I’m thrilled to announce that four works from the Sidewalk Series are now part of the Fidelity Corporate Art Collection. Fidelity supports local artist communities in areas where it has a business presence and engage associates with dynamic, thought-provoking works of museum-quality art in all the spaces where they work. It gives me great joy to know some old pieces of cast-off sidewalk are now part of this prestigious contemporary art collection.
On Friday, October 20, we came together for the final workshop in the three-part Me(dia) Response Self-Awareness and Activism Through Art-Making series at MIT List Visual Art Center.
Photojournalist Dominic Chavez presented his work and recounted tales of visiting Sierra Leone, Iraq and other conflict areas and Danielle Benaroche Gottesman shared insight into the importance of self-care in managing the barrage of stressful circumstances, including violent imagery.
Read MoreOn Friday, October 20 from 12-2pm we'll conclude the Me(dia) Response series at MIT List Visual Art Center with a creative action open to the public. I'm eager to share the works participant's made during the first two workshops, expand the dialogue we've been having, and conclude with a cathartic activity during this free workshop open to the public. (image: workshop participant work)
Read MoreOn September 15, 2017 ten inquisitive and empathetic souls arrived at the second of three Me(dia) Response: Self-Awareness and Activism Through Art-Making workshops at MIT List Visual Art Center to explore their role in shaping media and responding to it. (Image: Gilbert. newspaper, plastic, greenery and grenade pull.)
Read MorePresenting the ten accumulations made at the second Me(dia) Response workshop at MIT List Visual Art Center on September 15.
The next and final workshop on October 20, 12–2pm and is free and open to the general public. Visit MIT List to register.
Following the first Me(dia) Response workshop at MIT List Art Center on August 18, I altered the twelve accumulations made by participants by adding Plasti Dip.
Presenting the twelve accumulations made at the first Me(dia) Response workshop, pre-alteration.
Sidewalk Series #5 , 2017 will be included in Nasty Women Boston, a group exhibition demonstrating solidarity among artists who identify with being Nasty Women in the face of threats to roll back women's rights, civil rights, and reproductive rights. It also serves as a fundraiser to support Color of Change and Planned Parenthood.
Please join me at the Opening + Art Sale on Friday, September 8, 6—9 pm at Laconia Gallery, 533 Harrison Avenue, Boston.
Sidewalk Series #5, 2016. Found concrete, gold leaf and modeling turf.
On Friday, August 18, 2017, I had the pleasure of working with twelve curious and courageous souls who attended the Me(dia) Response: Self-Awareness and Activism Through Art-Making workshop at MIT List Visual Art Center. This, the first of a three-part workshop, stirred a conversation about the excess of violent imagery in our news and questioned the role of the photographers, editors, and consumers (us) in making (and disseminating) political statements.
After a guided meditation, participants selected violent images that spoke to them—hands that called out for help, people locked in protest for their civil rights—from a collection of over 100 that I've been snipping from newspapers since December 2016.
We got right to making, each person gluing together over 60 pages of newspaper. The goal was to give participants quiet time to consider the glut of violent imagery and news as they busied their hands. But heated political conversations quickly ensued. The imagery may have aggrevated some who were not comfortable sitting with the feelings it evoked. Or perhaps they were frustrated at not being heard in other contexts.
As time went on, the suggested shape, a vertical stack akin to striated rock, took on new and surprising shapes — a flower, a frayed puck shape, and a hand for instance.
Now it is my turn to alter the twelve completed accumulations with a unifying color and texture using a black rubbery paint. I'll return in September to guide the next set of participants through a deeper understanding of their role in shaping media (and how they can take control of it) by altering someone else's creation.
Me(dia) Response: Self-Awareness and Activism Through Art-Making is part of List Projects: Civil Disobedience, a program of documentaries, news footage, citizen journalism, artist’s films and videos focusing on moments of political resistance and public demonstration from the early 20th century through today. Presenting records from the historical Civil Rights and women’s movements, gay liberation and AIDS activism, the Black Lives Matter movement, and recent Women’s Marches recognize the history of resistance, and considers the role that artists and documentarians play in chronicling and confronting abuses of power and social injustice. July 18, 2017 - October 29, 2017 (Note: closed August 22–27. Daily screening program will resume on August 29.)
By Cate McQuaid GLOBE CORRESPONDENT AUGUST 24, 2017
MELISSA BLACKALL PHOTOGRAPHY
“REAL/IDEAL (Turning Utopia Into Reality)” at the Boston Center for the Arts Mills Gallery is a reassuring show for tense times.
In recent years, Randi Hopkins, the center’s director of visual arts, has elevated the annual resident artists’ exhibition above the level of an obligatory members show, which can be scattershot. This year, curator David Guerra invited 18 residents and 10 guests to contemplate utopia. These artists’ ideals range from personal to philosophical to societal, but they hang together on hope.
…
Kate Gilbert installs her photo “Untitled (Chinatown Housing)” above rocks and asphalt adorned with gold leaf, moss, and a nylon sack. In the photo, a dress Gilbert wore for a public performance piece about economic inequality has been made into a tent in a deserted lot. Each element here sets off bare subsistence with touches of value and dearness, and the prospect of wholeness.
Utopias are easy. It’s in dystopias such as Gilbert’s that ideals are most cherished.
