Delia Gonzalez’s Doomed Decadence
“The Last Days of Pompeii” is a loaded phrase, conjuring both tragedy and opulence. Multimedia artist and musician Delia Gonzalez takes these words and burns them across a wall in…
Author Olivia Kiers
Olivia Kiers
Olivia J. Kiers is an arts writer, printmaker, and poet based in Boston. She holds an MA in the History of Art and Architecture from Boston University. She is the Assistant Editor at Art New England magazine, and her poetry has appeared most recently in The Ekphrastic Review and Sunset Liminal.
Artists Earn a Living: Culture Hustlers at the BCA
Last year, Lucas Spivey parked his vintage Shasta camper on the Boston Center for the Arts Plaza, unfurled the awning, positioned a flamingo lawn ornament, and invited artists of all…
Painful Performances: Contemporary Chinese Art
It is now almost ten years after the 2008 Beijing Olympics, and sixteen since China joined the World Trade Organization. Three decades have elapsed since the Tiananmen Square protests, and…
Claire Ashley is Alive and Kicking in Boston
Those crazy female foreigners are alive and kicking. So claims—in texting-slang—the title of Scottish artist Claire Ashley’s current solo exhibition at Boston University’s 808 Gallery, (((CRZ.F.4NRS.AAK))). It’s an attention-grabbing statement,…
Cuban Complexity: Mark Guglielmo’s Cubaneo
Despite an increase of U.S. citizens traveling to Cuba in the recent past, the popular American image of that island nation remains a combination of ‘50s cars and fine cigars,…
Neither Forbidden nor Forgotten: Ariel Basson Freiberg & Lavaughan Jenkins
This September, painter Ariel Basson Frieberg fearlessly explores figure painting through two striking gallery shows: Ariel Basson Freiberg: Trespass Daughter at Howard Yezerski Gallery (September 8–October 10), and Reconfigure with…
The Artist’s Beautiful Mess: Sarah Meyers Brent at Kingston
Sarah Meyers Brent’s current exhibition, Growth and Decay, ought to—by the artist’s own admission—have been called Beautiful Mess. “Growth and decay” is a precise summation of how Brent’s assemblages and…
Matrices of Memory: Caroline Bagenal’s Summer Palace
The ethereal aesthetic of Caroline Bagenal’s Summer Palace—on view at Boston Sculptors Gallery through June 11—awakens one’s emotions. In this exhibition, her sculptures hang from the ceiling rather than stand…