art

Local lad at Shaw's on Hyde Park Avenue has fun with fish heads.

MBTA photo.Forty years ago, artist Dennis Kowal loaned the MBTA his "Constellations" statue for installation at the Hynes Green Line station.

The T installed it along the walkway to the Boylston Street entrance, where it's gone largely unnoticed in recent years, since the T's locked that entrance up. T spokesman Joe Pesaturo reports:

Therefore, the artist contacted the MBTA in his efforts to locate a new venue. When the artist found the new location at Wentworth, the MBTA agreed that this was in the best interest of the artist and the artwork. T personnel helped to ensure the sculpture was safely moved.

There's an official dedication at Wentworth on Saturday.

Big Red & Shiny is coming back and is using Kickstarter to raise funds to create "a bigger and bolder Blog devoted to New England art & artists and a monthly web-based Journal with perceptive and incisive writing from around the globe." With art/music/dance in the South End on Sept. 29 and panel discussions on art writing and community at MIT on Oct. 27.

Earlier:
We Love Beantown gets ready to launch.

Big head on the Greenway. Photo by Jeff Cutler. Posted under this Creative Commons license.

Natasha Vianna, who is Brazilian-American, says she was delighted to see a pair of Brazilian artists, Os Gemeos, come to Boston for a show at the ICA. She reports on meeting the two at a reception and feels compelled to address stupid people who think their mural on the Greenway is a terrorist plot to force Middle Eastern men on us or something:

Trying not to allow fumes from escaping my ears, I explained that this was inaccurate. Their characters usually have no race and like most art, it's up to you to see what you want to see. The skin of the characters are yellow because it is how they envision these characters in their dreams. Specifically in the Boston mural, the man's face is covered because it is a representation of how most street artists do their work, by covering their faces with an old shirt as to not inhale the fumes. ... In the '80s, the two identical brothers started as graffiti artists after embracing the New York culture of Hip Hop and street art. And without much money or the resources to even create street art, they used household and car paint for most of their creations.

Two Brazilian artists are transforming the plain brown side of that thing in the middle of the Greenway in Dewey Square into a mural - which will stay up until it gets to faded and ugly in the weather to stay up any longer.

Photo of their progress earlier today.

The Globe reports the FBI is planning an advertising campaign - similar to the one that brought down Whitey Bulger - around the 1990 Gardner art heist.

The fantasist stirred up a bit of a hornet's nest with his not entirely factual "report" from the alleged Apple slaveshops of China. But the Phoenix's Carly Carioli reports he played a little fast and loose with the facts surrounding that performance at ART in 2007 when an entire class of students at a Christian school walked out.

Matthew Wilding reports stumbling onto an exhibit by six contemporary Egyptian artists (one of whom died in Tahrir Square) at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts.

I don’t know whether this exhibit was "good art" (though it's affiliation with the MFA infers it). I do know that it was incredibly effective. It was interesting and beautiful, and it made me relate to the core with people I very rarely find common ground with or think about.

Boston Daily totals up all the money spent on art-museum expansion in the Boston area over a decade, and comes up with a pretty large number.

A painting.

Greg Cook takes us on a tour of the new Renzo Piano wing of the Fenway museum:

The addition's new 300-seat concert hall and a special exhibition gallery are dashing. And they make the old building better too by freeing up space to showcase the core collection, particularly in the dramatically improved tapestry room.

It's not perfect. From the outside, the addition, which sits behind the palace, could be mistaken for the mechanical building of one of the neighboring, generic school or medical campuses. And the corridor from the new building to the old begins muddled and dull. But the way it delivers you into the old palace, right beside the blossoming courtyard, is a revelation, that feels like Gardner's old magic.

Anulfo introduces us to East Boston's Shipyard Gallery:

I love that it is less than 10 minute walk from Maverick Station on the Blue Line. I also love that behind each one of the thirty works (mostly sculpture) on display is a pressing environmental issue facing our oceans. I also love that I get to learn about the sponsoring organization behind each piece and of the work they’re doing to protect our oceans.

The Daily Free Press interviews a street artist who sometimes wheat-pastes posters, sometimes does some stenciling and sometimes just sprays her tags on things:

After she finishes, Skeczh said she runs from the site to avoid getting arrested. One street artist she knows hung around too long after spraying a piece in an alleyway and was discovered by police, she said.

Greg Cook reports Gasp Gallery on Rte. 9 in Brookline has shut its doors but that owners Maria Magdalena Campos-Pons and Neil Leonard plan to re-open somewhere else in the area this fall.

Imagine City Hall or the Hynes covered in vines.

If Nate Swain has his way, it could happen. For the past couple of years, he's been covering eyesores in the North End with vinyl canvases covered with high-resolution photos. See if you can spot his work in the photo above.

His first project was in a building facing Salem and Prince streets in 2009. He photographed and then printed scenes such as a cat on a windowsill with flowers in pots; a goldfish swimming in a bowl, printed them onto a mesh vinyl back, then installed them over the windows. The idea is to create a sort of an "idyllic" concept, as he calls it.

Ian Thal provides the Playbill for a struggle between the American Repertory Theatre and local critic Thomas Garvey: ART threatened to boycott the Independent Reviewers of New Englands' annual awards ceremony if Garvey weren't booted from the group. Garvey resigned, but not without directing a few choice words ART's way.

Via Art Hennessey, who has a few thoughts as well.

Most of us dread more snow, but Dan Sternof Beyer is looking forward to it.

Beyer is the artist responsible for the mysterious snowdecahdrons that have shown up in Porter Square and Dewey Square after recent storms. So far this season, he's created about ten large versions of the 12-sided objects and 20 to 30 smaller versions.

In an interview with Universal Hub, Beyer said he creates the snowdecahedrons by packing snow into a dodecahdron-shaped box. But not just any snow. "I've become extremely picky about snow, which I'd never thought I'd be, but it has to be just above freezing, after a large snowstorm so the snow is clean, sticks together, packs well, but isn't soggy," he said.

Bryce Lambert is thinking the Cambridge theater has replaced edgy-but-audience-alienating productions with dull-but-profitable fare, such as "Johnny Baseball:"

... Johnny Baseball, as one would expect and might've read, is wicked conventional, so much so that, if it didn't require such a large cast, I wouldn't be surprised if it became a seasonal theater fixture for tourists, locals, and local non-theater-types alike. I'd rather not get too deep into the plot here, because it's not very interesting, and (unless you’ve kept away from the TV and movie theaters for the last 25 years) you're probably able to fill in most of the blanks. ...

Still, he gives them points for funny local jokes and actors who actually nailed the local accent.

Fabulously Out There surveys the public installations at the shipyard, featuring giant fish, mermaids and other objets de mer.

More on the Outdoor Sculpture Gallery in the Boston Harbor Shipyard.

Greg Cook reports on the impending closing of the Judi Rotenberg Gallery, after nearly 40 years, and the end of artblog.net, one of the oldest art blogs in the country.

ART seeks boy, 9-12, for role in play. Pays $400 a week, but does involve some rehersals in New York (to learn how to hate the Yankees?) - with expenses paid, natch.

Shephard Fairey is not alone in, um - what's the word? - building on other people's work. Thomas Garvey takes in an exhibit of ICA Foster Prize winner Kelly Sherman's work at the Barbara Krakow Gallery:

... Now I admit I kind of admire Sherman's conceptual chutzpah here - Prince and Levine appropriated other people's imagery, so why not just appropriate them? There's a neat little thrill to be had in that (along with extra points for ripping off those rip-off artists during their big Met show). Of course you have to be careful, and vary things just enough to avoid legal action, like the kind Shepard Fairey visited on those with the temerity to appropriate his own, plagiarized works. I admire this line of endeavor so much, in fact that I am willing to download any of Sherman's works from the Internet for you, and print it out with my signature for $1 less than she's going for at Barbara Krakow. ...

Joel Brown reports the Roses for whom the Rose Art Museum is named are gathering at Brandeis on Monday; things could get pretty thorny for university President Yehuda Reinharz:

More than 50 members of the Rose family have come together to condemn the actions of the current Brandeis administration in closing the Edward and Bertha C. Rose Art Museum and selling the art works in its renowned collection.

Booking photo courtesy Suffolk County District Attorney's office. Art via Obamafy Yourself.

The Herald talks to Boston's top graffiti cop (yes, of course Boston has one) about his arrest of the street-art guy:

... "He's always been a big problem," Kelley said. "He'd go from city to city to do this." ...

He's also the guy who brought down the tagger known as Spek.

The other day, I left my hermit's cave and actually ventured into Kenmore Square for a lunch engagement. Andre the Giant and oversized Red Revolutionary Peasant Women stared at me from every available surface, it seemed (except, of course from the world's largest anti-gun poster and the soft green that surrounds our local field of dreams). It was quite a shock for a country boy from the sticks, where the public art consists of a) A bust of Alexander the Great and b) Gang tags on the pedestrian bridge over the Amtrak tracks.

Anyway, UnlikelyWords reports on Fairey's talk at the ICA:

... There was a lot to like. Fairey was enthusiastic and genuinely seemed to enjoy talking about his art. He didn’t come off as pretentious or idealistic, which is always a possibility with celebrities famous for their political activism. ...

Ryan Weaver also reports on Fairey's talk.

Kerry, meanwhile, reports Fairey showed up at his club to do some DJing (as DJ Diabetic):

... He was also a really nice guy, posing for photos and signing Obey propaganda. And the best part was to both of our surprise, he was repping the Proletariat. ...

Finally, Dan Kennedy explains why AP would likely lose a copyright suit against Fairey for basing his iconic Hope memey thing on one of its photos.