Nov 20 Sunday
William Baczek Fine Arts, in Northampton, Massachusetts is pleased to announce the opening of the 2022 – 2023 Winter Show. This group exhibition highlights the work of gallery artists. The featured works span many mediums, including oil, watercolor, and egg tempera painting.
This exhibition featuring original art, manuscripts, sketches, photographs, music, videos and more will pay homage to the sprightly six-year-old. Much of the work on view has rarely been seen, including trial Eloise drawings from Hilary Knight in 1954, previously unpublished drawings from Eloise in Paris, and a once-stolen Eloise portrait from the Plaza Hotel. The exhibition also explores the lives of both Kay Thompson and Hilary Knight and the life that Eloise took on after publication—in clothes, merchandising, and even Eloise-themed children’s menus from the Plaza. The exhibition will also feature original illustrations from many other picturebooks by the artist, as well as Drawn from Life, an illustrated memoir.
CHRISTOPHER CURTISLuminous Places
My exhibit includes images from wild places around the world. Many of these places are vanishing forever, just in the time that I have been on the planet. With these photographs, I hope to convey the sense and experience of place in each landscape, along with the extraordinary beauty and fragility of our planet.My photographs are large format color landscape images, some panoramas, beautifully printed on cotton rag paper. I have travelled the world in search of landscapes that are wild, spiritual and ancient, and that speak to me in an ineffable and timeless voice. With their compelling beauty, deep silence, sweet scents, light and shadow, these places connect me to a sense that god and nature are one, and that nature is a powerful and enduring force. My photographs include images of rare ecosystems on top of Mount Kenya, dreamtime rock art in remote Cape York, Australia, sunrise on the islands of the Sea of Cortez, shamanic petroglyphs in Wyoming, mists in the Hoh Rainforest of Washington, rainstorms over Canyonlands, Masai villages in Tanzania, and ancient granaries and waterfalls in the Grand Canyon.Website
NAYANA LAFONDPortraits in RED: Missing and Murdered Indigenous People
Nayana LaFond is a painter and multi-disciplinary artist based in Western Massachusetts.Her work tackles deeply personal subjects related to trauma and life experience. Her recent series, “Portraits in RED, Missing and Murdered Indigenous People painting project”, has garnered national acclaim. Nayana has multiple solo and touring exhibitions of the ongoing series scheduled for the next several years. In addition to being a professional full time artist and mother, Nayana also serves on the Board of Directors for Artist Organized Art out of Brooklyn NY, and several other organizations and boards in Massachusetts. She has written articles on art and culture and regularly lectures on topics related to Missing and Murdered Indigenous People, processing trauma through art and Artivist. Nayana has also been a curator for 20 years and was the chief curator for the Whitney center for the arts and a serial entrepreneur having owned and operated both a cafe, independent record label and several art galleries, and is a founding member of the Liberal Arts Pop Up Gallery in Northampton MA.
A new exhibition featuring rarely seen Norman Rockwell drawings and preliminary studies from his six-decade career and coinciding with the release of Norman Rockwell: Drawings, 1911-1976, a new book of the same title, by Abbeville Press written by Museum curators Stephanie Haboush Plunkett and Jesse Kowalski. Though best known for his painted magazine covers and illustrations for stories, books, and advertisements, Norman Rockwell was also a prolific and masterful draftsman who utilized drawing as an essential underpinning of his art. Select drawings by Rockwell’s teachers, predecessors, and contemporaries will also be included, from the Museum’s American Illustration collection.
Josh Simpson: Visionary Explorations in Glass presents a 50-year retrospective of one of the most innovative glass artists of our time. Based in Shelburne Falls, Massachusetts, Josh Simpson has long been captivated by the fickle properties and phenomenal possibilities of red-hot molten glass. Largely self-taught, Simpson’s artistic vision marries groundbreaking techniques with new forms and materials and his intrepid experimentations have resulted in advances in the chemistry and artistry of glass. The connection between art and science runs deep for Simpson, who sources inspiration from nature, the night sky, and the universe beyond. Featured prominently in this exhibition are glass works that reflect the artist’s interest in cosmology and astronomy. For instance, Simpson’s glass planets were inspired by the Apollo astronauts’ description of seeing the Earth “hanging like a blue marble in space.” Other objects mimic the luminous interior found in tektites, objects that result from meteorites hitting the Earth.
Central to all of Simpson’s work is his talent, curiosity, and appetite for exploration. Drawn from the artist’s archives, the Springfield Museums’ holdings, and from private collections, this exhibition showcases the expansive range of Simpsons’ vision in the form of planets, platters, vessels, goblets, sculptures, copper baskets, and unique surprises. The display also includes new work, nodding to the artist’s ongoing quest to expand the boundaries of his medium.
Throughout the beautifully decorated first floor gallery are paintings, drawings, graphic arts, sculpture, ceramics, fiber/beadwork and photography selling for no more than $200. The guild, the longest continuously operating in Connecticut, has a membership from over 30 area towns. Support local artists and find handcrafted gifts that are perfect for those on your holiday list or for yourself! There is the added convenience of being able to take the pieces immediately at the time of purchase.
Two shows are in the upstairs galleries. Leslie Landau presents “Atmospheric Shifts,” consisting of paintings “inspired by the ever-changing nuances of weather and time, and how in a moment, the landscape can be altered from our initial impression.” Landau earned her BFA in printmaking/drawing from the Ohio State University and an MS in Art Education from Central Connecticut State University. Her work is held in private collections throughout New England, New York, Ohio, Washington and California. She has been in exhibits at Mattatuck Museum, New Britain Museum of American Art, CT Academy of Art, Silvermine Art Guild, Emerge Gallery and Five Points Gallery.
Canton residents John Rohlfing and Peggy Steinway have a combined exhibit of paintings and ceramics. Rohlfing finds inspiration stemming from ceramic sculpture he made as an undergraduate student. “I love the pieces freshness and spontaneity; the work takes me to a time and a place that is still in my heart when youthful inexperience and exuberance guided my art making.” Steinway’s paintings and collages explore her family experiences and recent travel. Global strife is also a significant theme. Rohlfing, an internationally acclaimed artist, has ceramic sculpture at the Renwick Gallery at the Smithsonian American Art Museum and at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. His large-scale public sculpture is at the Isador Wexler School in New Haven. Steinway is a recipient of the National Endowment for the Arts Regional fellowship and the Connecticut Commission of the Arts Individual Artist Grant. A graduate of the N.Y. State College of Ceramics and Southern Illinois University at Carbondale, she recently retired from teaching art at The Gilbert School in Winsted.
An opening reception is on Saturday, November 19th from 6:00 to 8:00 pm. The public is warmly invited to attend this free reception.
Festival of Illumination | Once Upon a Time09/01/2022 - 12/31/2022, 5:30PM – 10:30PM, Wed-Sun
Southwick’s Zoo:Address: 2 Southwick St. Mendon, MA 01756
The Festival of Illumination is a must-see experience for guests of all ages. New England's largest and premier lantern showcase; a cultural and artistic expression like you have not experienced before.Be immersed in the magical world of impressive and larger-than-life Festival of Illumination lanterns, showcasing the incredible artistry of handcrafted Chinese Lanterns. Beginning the first of September and running through to the end of December, the 2022 Festival of Illumination themed "Once Upon a Time" takes guests on an epic journey through forgotten stories of legendary creatures, myths, and fairytales; a once in a lifetime experience that you don't want to miss!
Nov 21 Monday
Reception on Wednesday, November 16, 5-7 p.m. in Pegasus Gallery
Joseph R. Gorneault Jr’s mixed media paintings are created in response to political and social subject matter. Through abstract applications of paint and juxtapositions of collaged objects, topical meaning is communicated through symbolic and emotionally associative relationships. Three works in this show are accompanied by sonnet poems written by Gorneult’s friend and collaborator, Jim Whitten.
In his painting “Fluctuating,” marbleized color flows of white, black, blue, and red tinted gray pigments appear to emerge from and radiate around a distant central space. Its turbulent fluid textural composition materializes the intertwined forces of life and death.
Gorneault studied art at Tunxis Community College and graduated with a Bachelor of Fine Arts from the Hartford Art School. See more of Joe’s work at www.joesartlive.com
