8 Visions 2013 Opening Reception

On Thursday, August 8th, the Attleboro Arts Museum will host the opening reception of it's 11th installment of 8 Visions. Close to 50 artists applied for this opportunity, starting back in December. 2 rounds and 3 juror's later, the final eight were selected. Here's a look at the 8 artists.

Judith Bertozzi’s artwork for 8 Visions is based on the theme of travel to new and artistically compelling locations.  These locations correlate to each other and response to the specific landscape site, and Judith approaches them with a new and eager eye. Judith’s goal is for the viewer to sense the architectural quality of landscape and find there a place of interest.  She comes to her painting with the intention of acting as a visual surveyor, however it is not her intention to produce a photographic interpretation but rather an abstracted echo of the impression of what the light and space have imposed on her eye.  More perfume than padding is the essence of the linear details, which invite the viewer to enter the space and respond with their own sense of adventure.  For Judith, the integrity of these images lays in the simplicity of a quiet, reflective and evocative balance of form and color. 

Arlene Chaplin attended Northeastern University in Boston, MA as a science major, but found herself drawn repeatedly to the walk across the tracks to the Museum of Fine Arts.  There she spent many hours viewing the paintings that became the foundation of her passion for art.     Her early professional background in Clinical Laboratory Science was filled with microscopic views of cells and microorganisms stained with dyes of Malachite Green, Cresyl Violet, Prussian Blue and Congo Red.  The vibrant colors and cellular forms provided visual nourishment while   she spent time as an administrator in health care and in higher education, managing the details of finances and schedules.  She now works in her studio at Holliston Mill translating the   images and memories she has collected throughout her life into abstract paintings. This abstract work   speaks to possibilities.  She has no specific end in mind when she begins. This approach gives her the freedom to be open to the unexpected and makes her journey more interesting.  Arlene roams through her past, each step taking her through another set of experiences until she arrives at her destination.    

As a mixed media and collage artist, Susan Clark works in a process geared toward an intuitive, playful approach. She tends to work quickly, responding to each new element spontaneously as a way of letting the process guide her. Movement, vibrancy and at times an almost musical quality play a big part; a way of bringing herself into a piece. Looking for a certain depth, Susan brings in the use of many layers, each level influencing the other. She’s also deeply curious   about what it means to create unity within opposing kinds of  expression; busy, wild, intense elements next to quiet, almost empty ones. There’s something, too, of the natural world   coming through in all her work; the obvious, seen level and the quieter, more internal levels.      The layers of Susan’s work are built up using a variety of techniques and materials. The papers may be hand painted, mono‐printed, stenciled, stamped and at times found. Some are very translucent and others opaque, some come with repeated patterns or gestural marks inscribed on them. Many times components from earlier pieces are brought in, cut or ripped. Susan   brings in gesture, pattern and the use of white as a way of unifying and focusing elements.     

Elizabeth Beaudoin Gouin’s still‐lifes have become increasingly about abundance.  With each   successive painting, she strives to add complexity and depth to her set‐ups and have in turn enjoyed rendering the varying shapes and colors of the natural world verses man‐made objects.  The objects Elizabeth chooses are inspired by the grocery store.  She feels that in our modern society we often have a paradoxical relationship with the food we purchase: we have an immense variety at   our fingertips and can easily access tropical fruit alongside fall harvest vegetables. Knowing that she is working in a long tradition of feast paintings, Elizabeth’s challenge has been finding ways in which to portray the idea of abundance in a distinctly contemporary manner.  She finds herself looking at her compositions from above, in an almost bird’s‐eye view, rather than head on – and her use of line allows her to keep the original vitality of the initial drawing underneath.  This is often her favorite part of the process. Elizabeth often chooses strange juxtapositions for her work, but the overall effect is still of an appetizing richness.     

Linda Pearlman Karlsberg’s work is about light: about the conflicts of light and shadow, desolation and beauty, and the emotional responses light provokes. She paints the resulting interplay of color and atmosphere, of one texture and shape against another, the dynamic exchange between forms and line in space. But most essentially Linda depicts places that suspend her in their stillness and trigger in her a visceral emotional response. She searches for those times and places where beauty is startling and suddenly present. In depicting these fleeting visual encounters Linda paints the arresting color relationships that flare and bring a momentary expressiveness to the enfolding, lush tranquility of these still corners. The Water Lily paintings are landscapes in a foreshortened space. Here too are transient visions that arrive through the power, color, and atmosphere of a particular time and light. Linda works to evoke   the glow that emanates from blooms reaching for the sun; the magic and mystery in the water’s   surface; the multifarious lily pad forms that dance, twist or plod across the surface. While celebrating this natural splendor these scenes also evoke life’s fragility inherent in this   perpetual reshaping and reordering, this cycle of abundance and loss. In each painting the challenge is to render the beauty and ambivalence of these moments: to hold the melancholy engendered by this perpetual, metaphorical play of birth, growth and death: to impart the compositional magic of this random intersection of light, color, texture, shape and form; and to convey the awe of witnessing life’s infinite creativity.     

Alan Strassman is a fine art photographer. A long‐time supporter of the arts in Boston, Alan is active on the Board of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (President Emeritus) and on the Board of the School of the Museum of Fine Arts (Chairman Emeritus). Like renowned photographer   William Eggleston, Alan took his first photographs with a Brownie Hawkeye. A serious amateur for many years, fine art photography became his second career in 2008; it is only in the past few years that he has exhibited and sold his work. His publications include Signs of Life, a brief illustrated history of photography and New England Mill Towns, contemporary images from the birthplace of the   industrial revolution in America.  Alan is drawn to places and things that have been used and abandoned. Time, weather and decay effortlessly produce compelling images – his job is to capture them. He photographs signs of wear and tear, fatigue and neglect that are symbols of passing time, lives lived and stories untold.  He composes in the camera’s viewfinder and uses the computer like a traditional dark room to make adjustments of exposure, contrast and color balance in order to more closely approximate what the human eye can see.   

Aaron Usher’s Ice Abstractions – Equivalents collection started as a “means to escape” other facets of his work that tend to be rigid and precise. The freedom to explore shapes and lines coupled with a return to black and white was refreshing. Discovering these ice abstractions allowed Aaron’s mind’s eye to roam wildly in a space approximately 6 ‐ 12” in front of him. He started seeing and feeling the images as they unfolded. They could be microscopic at one end or stratospheric at another. Similar to a reader of a great novel, Aaron was being immersed in   the stories his mind created from the various shapes and movement of the lines. Much like the work of the photographers of the 1920s, including Alfred Stieglitz and Minor White, Aaron’s   abstraction photos have taken on a certain “equivalence.”  They are a reflection or a response to   his own experiences, thoughts, and emotions.

Richard Whitten’s paintings are about play. They are, in some way, very serious toys. This does   not mean that they are frivolous. Play is a very serious activity – an impetus for learning – and   exploration. Moreover, neither play nor his paintings are simply about fun. Richard’s paintings imply the existence of places and objects of desire that can be glimpsed but not reached or acquired. One must ask: is the experience of “seeing and wanting” perhaps superior to “having”? In 8 Visions, Richard presents paintings that might be considered icons devoted to toys of his design – his imagining. (In the making of these paintings, he will often construct actual reference models.) They are painted at a one‐to‐one relationship of size – painted image to toy. Therefore, the viewer can, at one moment, mentally touch and play with them. In the next moment, however, the viewer sees that they are  presented within the setting of a grand Romanesque interior.     

Stop in and view this year's edition of "8 Visions"! The opening reception will run from 6:30 - 7:30, with an artist gallery talk happening from 7:30 - 9:00. The entire evening will be free and open to the public. 

8 Visions will be up through September 7th. The museum's summer hours (through labor day) are Tuesday - Saturday, 10:00am - 4:00pm.