Newest Features
By KATHLEEN BITETTI Why every artist should know who all their elected officials are. As a working artist, as an activist, and also as the executive director for the Artists Foundation, I learned that elected officials are very interested in knowing those they represent. After all they are public servants and work for you and I. I have found most of the elected officials and those who work for them to be quite nice, approachable, and often very helpful (via helping find contacts, collaborators, etc). For many of my own art projects,…
By STEVE AISHMAN I am writing this letter to Big Red because I realized the other day that I am stalking Bill Arning, the curator of the MIT List Visual Arts Center. I love the work he curates at various venues, I have followed his writing in art periodicals like Art in America and I have a substantial collection of the various catalogs for exhibitions he has written in. In fact they have their own special shelf. Next to his picture. And some candles. All of this seemed normal to me, but…
By CAROLYN FRANKLIN Have you ever judged a book by it’s cover? Sure you have, it’s a part of life. If no one judged books by their cover, there would be no need for Barnes & Noble to construct such elaborate displays to entice us to purchase the latest novels. A bookstore would be an austere and cold place, with shelf after shelf of white rectangles labelled in simple black type with the title and author’s name. The rise of pulp fiction, comics and dime store novels since WWII gave the world…
By BEN SLOAT Rarely does an art exhibition speak to the importance and advocacy of art itself. Temporary Walls, curated by Heidi Marston and Lydia Ruby, on exhibit at the Rhys Gallery until March 4th, is a show of work by youths between the ages of 7 to 21 detained within the Department of Youth Services. Aided by art instuctors Brian Burckhardt and Derek Fenner, the youths create in a variety of media including sculpture, photography, drawing, and painting. All work sold from the show goes directly towards buying art supplies for…
By MICAH J. MALONE Graffiti art has been infiltrating its way into the “official” art world for more than two decades now. With artists like Jean Michel Basquiat and Keith Haring, to name only two of the most well known, paving the way for more contemporaries like Barry McGee and Margaret Kilgallen, the art of graffiti now seems to reside quite comfortably in the gallery world. Perhaps one of the most pressing questions about this phenomena, at least for this writer, is once graffiti leaves the street, is it really graffiti anymore?…
By RACHEL GEPNER I have an image burned into my memory of a seafoam green floor and a pink face. I think of the 80s. Excess. Commercialism. Poor packaging. Bad design. Unflattering lighting. Shitty taste. Cultural decay. Death and meaninglessness. David Hockney’s colors scare me out of my mind. I have always had an equally strong, but opposite, reaction to his photo collages. They are handsomely presented: each expression and gesture is presented as a discrete object, within an appropriate context. They are complex, but clean. This is not to say that…
By PHAEDRA SHANBAUM As the only Boston representatives of the newly opened Whitney Biennial “Day for Night”, I thought it appropriate to give local filmmakers Louise Bourque and Joe Gibbons some much-deserved attention. I asked new Big RED & Shiny contributor Phaedra Shanbaum to give a synopsis of each of their practices for those unfamiliar to their work. Also, part 2 of this article will appear in issue #39, where regular contributor Christian Holland and myself will conduct an interview with each artist, paying special attention to the work that will be…
By MATTHEW NASH In our efforts to understand and accurately represent the full scope of our art scene, Big RED & Shiny sent a survey to the commercial galleries of New England. About half of those contacted replied, and the results give an interesting glimpse into the generally opaque world behind the scenes of the galleries many artists stake their careers on. While not 100% thorough [1], the results give us an opportunity to discuss several aspects of our commercial culture, and to build on the successes while considering some improvements. To…