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8.22.2009

What I Saw This Summer, Part 2: Exhibitions

This post features exhibitions in Boston and Maine, territory I covered in July.
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BOSTON: At the Kingston Gallery I saw the small, deliciously hued and color-banded paintings of Rose Olson, who has a studio just a few blocks from the gallery. Both studio and gallery are in Boston's South End--the Chelsea of Boston. Click here for a previous post about Olson's work, where I talk about the yin and yang of substantial box-panels tethering those luminous veils of color


Rose Olson: Installation wall of the exhibition Ju Ju Summer 4G at Kingston Gallery, Boston

Below: Ju Ju Summer 4G, 2009, acrylic on birch, 12 x 12 x 3 inches; this image courtest of the gallery website



A few doors down at Carroll and Sons, I saw the drawings of Jacqueline Ott. The gallery houses The Boston Drawing Project, a Pierogi-style setup of flat files in a small back room, which features the work of New England-based artists. Joseph Carroll runs both the gallery and the Project. Ott is a painter who also makes meticulously drafted drawings, based on a triangular grid, using a compass and different hardnesses of graphite pencil. While they're mandala like in shape, they engage the eye actively. Click here to see a four-minute video of the artist talking about and making these drawings.



Jacqueline Ott in The Boston Drawing Project space at Carroll and Sons. Ott's drawings are installed just above the flat file. I don't have good individual pics of the work, but you can get a sense of the visual complexity of her graphite-on-paper geometry by clicking onto the aforementioned video
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MAINE: About 20 miles north of Portland is Brunswick, home of the legendary Icon Gallery. Run by Duane Paluska, Icon is located in a small farmhouse-turned-exhibition-space where two floors are given over to art. Here Kate Beck was having her first solo show, Whitespot: Drawings and Paintings. Beck achieves extraordinary lushness and depth from a repeated graphite line. The upper right corner of her blog features a slideshow of the exhibition, so here I'll just show you a few pics, including one of the artist with her work.


The gallery sign
Kate Beck standing in front of her work--the largest piece, and only painting, in the show






One of Beck's large graphite drawings, with a small, rich detail below

Next "What I Saw" installment: Dannielle Tegeder at Priska Juschka Fine Art; the Postcard show at A.I.R. Gallery

4 comments:

lisa said...

Thanks for these "studio posts'
Love seeing the work, it is inspiring.
Lisa

Ian MacLeod said...

both Rose Olson and Kate Beck's work are beautiful. Thank you for showing the detail of Beck's drawing - and the detail of the birch panel showing through the paint.
ian

Joanne Mattera said...

Thanks, Lisa and Ian.
The details are one of the ways we look at work in person, so I'm glad to be able to post them.

Catherine Carter said...

Joanne, in this post, you've written about three of my favorite Boston area artists in one fell swoop. Thank you so much!

I've been a great admirer of Grace deGennaro's work for many years too. Again, thank you for your writing.