Mixed traffic
“Ciiserec —Now Do You See It?” (collage and mixed media on ledger paper), by Henry Payer, in the show “Free Association: New Acquisitions in Context,’’ at the Addison Gallery of American Art, in Andover, Mass.
The gallery says:
{The show} “places a focus on the gallery's newest additions to its collection. But new works don't exist in a vacuum, each piece is surrounded by other works collected over the Addison's nearly 100-year history. These associations create a dialogue between old and new, putting everything in a new light.’’
Samuel Phillips Hall, the social science and language building of Phillips Academy, the elite boarding school in Andover.
'Persistent interrogation'
“Checkerboard ("It's How You Play the Game"), (mixed-media collage). by Greater Boston artist Rosamond Purcell, in her first retrospective show, “Nature Stands Aside,’’ at the Addison Gallery, at Phillips Andover Academy, Andover, Mass., through Dec. 31.
The gallery says:
“Murre eggs nestled in cotton that appear to have been decorated by an overzealous Abstract Expressionist, a blanched piranha charging ahead in a glass jar of orange-tinged formaldehyde, a cast off typewriter transformed by time into an octopean tangle of rusticles. From luscious large format Polaroid prints to objects rescued from obscurity, the empathetic, evocative, and multifaceted work of the photographer and conceptual artist Rosamond Purcell (born 1942) explores the ill-defined interstices between the unsettling and the sublime, the beautiful and the bizarre, the natural and the manufactured. As a body of work, it lays bare humanity’s desperate desire to collect and make sense of it all.
“Over a career spanning some fifty years, Purcell has collaborated with paleontologists, anthropologists, historians, museum curators, termite experts, and even a scholar-magician to illuminate and explore the shifting boundaries between art and science. She has found some of her greatest inspiration in long-overlooked storage spaces in natural history museums across the world and in the hills and the shacks of a 13-acre junkyard located in an otherwise picturesque Maine coastal town. Purcell’s six decades of work, while brilliantly varied and resistant to easy classification, speaks eloquently to the artist’s persistent interrogation of the ways in which humanity has and continues to attempt, often fruitlessly, to understand the world around it.”
But the days grow short
“Summer” (oil on panel” by Philip Koch, at Alpers Fine Art, Andover, Mass.
The gallery reports:
“Philip Koch is well known for his colorful, panoramic landscapes. Less known is that he was originally an abstract artist. A pivotal event for him was seeing the work of Edward Hopper (1882-1967) It inspired him early in his career toward realism.
‘‘Koch has been given unprecedented access to Hopper’s studio on
Cape Cod, enjoying 19 residencies there since 1983, an honor granted
to no other living American artist.
‘‘He is an emeritus professor at the Maryland Institute College of Art.
Koch’s grandfather was the inventor of the original Kodachrome color-
film process. Mr. Koch is also the great-grandson of John Wallace, the Scottish landscape painter.’’
Better go by land
“River Currents” (oil on panel), by Cambridge, Mass.-based artist Wendy Prellwitz at Alpers Fine Art, Andover, Mass.
Flowing into COVID’s third year
“Golden Rapids (Maine)” (limited-edition photo-print on anodized aluminum), by Kathleen McCarthy, at Alpers Fine Art, Andover, Mass.
‘Like a hummable melody’
“Sky on Fire,’’ by Sue Charles, at Alpers Fine Art, Andover, Mass.
Ms. Charles is based in Amesbury, Mass., on the Merrimack River. Her artist bio says:
“The northeast coast of the Atlantic is my subject…. Paintings exist in many dimensions;They depict three dimensions of light and space with two dimensions of color, they express the fourth dimension of time in their marks and they reveal metaphysical dimensions of thought and emotion. Finding the intersection between these ways of perceiving is my goal. I work to express the long lines of landscape space, light and air connecting everything and the quiet profundity of nature. A good painting contains only the essentials and it stays with you like a hummable melody. I aim for that. www.suecharlesstudio.com.’’
View northeast from Powwow Hill, in Amesbury
Before the water rose higher
“What Was” (oil on canvas), by Cotuit, Mass-based Julie Gifford, at Alpers Fine Art, Andover, Mass. She writes:
“I’m interested in celebrating the spirit of land, sea and sky and the resilience of the creatures who inhabit it. When painting, I’m working on an internal script…a bit of prose which reveals itself through marks on canvas – a personal conversation that comes from within and becomes clear only upon completion.’’
Cahoon Museum of American Art, in Cotuit
Autumn browning
“Split Second” (oil on gallery-wrap canvas), by Tanya Hayes Lee, at Alpers Fine Art, Andover, Mass.
Gird yourself
“First Light” (on on braced panel), by Janis Sanders, at Alpers Fine Art, Andover, Mass.
First Light
20 x 16 in.
oil on braced panel
$1,600
The mosquito air force
“Taking Flight’’ (mixed media on braced panel), by Fran Busse, at Alpers Fine Art, Andover, Mass. She’s based in West Concord, Mass.
But just water vapor
“Forbidding & Sublime”” (oil painting), by Linda Pearlman Karlsberg, at Alpers Fine Art, Andover, Mass.
Inspired by old maps
“Stretched Marker” (woven silk yardage), by Liz Collins, in the “current “Stretching Boundaries’,’ show at the Addison Museum of American at Phillips Academy, Andover, Mass.
The gallery says:
“An extraordinary collection of antique maps at Phillips Academy, dating from the Age of Discovery, has brought together six diverse artists who were invited to view, study and interact with the documents and create works in response to them. The artists — Sonny Assu, Andrea Chung, Liz Collins, Spencer Finch, Josh T. Franco and Heidi Whitman — produced installations that reflect each artist’s unique perspectives on the historical documents.’’
'I'm a g-nu, how d'you do?'
“The Trojan Gnu” (steel, wood, acrylic paint and classical myth, reinterpreted), by Charles Gibbs at Alpers Fine Art, Andover, Mass.
“I'm a g-nu, I'm a g-nu,
The g-nicest work of g-nature in the zoo.
I'm a g-nu, how d'you do?
You really ought to k-now W-ho's W-ho!’’
— From “The Gnu Song,’’ by Flanders and Swann.
Coastal cold
“Inlet, Isle au Haut (Maine)” (oil on anodized-aluminum panel) by Sue Charles, at Alpers Fine Art, Andover, Mass.
Tough look at 1950s America
“Trolley—New Orleans ‘‘ (neg. 1955-1956, print 1989, gelatin silver print) , by the great Swiss-American photographer Robert Frank (1924-2019) as seen in his book The Americans.
A show — “Robert Frank: The Americans” — running until April 11 at the Addison Gallery of American Art, at Phillips Academy in Andover, Mass., displays a range of photographs from the famed book, providing an unflinching account of 1950s America. Note in this picture that the Blacks had to sit in the back in the still-segregated South.
The unusual Andover Town Hall.
Night falls on Andover
At Alpers Fine Art, Andover, Mass.: Above, “Ignite the Night” (mixed media on canvas), by Debra Corbett, below, “Sundowner” (oil painting), by Sue Charles
