Maria Molteni is a Boston-based artist who was a part of the Boston Artist in Residence program from 2016 – 2017. She is also the founder and team captain of the New Craft Artists in Action, a collective that looks…
The Minuteman Bikeway passing through Arlington teems with activity throughout the day and into the evenings. Whether it is a cyclist racing to get to work in the morning, or a young child who is still finding their footing while…
Men are a burden. This matter-of-fact sentiment prefaced the call for submissions Reflections on the Burden of Men, edited by Laura Beth Reese and Madeline Zappala. For a liberal feminist (like me), it was a fun sentence to say out…
Crossing Borders is a reflection of intercultural identity, both for the artists represented and for the larger society in which we operate. At times it feels like a celebration, sometimes like a confrontation, while yet other moments take a more…
Big Red & Shiny is pleased to welcome Chanel Thervil as our next Inside/Out artist in residence. Working in sculpture, painting, installation, and public art works, Thervil balances roles of visual artist, community activist, and arts educator. Her newest body…
Enter, sit, read magazine, wait. Then—hair cut. The thought of having a conversation with a stranger while they touch my head and cut my hair has always given me anxiety. I’ve never actually had to go through that because my…
When Matter & Light director, Ian Corbin, describes his life’s origin, it is almost unbelievable. This, in part, is due to his aesthetic: he’s on the couch in the back of the gallery finishing up an email on his MacBook…
Sun Splashed: Nari Ward, the artist’s largest survey to date, is now on view at the Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston. Organized by Ruth Erickson, Mannion Family Curator, with Jessica Hong, Curatorial Associate, this show couldn’t have come at a…
Every Saturday morning I water plants and draw cartoons. Before that I drink coffee and eat a quick breakfast, usually toast. My watering can was produced by Union Products, Inc. in Leominster, which was a major plastic manufacturing city in…
Ana Mendieta (1948-1985) wasn’t the first, nor will she be the last female artist to use her own body, feminine processes, and the stuff of the earth in her art—of her generation, Judy Chicago and Kiki Smith immediately come to…
Inside/Out is Big Red & Shiny’s artist-in-residence series, offering a space for artists to write about their ideas, research, and challenges, and publish their inspirations, obsessions, creative experiences, and insights. Unlike an ‘Open Studio’ format, which is often predicated on…
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 paintings, on view at Kingston Gallery through July 1, bulge…
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 on plinths. They activate the gallery’s negative space, immediately engaging…
“There is both capricious absurdity and poetic impossibility in the realm of the unconscious lapses of time that constitute dreams.”[1] -Maria Magdalena Campos-Pons While I reflect upon the indeterminacy of global political conditions, I continue to be buoyed by…
Suggested for You, the third exhibition curated and organized by localhost, is hosted on the video game platform Minecraft—a game devoted to crafting, building, and rebuilding. The game, which allows users to create entire virtual worlds, transmits the gallery experience…
Since the 1990s, Beverly Semmes’s work has been at the forefront of contemporary art. Semmes’s work is situated at the nexus of American feminism, puritanism, and history of sculpture and craft. This work spans across disciplines and cultures, from photography,…
I shall always be grateful to Honduras, though for it has given me back myself. I am my old brash self again. -Zora Neale Hurston, Puerto Cortes, Honduras, May 20, 1947 Being a fan or scholar of Zora Neale Hurston…
When I found out that the artist A.K. Burns was one of the Radcliffe fellows at Harvard this year, I was excited to have gotten that memo because things come and go pretty quietly over there. My husband works next…
Observance: As I See You, You See Me (up through April 8 at the Montserrat College of Art Gallery in Beverley, MA) is an exhibition of portrait photography that features multiple viewpoints on identity. Curated by Leonie Bradbury, the variety…
“What is radical in 2016-2017?” artist, activist, educator Morehshin Allahyari asked the audience in attendance for her talk “On Activism, Digital Colonialism, and Re-figuring” at UMass Lowell last Wednesday afternoon. Born in Iran and a resident of the US since…