Closing Reception Shame/Less

Closing Reception

Wednesday, February 29th, 2012, 7-9pmPlease join curators AJ Liberto and Kate True for a closing reception for "Shame/Less." The box of shame will be opened for a final time, and anonymous submissions from visitors will be projected on the wall once again.  Please join us! The show will be up through Friday, March 2nd, 2012.

Shame/Less is an exhibit of seven contemporary artists probing the issues of shame and shamelessness in various aspects: gluttony, lust, vanity, weakness. Can the shameless display of private fears, personal failings, and vulnerability have the effect of making a viewer feel shame less? These artists are drawing a wedge between shame and less, and inviting you to find out.

"Shame/Less," curated by AJ Liberto & Kate True
work by Daniel Davidson, Tory Fair, Pam Hart, Katie Koti, Steve Locke, Rosemarie Padovano & Kate True

FPAC Gallery
300 Summer Street
Boston, MA 02210
617.423.4299
http://www.fortpointarts.org

Exhibit Hours 
Monday, 9-3, Tuesday-Friday, 9-9
Saturdays and Sundays by appointment

FPAC Gallery is located near the Red Line South Station and Silver Line Courthouse Station MBTA. For more information, contact the FPAC Office at 617-423-4299 or email us at gallery@fortpointarts.org.

Above: Steve Locke, "untitled," neon, 2009. Photography courtesy of Harlem Kunzang Dorje Logan.

Fort Point Inspirations: Jess Barnett

When asked about inspirations, Boston artist Jess Barnett leads with color. “The contrast of red and purple gives me chills,” she says. “There’s something about two opposing colors that gives me goose bumps – there’s such a show of strength and force there. It’s really making a statement.”

The artist, whose work benefits from this focus on the essential elements of art, has exhibited all over Boston and Cambridge including shows at The Lilypad in Inman Square, Achilles, Cambridge Common, the SoWa and Beacon Hill Art Walks, the FPAC Gallery, Art at 12, The Lincoln Art Project in Waltham, and the Larkin Gallery in Provincetown. A member of FPAC for over two years, she has participated in several Boston-area art festivals over the years as well. A fixture on the local scene, her work continues to explore its roots in abstraction and the primary relationships between rich colors, line, and space.

Untitled Gouache Sketches, 22” x 28” 2012.

“I used to refer to myself as an abstract expressionist, but now just say I make abstract art, mainly with acrylics,” Barnett says of her current work. Painting since 2004, she has recently been working with watercolors and gouache. Part of her overall process includes this drive toward new and unexplored territory, a continual challenge to break new ground with medium, approach, and experimentation.

“I also occasionally use other media in my work,” she says, “such as rose petals, cotton, words cut from books, lipstick, and other things. I like playing with texture sometimes.” But the essential interplay between colors remains a foundation stone in her work.

Benjamin Moore Paint Sample, and HP Lovecraft book cover, circa 1970

“Sometimes a specific color combination will get stuck in my head, and I’ll have to use it in order to get tired of it and be able to move on,” she says. “Red and teal had a hold on me for quite a while.”

Beyond Barnet’s fascination with the primal essence of colors, the intersection of art and literature holds special importance at the center of her art. Citing H.P. Lovecraft, a writer Stephen King referred to as “the twentieth century’s greatest practitioner of the classic horror tale,” as one of her major influences, she “fell in love with Lovecraft from the first time I read him.”

She says, “I prefer to think there is a whole other world out there hiding under the back hills of New Hampshire.”

Jess Barnett, Impact, 28” x 44”, acrylic, 2009, and Have a Seat, 24” x 36”, acrylic, 2011

The idea of a hyper-reality mangled and accentuated by fantasy and grief extends from the passion of rich colors and into literature as a sort of back story for her paintings. Barnett’s work is a combination of these elements, an expressionist style grounded in an alternate reality.

Literature also features prominently in Barnett’s interaction with the Boston arts community, and beyond. As co-editor of Printer’s Devil Review, or PDR, she heads up the arts section with photographer  Joshi Radin. The two work closely with the literature editors and the main editor, and their third issue is due out in April.  

And while Barnett’s work responds to the work of others, varying mediums, and alternate visions of reality—as populated by writers and members of the art community at-large—her painting remains intensely personal and grounded in emotion.

“When I am heartsick, angry, or excited,” she says, “I make my best art.”

“I’m more inspired,” Barnett explains, “at those times, than any other.”

- Kurt Cole Eidsvig

http://www.kurtcoleeidsvig.com/

THREE at Lot F Gallery

FPAC shots from Lot F Gallery's latest Exhibit, THREE, featuring the work of Sean Flood, Nick Ward and Josh Falk.

Lot F Gallery
By Appointment
info@lotfgallery.com
145 Pearl Street #4
Boston, MA 02210

Beyond Graphic Design

The Art at 12 Gallery hosts Beyond Graphic Design the Masters Thesis Exhibition of the New England School of Art and Design. Student work explores the meaning of grow, stitch, travel, imagine, explode, and experience at the intersection of art and design.

Art at 12

12 Farnsworth Street

Monday - Friday 11am - 6pm

Saturday + Sunday 10am - 5pm

Shame/Less

Daniel Davidson

Shame/Less, brings together seven contemporary artists probing the issues of shame and shamelessness in various aspects: gluttony, lust, vanity, weakness. Artists have long had an intimate knowledge of shame. By vocation, they are familiar with economic insecurity, lack of prestige, self-doubt, and isolation. Can the shameless display of private fears, personal failings, and vulnerability have the effect of making a viewer feel shame less? These artists are drawing a wedge between shame and less in an attempt to find out.
Daniel Davidson, Tory Fair, Pam Hart, Katie Koti, Steve Locke, Rosemarie Padovano & Kate True

January 9 - March 2, 2012

Curated by AJ Liberto & Kate True

FPAC Gallery

300 Summer Street

S#&t Photographers Say

Paris Visone, Tim Kennedy, Chris Sanchez, Dan Aguirre - Based off of S#5t Girls Say

February Photo of the Month

Benjamin Braithwaite - Via Instagram

Welcome!

Welcome to Fort Point from Henry Dane 

Welcome to the NEW Fort Point Artist Community blog.  We have moved from our previous URL, but don't fret, you can still access all of your favorite past stories through the link on our sidebar.  If you have artist stories, openings, pictures or studio views to share, please email Jodie McMenamin at jodie@glvbx.com.  Check out this great video from Henry Dane on the Fort Point community!