G263 - The Scene

Danielle Freiman Interview

2011-11-06T10:51:00.000-08:00

Danielle Freiman Full Interview!

Danielle had her show in October of 2011.

Danielle Freiman is an artist and recent graduate of the Studio for Interrelated Media (SIM) at Massachusetts College of Art and Design. She explores the ideas of home and memory as reoccurring themes in her art, referring to specific memories and objects of her youth through various methods of performance, dance, installation, and assemblage.

Pep Manalang Interview

2011-11-04T13:34:00.000-07:00

Pep Manalang Full Interview!

Pep had her show at Gallery 263 in early September of 2011.

Pep Manalang aka “Maria Belina S. Manalang” is an abstract artist whose paintings have been widely exhibited in Manila, Philippines. She is also an amateur photographer who does her own darkroom work.

Pep is represented by Finale Art File, West Gallery, and The Drawing Room, in Metro Manila.

She studied Architecture and Physics before obtaining her Certificate in Painting from the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts in Philadelphia. Her degrees include B.S. Physics from University of the Philippines, Diliman, and M.A.Physics from SUNY Buffalo.

Pep has currently been working mostly with acrylic paint, on paper, wood, or canvas. She uses modeling paste to create texture and layers paint washes to achieve different tonalities and color compositions. She often starts with a symmetrical composition then uses repetition of lines to complete the framework.

Space 242

2009-08-29T12:25:00.000-07:00

Space 242, Boston’s self-professed “lowbrow destination” recently had a three-part show called Sin Alley/Robots & Hungry Animals/Voodoo Kitchen, featuring the work of Craig Bostick, Fish McGill and Gavin Petersen, respectively.

Craig Bostick is also a cartoonist, much influenced by 50s and 60s-era comics like Archie and Jughead/ Betty and Veronica. He references Jughead more than once in the paintings featured at Space 242, most noticeably in Gluttony. “Jughead is a lot like myself,” Bostick grins. His ten pieces based on the seven deadly sins are often in multi-paneled format, emulating comic strips and recycling the styles and fonts of 50s magazine or billboard advertisements. “I like my work to be as flat as possible,” explains Bostick, “I always work this way.” In terms of content, “the last show I did had, visually, a similar style, but [this show, having a theme] feels more complete.”

Working primarily for Harmonix Music Systems, the company that brought us Guitar Hero and Rock Band, McGill has also created a series of prints inspired by his job. Impish imaginings featuring fellow officemates dreaming of rock stardom, confused robots and conga lines of jungle animals populate these pieces. “There’s always a gator, always a weinerdog… sometimes an elephant,” says Fish McGill of his canon of images. Regarding pieces like “Darth Puppets,” McGill often riffs off of “characters from [his] childhood” that he likes to “re-draw or reinterpret.” McGill has painted on skateboards, constructed flowerboxes based on his recurring cast of characters, and done work with Project SF, which organizes “collaborative painting, often live events” mostly around Boston. “It’s a lot like the Superfriends, where everyone brings their own really tight skill to the group.”

Gavin Petersen, a recent MassArt grad (’09) was an Illustration major, but “changed to Art and Design to graduate faster.” His pieces, starting as doodles, employ artists’ paint markers and acrylics, layered and textured in different ways for various effects. Looking at his work reminds one of the grotesquerie of surf or rock art—Rat Fink and the like with tongues lolling out of jowly, spittle-showered mouths, bloodshot eyes melting into emaciated faces. Example: there is a piece dedicated to the Swine Flu (or H1N1 virus, to be P.C.). “I don’t really plan it out,” Petersen admits, “I just go with the flow.”

Space 242 has a new show up as of yesterday, Aug 28^th:

Dirty Duality/Gramps & Scamps/The Foxtrot Code

SCOTT MURRY, ELLEN CRENSHAW, AMANDA ATKINS

Give it a look! 242 E. Berkeley St, 2^nd Floor-- in the South End.

info@space242.com

The Stephanie Walker Story

2009-08-13T20:33:00.000-07:00

Stephanie Walker has come a long way to where she is now. Going on 34, she is the sole owner of Walker Contemporary Gallery in the South End (450 Harrison Ave). I considered re-editing the narrative she sent me to be more "professional"/ publication-like, but her words struck me in such a way that I worry they may lose sincerity if I try to distill the message myself. So here it is straight from the lady herself, the story of a circuitously-realized dream and a lesson that things may not go the way we'd like or plan, but if you've got the fight in you (ref: cojones) things really can turn out.

"I'm soon to be 34. Born and raised in VT. I spent the first 9 years of my life in a very rural part of VT where I spent my summers on a farm, winters stacking wood with my father. The whole thing. I went to Connecticut College, with the aid of a big fat scholarship and the rest I took out in loans, where I studied Sociology. After I graduated from college, I went home to VT. I didn't have the money or resources (nor did (or does) my family) to do anything else. I started looking for jobs that would utilize my degree, thinking that by helping people, I could save the world. Even though I grew up with what I now know and understand were very limited resources, I never felt that way. I have an incredibly loving (albeit whacky) family, who doesn't. They gave me so much in terms of what I call important and foundational skills, besides nurturing and love, I learned common sense, logic, business skills, life and death etc. from them. I learned about the essentials. We killed and ate our own chickens. I de-feathered them. We had a vegetable garden, canned our own veggies etc. That's just how it was. I grew up knowing that vegetables have seasons and come from the earth and still have a hard time eating them out of season from a super market.

Anyway, why all the weird-o background? My mother worked as an engineer at IBM and my father was in the National Guard. I certainly did not come from an art background or art family. In may respects, I have no [really] good reason to be in art, except that I love it. And as it turns out, Passion is the single most important qualification for any job, in my book.

After several months of interviewing for social work type jobs and teaching sports to 5 year olds in the afternoons, I found a job at a gallery in VT. It was a gallery that focused on 19th & 20th C American art. I LOVED the actual day to day work. I loved working with clients. I was out of my skin elated to be working around art every day. It was truly life changing. Shortly after I started that job, I had an opportunity to move to Boston, which I did. However, as most gallery people know, gallery jobs are incredibly hard to come by. I spent several months looking and finally took a job in technology, since they were a dime a dozen at the time. All the while though, my heart was with art. But I am a fatalist and believe that everything happens for a reason so I learned everything I could in my tech job but kept looking for gallery work. By this time, I was so fascinated by the entire web craziness, that I decided I wanted to work with a gallery that was doing something with the web. This was early 1998! So I surfed the web looking for decent gallery web sites. When I finally found one, I sent my resume, regardless of the fact that they didn't have any job listings. As it turns out, the current director was leaving and was so excited to see my resume with a combination of technical know-how and gallery experience so she handed it to the owner and voila! I had a gallery job.

What I wasn't prepared for, was this was a Contemporary gallery. It was a whole new world to me - I was super young and naive and really knew nothing about the art world at large. The business model was completely different. The day to day was an entirely new thing to me. And most gratifying of all - I got to work with LIVING artists!!! It changed my life. I read and learned everything I could. I talked to the artists all the time about how they do things, why they do things. And then when I made a sale, the best part of every day was being able to call an artist and tell them! I was completely smitten.

I stayed with the gallery (after a brief hiatus back into technology) for over 8 years. The owner asked me to come back to the gallery because he was moving to North Carolina, however, there was already a director. He just wanted another person in there he knew he could trust etc. It wasn't easy at first. I had already done all the work the current director was doing and now I was doing it as an asst. But it paid off. She left and I took over. That was the most phenomenal opportunity for me. And a great lesson in the way the art world works. You get to your destination often in a very circuitous fashion.

After several years of running the gallery on my own, the owner had asked me to buy it. A short time later, my then husband asked me to move across the country to Los Angeles to pursue a career opportunity for him. I was torn, devastated and crushed. How do you choose between those two things. Quite frankly, my job is what got me out of bed every morning. I felt like the luckiest girl alive - not only did I love the work I did, but I put beauty out into the world. I made a difference every single day by providing opportunities for people to connect and engage with art. I believe fully that without art, we lose our humanity, our democracy, our ability to be rational creative thinkers, to treat others as equals, to communicate. To me, art is life and although I couldn't create it, I could certainly participate in it and perpetuate it.

Ultimately, I did what I thought was the unthinkable and it had the most unexpected of consequences. I chose to move to Los Angeles with my then-husband. This was in the Fall of 2007. We got to LA, his career op fell through and his company planned to move us back to Boston, but as it turns out, we were going to stay for a little while. So, I took it as an opportunity. After having to let go of my dream, I now knew more than ever that this was the only thing I wanted to do in the world. So I got busy. I took advantage of my time in LA to explore the West coast. In my role as Director at my former gallery, I was very tied to the day to day operations and being in the gallery. I rarely had the opportunity to travel and get to know other parts of the country and what the art scene was like. I went to Portland, Seattle, San Francisco. I went to Minneapolis, Toronto and Chicago. It was amazing. I started emailing and calling artists to do studio visits - still with no concrete plan.... I emailed one artist whose work to this day, I can't stop thinking about, Elisa Johns. She invited me to her studio, showed me her work and then simply asked what my deal was. I told her, the dream was to open my own gallery. My then husband and I planned on heading back to Boston, but I wasn't sure when and even then, I wasn't sure when I would find the right space. But, I told her, I knew I wanted to represent her work. so until then, I would be working as a private dealer. After I left her studio, I went to city hall and filled out all the paper work and Walker Contemporary - the private dealership - was born. With a couple weeks of Elisa signing a contract with me, I was able to sell a piece of her work to one of my former East coast clients. It was one of the single most exhilarating moments of my life. I knew I had found what I was born to do.

Cut to today. My then husband and I ended up moving back to Boston late Summer 2008. I had a space that I was ready to lease, a roster of artists who wanted to work with me. I was ready to go! Then some of my backing fell through, I had to let go of the space, some of my artists left me. It was devastating. I didn't want to get out of bed for days. But I had other artists who believed in me so fully, they didn't care if they worked with me as a private dealer, as a gallerist, they said they just wanted to work with me, my enthusiasm was infectious. So, being as tenacious as I am, I went to my accountant, we put together a business plan, presented it to potential investors who said they wanted to give me money and I turned it down!? I realized that this was my dream and my dream alone. Whether it succeeded or failed, it would succeed or fail because of me. I scraped together less money then you think it would be possible to open a business with, contacted GTI - the property managers/owners of my current gallery space, and asked what they had available. I secured the space and began. Being a fatalist, you have this theory that if it was meant to be, it will be. I believed so fully in my artists and what they do, I felt it was impossible to 1. not succeed and 2. not put their work out there any longer!

Two weeks later my husband asked for a divorce. A few weeks later, I learned it was because of an affair he had been having for quite some time. A short time after that, my dog (and of course, best friend, not be cliche, but he was amazing) died. In the middle of all this, I experienced a couple small health crises.

WHY on earth am I telling you all of this? Because it's important to know that the cliches are true - that nothing good comes easy, that without pain, there is no beauty. If you want to achieve your dream, you need to reach for it. In spite of it all, I'm happier than I have ever been in my entire life and there is no other place that I would rather be. Whether my business succeeds or fails now, I know I tried. And I know I can."

I was pointed in Stephanie's direction by David Craft, who had met her at some art event and was impressed with the vivacity and enthusiasm that she exuded, not only regarding the art world, but simply in her person. In my own experience since she has had nothing but kind, hopeful and encouraging words for G263 and myself. I wish her all the best here in Boston. I think that it's important not only to support young businesses, but to recognize that behind many businesses is a heartfelt dream that must be mutually supported for the collective to not just be a handful of daring financial ventures, but to really become a community. Especially regarding the art world, we often don't have much to go on but each other.

Please keep an eye out for Walker Contemporary's new show going up on Sept. 11th: Susan Dory

http://walkercontemporary.com/

So we had this opening last night...

2009-07-10T09:23:00.000-07:00

This opening, at Gallery 263 (that is, 263 Pearl Street in Cambridgeport) was for our new show "Re-paint"-- an open call to local artists to fish through those stacks of horrible,horrible paintings you find at Goodwill/ the Salvation Army etc. and to re-paint approximately half the surface as they please.

The possibilities! You've got bad paintings (ref: things you might see at the Museum of Bad Art), poorly painted reproductions of/ prints of famous pieces, religious art, "bless our home" crochet work, and so many other strange things I can't conceive of without seeing with my own two eyes first...

There was a pleasing range of results. David Lasley made good use of a holographic Jesus portrait to produce The Kraken Repents, which has a gouache addition of... a Kraken, in the foreground (specifically from the 1981 Clash of the Titans). His second entry, To the cemetery, bears the same title of the Goya print it began as. Again, gouache is used.

Other creative reactions were Nicki Mead Draves' Sunflowers in June, which layered three-dimensional watercolor cutouts on a print of Van Gogh's Sunflowers, and William Mayo's... well, check this out:

before after

Titled: Shamer of all Life

And Nicholas Read's Bipolar:

before after

Interesting to note: the "re-painting" in this one is done in blocks, not exclusively around the area needed to change/ remove/ add an object. Well done there, Mr. Read.

As for the event itself-- so many young people! This was encouraging. I'd say at least half of those in attendance were in their late 20s or younger. In part this was because of Laura Francis' (our head intern and curator/ organizer of this show) pull in art school or recently-post-art school circles, but it seems there is a strong amount of the young and creatively-inclined in Cambridge that are curious to see what we, this new gallery, are bringing to the area.

Artists were there, mingling and talking about their contributions-- their approach, how they came upon an idea... a book of "before" pictures was being passed around, which offered fun for all. A table of snacks in the center of the room laid out an array of smart, fresh, yet not-too-fancy foods that I think strengthened just the kind of ambiance we were hoping for. Lech Szczepaniak, wearing a pink sequined headband, provided live music towards the end of the night, playing acoustic covers of mellow favorites like Al Greene's Let's Stay Together. Everyone got loose on Charles Shaw wine and had a good old time.

Walker Contemporary

2009-06-24T08:44:00.000-07:00

Walker Contemporary gallery in the South End is run by the young Stephanie Walker—her first lone business venture in Boston. She had worked in a gallery on Newbury Street for ten years, then spent one year out in LA doing the same. Walker Contemporary opened in 2008 and shows mostly West Coast artists. When asked about this strange arrangement, Stephanie replied, in short, that her artist connections are mostly on the West coast, while her shipping/ business connections are on the East. (I spoke to Stephanie only briefly and may follow up with more details on her life/ approach/ thoughts on Boston vs. LA etc.)

BUT

What made me want to write about this gallery is the quality of the work there. Much of it is minimalist (by the art-historical definition) while the rest is loosely of the same feel—quiet, light, often whimsical. The gallery itself is, in accordance with the art it shows, very spare, the interior being almost entirely white. Currently on display is a selection of work from past artists towards the back of the space, and, towards the front, the paintings of Jennifer Davis under the show title Not Too Sweet.

“My work often communicates what is unspoken and private, but commonly human. …It is an expression of my most personal thoughts and ideas.”

-Davis, in her artist write-up.

Pastel-colored figures, human, animal, plant, object and in-between, are pictured in moments of pause—although an “action” may be occurring, there is often a feeling of stasis in these vignettes, as the characters within slow themselves, often stopping, often regarding the viewer, peering outward from their quietly odd situation. (on a personal note, her associations remind me somehow of the novels of Haruki Murakami)

There is immediately a distinct “vocabulary” or, if you like, “style” of images in these paintings. There are a few artists that take the same approach to art-making—that is, literal visual metaphor, describing some dynamic or relationship using characters/avatars as stand-ins for real forces. In contrast to Layla Adams, for example, Davis is less sinister and less strictly focused on human relationships. Amy Cutler, another of the same, seems more preoccupied with her perspective as a woman.

Laylah Ali, Untitled / / Amy Cutler, Futile Fleet

Davis’ pictures, because of both her soft palette and poise of her characters, seems somewhat more ...spiritual. The carefulness of Davis’ work gives the sense of a meditative feeling circumscribed by thin pencil, thin brush lines, in "nonsensical" juxtapositions that linear thought cannot trace. Ali and Cutler often concoct strange situations in a similar way, but their characters and objects are more individual, more itemized and apart, whereas Davis’ arrangements tend to flow one into another, as if her world were made of misted mylar cutouts, everything tinted or semitransparent and never quite identifiable. There is a soft retreat into the ambiguity and illogic of private, abstract thought.

Past work at Walker Contemporary can be seen at their website: http://walkercontemporary.com/

(Photo credits: Jennifer Davis. Dreaming, 22 x 9". Acrylic and graphite on paper. / / Jennifer Davis. Scheming, 22" x 9". Acrylic and graphite on paper. Laylah Ali. Untitled, 2006-2007. Ink on paper. Unframed: 23 5/16 x 19". Courtesy of the artist and 303 Gallery, New York. / / Amy Cutler. "Futile Fleet" 41 1/8" x 29 1/4", Gouache on paper, 2003.)

What's what

2009-05-17T13:23:00.000-07:00

We open this chic new feature to our website –the blog—with some thoughts on the mishmash of lives, creations, events, exchanges and little moments that make up what we lovingly know as the Cambridge arts “scene.” The segments that will accrue here in the coming months will hopefully give some sense of this as I (Melissa Woods, new intern here at Gallery 263) sniff things out for myself.

There’s a little thing that I am personally involved in called “La Fin du Temps,” that just finished up at the Lily Pad in Inman Square (1353 Cambridge Street) earlier today. On top of the 8 performance pieces featuring ballet-influenced modern dance accompanied by experimental music on cello, oboe, viola, electric guitar and mixing board, some charcoal sketches of mine were scattered onstage to help with ambiance. A little wall in an enclave on the left displayed some old photographs, prints and drawings I wanted to share, as well.

From there, segue into how people and art work. Cambridge is a small enough place that many artists around here are friends, or at least know of each other in some capacity. I’ve heard it said that Somerville is the “Paris of New England” –not that I’m endorsing this, but it is said—because it has the highest number of artists per capita, second only to New York City, in all of the United States. Cambridge, I’m sure, is similar by proxy.

Natalie VanLandingham is a 22-year-old Floridian that just moved up to Cambridge literally months ago and has started mobilizing artists of various mediums to put on events like La Fin du Temps through something she has created called the Avant-Garde Collaboration Company. The name is a little suspect, I’ll admit, but that is the spirit of this operation—a frontier enthusiasm, in the company of like minds. For a debut event, it actually is well done; I noticed a marked improvement from the first night of performance to the third. If this trend continues, Natalie will have something truly successful on her hands, in time.

The lesson to take from this, I suppose, is the grassroots, D.I.Y. ethos—that if you seek, and pub yourself like mad, in Cambridge you shall find. Publicity is something Natalie has on lockdown, by the way. Discounts at 1369 Coffee House in Inman, thorough postering, especially in Inman, an ad in the Globe… and each night I’ve been there the show has been close to sold out. Not too bad for an organization with no name recognition to speak of yet.

Whether you’re in a bar, going to a show, sitting on a bench in one of these tiny “parks” scattered about, etc. you are surrounded –more than in most places in the world-- by thinking, questioning, and in various ways educated people that are actively making or “developing,” as the term in scientific fields may be, in their chosen professions. For example, I met Natalie VanLandingham through a bartender friend of mine at the Middle East. There are all kinds of creative minds hidden in the Cambridge landscape, in the other life of your waiter, your professor, your convenient store clerk, the bookstore girl, the art store guy…

You might call a gallery like ours a middle ground between such happenings and the “professional” art world. We skulk about beds of artistic foment looking for “talent” to feature in a way that brings them into focus, with a layout that’s clear, and with supplementary goodies and bits of information that help describe the artist’s point of view. There’s some idea of making the art salable too, feeding into the realm of “professional” art i.e. art that pays the bills, but for the most part it’s just giving the work space to breathe, and be seen by more people than it otherwise might.

That said, imagine me cutting the red ribbon on this blog, with the words “for me to tell you what’s what.” But I don’t have a PhD in anything, so don’t let me make up your mind for good. This is just a start.

Sincerely,

Melissa