missing the point. These old processes include a chimerical chemical randomness that simply can’t be found in digital work. I think that makes all the difference.

After perusing the gallery, I walked down Newbury street looking for an al fresco dining opportunity despite the gathering clouds. I dropped in on Piattini where they were happy for me to sit outside since nobody else was. I suppose it could be coincidence or timing, but by the time I had finished my fusilli bolognese and glass of montepulciano d’Abruzzo, the patio was full.

I set out on a beautiful spring night with a nearly full moon a week ago Thursday to troll some Newbury street galleries with the Young Members of DeCordova (YMOD) and my frequent museum buddy L.

We began at Gallery NAGA, where the work of John Eric Byers was on view, entitled “Squares and Rectangles.” It turned out this was my favorite work of the evening – sculpture or furniture or painting I’m still not sure, but I really liked the black on black carved paintings, each one a slab of wood with almost regular gridmarks that start to move around the longer you look at them.

Next up, the Chase Gallery featuring Kathryn Frund’s mixed-media paintings and then Lynda Lowe at the Arden Gallery. Frund’s mixed media paintings took cues from Rauschenberg and Johns, resembling landscapes at times, memory pieces at others. My favorites, a series of six-inch square landscapes. Lowe presented multi-panel paintings with combinations of asian-themed still-lifes and scenes of birds and trees, and her gallerist showed us some interesting stuff in the back room — be sure to check Arden gallery soon and again after the shows change.

Next door at Kidder Smith Gallery we saw Melissa Hutton’s Rough Landing, a series of paintings or prints covered with a thick acrylic-like glaze that formed dangerous-looking stalagtites at the bottom of each canvas. The gallery also had a small stash of David Levinthal photos in the back room, I hope they hang them soon.

Across the street at Judi Rotenberg Gallery, new video work by Mary Ellen Strom and Ann Carlson held the crowd in an odd sort of mesmerism as we watched some hay, a cow and a woman in a clear plastic dress half filled with money wander about a gallery space.

The art evening finished up at the Copley Society of Art where the Patrons’ Choice show was on. Called City Escapes, the show featured the work of many member artists and their takes on various kinds of getaways. The work was too diverse to even start to describe here. If you go, don’t miss the downstairs gallery, too. Even more packed than upstairs, with some real gems.

Stay tuned for more tales of art-peeping. Spring is here, so get out there while the walking is good and see some art!