Monday, July 19, 2010

Elements: Line, Color, Form, Nave Gallery, 'til July 25th

Art is always in motion. Meanings change week-to-week, day-to-day, even moment-to-moment. They are replaced and molded to fit audience’s wants and needs. Famed screenwriting guru Robert McKee wrote in his manifesto Story, “Stories don’t always mean what their writers think they mean.” The same rings true for artists and their art. But I don’t know if that’s more of a problem or less of one because I’m still not sure who’s more concerned with meaning, artists or writers.

From July 8th to the 25th the exhibition Elements: Color, Line, Form is showing at the Nave Gallery in the Clarendon Hill Presbyterian Church in West Somerville. It features work by local artists Ron Brunelle, Kathleen Finlay and Alisa Dworsky, each showing work concerned with one of the three titular elements.

Ron Brunelle’s acrylic paintings are deep with several layers of glaze. They are colorful combinations of oranges, reds, and yellows with complementary blues and greens sinking in. It seems that he used some unorthodox methods like spray-painting the aforementioned glaze.

Alisa Dworsky created excellent, yet simple graphite drawings of helix loops, twisting and turning, whole walls of these bending loops.

I had a chance to talk with the third artist, Kathleen Finlay, who created plaster sculptures showing sheetrock and little cloth houses. I asked her what the meaning was trying to convey with these sculptures and she said she really wasn’t trying to make a statement. She explained how artists are always searching for inspiration, wanting insight. She asked me to apply my own meaning. She wants her work to have “layers of meaning,” nothing fixed.

However, if she had to apply a subtext to work, which seem to be precarious cloth houses on a cliff noting man’s vulnerability. The building of these soft houses is how we try to comfort ourselves.

She uses material left over from other projects as perhaps a statement about man’s ability to sustain through these tough odds against us. We are small, but she believes in us.

Then we talked about art and the Internet for bit. She seemed pleased that a young person such as I was interested in so much. Glad to make you proud, Kathleen.

Three artists.

Three mediums.

Three basic elements: line, color, and form.


Check it out.

Tuesday, July 6, 2010

The Museum of Bad Art, Somerville Theatre, July 5th (Permanent)


The Museum of Bad Art (MOBA) located in the basement of Davis Square's Somerville Theatre features selected works that are a little off, a little bizarre, and a little bit, well, bad. I'd just like to bring attention to this underrepresented branch of the art world with a quick analysis.

-Loneliness in a Blue Lagoon - a bacon-skinned nude sits dramatically on the titular lagoon (which looks like a beach) with no expression on her face to match her horribly sunburnt skin or lack of skin.

-A Latin version of the King of Rock n Roll called Pablo Presley, featuring a shitty Mexi-stache.

Overall, there were a lot of topless women at the MOBA who didn't need to be topless and a good chunk of those were in front of volcanoes for no reason.

-There was a piece simply called Too Fat People.

-An outline of a pink elephant with disproportionate legs over some "bad-ass" graffiti.

-Perhaps the worst piece in the entire Museum was a shitty expressionist representation of an effete man with a mustache smoking a cigarette against a fucking ugly mustard-colored wall.

-Naked man and folding chair. No explanation.

-The most horrifyingly colorful sex scene ever:


-Middle-aged woman with no face melting in a bathtub.

-Gremlin-looking multi-cultural kid reaching for a peaceful, weather-less globe.

-A shapeless woman in a dress that looks like wallpaper.

A barely visible woman with huge fake-looking breasts formed by the outlines of clouds (which are thicker than the clouds themselves?) dubbed "Silicone Clouds"

-There were these that are just beyond words:


-A tree with eyes as leaves, and guess what? They're crying.

Another MOBA trend: A lot of eyes where they didn't need to be and a lack of eyes where they probably should be.

-The final, and largest, piece in the Somerville Theatre collection is a giant oil painting feature the face of Robert Redford from The Great Gatsby wearing the disco hat that Dan Ackroyd and Steve Martin wore in the "Two wild and crazy guys!!" sketch. The weird thing is: those two came out around the same time.

Some come to the MOBA, adjacent the men's room in the basement, if you want a good chuckle and a good "WTF?"

You have to buy a ticket for a movie to gain access, so I'd recommend the art-related culture commentary "Exit Through the Gift Shop" featuring Shepard Fairey and Banksy. Very good. And it'll get you in the mood for some art.

Also, check out the original MOBA, also located in a theatre basement, the Dedham Community Theatre. They have a gift shop, which I'm sure is extremely entertaining.