Known for his work that confronts the fragile limits of perception and physicality, British sculptor Antony Gormley has confronted the human body throughout his career. In Chord (2015), a new public work permanently on view at MIT, Gormley challenges the…
Today, I am in transition. My art, my home, my studio, my day jobs, and my community are all in flux. I recently moved to New Jersey from Boston and then left shortly after to come to Vermont for a…
Since 1895, cultural institutions from around the world have gathered at the Venice Biennale to present the latest developments in their country’s visual arts, performance, and design. With the Biennale attracting over 500,000 visitors last year, prospective contributors vie to…
Each day that you and I choose to venture outside of our dwellings, we navigate streets, sidewalks, and other public infrastructure made not by us, but for us by other people who, assumedly, had our best interest in mind when…
The sculptures in VERY’s inaugural show, Sex Not Sex, inhabits the space in much the same way as the patrons at the opening: some sitting, some standing, others propped against the wall. In a gallery that feels more like a…
The sixteen busy sculptures, panels, and photographic collages in this strange, compact show hang back coolly in the space, waiting for the viewer to draw them out. Audrey Hope’s and Dan Boardman’s works are so encrusted with information that the…
Wilhelm Neusser and I first met in a roomful of paintings at an art auction. I asked him if he had a favorite of the works on view, and he began speaking about perceived intentions of many of the artists,…
After hiatus, Big Red & Shiny is pleased to continue Inside/Out, our artist-in-residence series. Inside/Out last ran during 2012 through 2013, and offered a space in which artists could discuss their studio practice and work. In this new iteration, a guest artist in…
Art in Service: a conversation between Leah Triplett Harrington of BR&S, Kate Gilbert of Now + There, and Maggie Cavallo of Alter Projects Last month, the City of Boston launched Boston Creates, its first-ever cultural plan. The ten-year plan aspires…
When Jed Speare died earlier this spring, Boston’s experimental arts community lost a pioneering artist, a tenacious advocate, a dear colleague, and an even more dear friend. Jed was best known for his work as a composer and sound artist,…
In Marguerite Yourcenar’s essay, “That Mighty Sculptor, Time,” she speaks of the “involuntary beauty” of ruined sculpture from the ancient past: …statues so thoroughly shattered that out of the debris a new work of art is born: a naked foot…
Being a pack rat and a sucker for attachment to objects, I’ve put a lot of thought into the value of things if you are using memory as a currency. Recently my sister Nicole Duennebier and I were invited to participate in…
When we aren’t seeing new work and writing about it, we’re probably reading. Here’s a selection of some articles that we’ve read in the past couple of weeks and found particularly engaging. Some are recent, while others are older and…
Monday at 5 pm public comments on the Boston Creates Cultural Plan will close. (The full text of the plan draft can be read here along with community comments, including my own). We encourage you to read the Cultural Plan…
Many years ago, while living in London, I became fascinated with honey bees after reading The Year of the Flood by Margaret Atwood. In the novel, a terrible disaster leaves only a few groups of people living in the world.…
One beautiful July morning in 2013 Boston woke to discover green paint had been thrown against the Robert Gould Shaw and the 54th Regiment Memorial that sits across from the State House in the Boston Public Garden. Outrage followed but…
In his seminal study on the subject, The Texture of Memory: Holocaust Memorials and Meaning, James Young distinguishes monuments from memorials as “material objects, sculptures, and installations used to memorialize a person or thing…a memorial may be a day, a…
Flux Factory—an alternative art space in Queens—hit the road for the Fung Wah Biennial on March 5th. Curator Will Owen spearheaded the mobile art exhibition with the support of Flux board member Sally Szwed and former curator in residence Matthias…
Recently, I was thinking about the artists I look up to and who play an integral part in my art practice. What immediately popped into my head weren’t the well-renowned high-end gallery artists, but the secret artists. The artists with…
In college, she studied painting. She had wanted to be a writer. Her father was a writer. But in college, she transitioned from drawing fictions on a page to painting pictures onto canvases. She was committed to painting when she…