Hey, there! Log in / Register

art

By adamg - 1/17/24 - 12:45 pm

WBUR reports on sculptor Wen-ti Tsen's Chinatown Worker Statues project: "An homage to the ordinary people who built the neighborhood, rendered in the same monumental material as the statue of Washington astride his horse that towers over the Public Garden."

By Sasha Patkin - 1/4/24 - 2:27 pm
Detail of In Harmony #86

Detail of In Harmony #86.

It's often said that photography is one of the hardest art forms by which to create anything original. Nature photography has always felt to me as particularly hard hit by this phenomenon. There's so much beauty inherent in nature that it seems especially difficult for a photographer to avoid trite, overseen tropes, lend a unique perspective, or tell a story that hasn't already been told. As anyone who has ever tried to photograph a landscape can attest to, attempting to convey the vastness and wonder of nature into a flattened, limited frame, stripped away from all other sensation, almost invariably leads to disappointment. Read more.

By Sasha Patkin - 12/26/23 - 10:05 am
 'Gluskabe Comes Home' by Richard Steitmatter-Tran

'Gluskabe Comes Home' by Richard Steitmatter-Tran.

Sitting in the middle of a gallery at MassArt Art Museum is a giant beaver. Ripping out of its belly in horror-movie fashion is what seems to be an infant.

The effect is disorientating, strange, and perhaps a little morbidly comical. It's weird, and that may be the point. Read more.

By Sasha Patkin - 11/24/23 - 1:58 pm
From Motherhood Undone

"I never expected to be a mother," Jennifer McClure writes in her artist statement. "I was forty-six when she was born, and I spent twenty-one days in the hospital after. When I got home, we had a long process of getting to know each other. She became more of her own person, while I let go of the self I thought I knew." Read more.

By Sasha Patkin - 11/14/23 - 9:00 pm
Decorated lunchbox

One of the lunchboxes created at a Boston workshop.

When did you realize that you were different?

For most of us, there isn't just one singular moment. We have entire lifetimes of collected memories where we come in and out of focus, blending in and contrasting against the world around us and noticing how we, our cultures, our families, or our traditions are or are not the norm.

The idea of a "lunchbox moment" has emerged as one such familiar point of connection for many within the Asian American and Pacific Islander (AAPI) community. It can be defined as a formative moment in which a traditional Asian meal was brought to school and elicited some sort of reaction from non-Asian peers. Read more.

By adamg - 11/11/23 - 10:41 am

CaptainRedblood used the Windows program for an homage to Birch Street Bistro, a now closed boite on, yes, Birch Street in Roslindale Square (and as you can see, it was across the street from a mural that is an homage to the street's name).

By Sasha Patkin - 11/7/23 - 2:54 pm
Jamaica by Just Bloom'd Weddings

"Jamaica" by Just Bloom'd Weddings.

Even as the weather outside hurtles ever forward toward the wrong side of fall, the inside of the Prudential Center was full of flowers and life for Voyage, a temporary installation created in partnership with Fleurs de Villes and featuring the work of local floral artists. Eighteen mannequins, each decorated by a different florist, were adorned with stunning arrays of flowers to represent different global destinations. Read more.

By adamg - 10/20/23 - 9:05 pm

The planned pouring of 3,000-degree molten iron at Dewey Square across from South Station has been moved from Saturday to Sunday since, of course, it's supposed to rain buckets tomorrow. Read more.

By Sasha Patkin - 10/18/23 - 4:08 pm
The Damned Guy, by Clarence Leroy Hinds

"The Damned Guy," by Clarence Leroy Hinds.

I was gazing upon a Michelangelo. Except, it wasn't a Michelangelo. It was an artist's painstakingly recreated version of "The Damned Man," a figure in The Last Judgement fresco on the altar wall of the Sistine Chapel who realizes he has been condemned to spend eternity in Hell. The oil on canvas before me, titled "The Damned Guy," was painted by Clarence Leroy Hinds and hangs in The Museum of Bad Art. A caption on the wall nearby reads: "The artist sought to improve upon Michelangelo's masterpiece by clothing him in a bright green Speedo, and adding a disjointed eyeball over his left shoulder spewing what appears to be toxic slime." Read more.

By Sasha Patkin - 9/28/23 - 11:41 am
Big Boy Pants

Raquel Fornasaro, "Big Boy Pants," photo by Sasha Patkin.

What does it mean to be Latinx? What is the significance of heritage? And what does it mean to have a "Latinx History Month" when Latinx is an identity that exists year-round?

These were some of the questions curator Jessica Hernandez had in mind when she put out an open call for "Latinx Identities: Struggles, Perspectives, and Critiques," which is currently on display at the Unbound Visual Arts Exhibit Gallery at the Arthaus in Allston. Read more.

By adamg - 9/22/23 - 2:30 pm
Rendering of proposed Hillsboro Street building

Rendering by Icon Architecture.

A developer that helped preserve artist studios in an old industrial building on Humphreys Street in Dorchester filed plans today to build a 21-unit condo building nearby in which all the units would be sold to people making no more than 80% to 100% of the Boston area median income - with 18 of them marketed to artists. Read more.

By adamg - 9/21/23 - 3:21 pm
A Street stars, now gone

One last look at the A Street stars, by the Fort Pointer.

The Fort Pointer reports that "Starry Night," above A Street on the underside of the Summer Street bridge, has blinked out after 14 years: Read more.

By adamg - 9/8/23 - 11:22 am

The Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum canceled its evening hours yesterday "due to a planned protest by climate activists that would put our community and collections at risk," the museum's director said in e-mail to museum supporters. Read more.

By adamg - 9/7/23 - 8:16 pm
Little Amal at the Chinatown Gate

Brooks Payne walked with Little Amal - who is actually 12 feet tall representation of a 10-year-old Syrian refugee girl - from Dewey Square to the Chinatown Gate today. Read more.

By Sasha Patkin - 8/30/23 - 9:43 pm
Rose Christian's painting Nevermore

Rose Christian's painting Nevermore. See it larger. Photos by Sasha Patkin.

Teen artist Ashanti Dejesus's paintings hung on the wall at the Artists For Humanity's Big Summa' Show - two moody-blue paintings of underpasses, their details sponged away to abstraction but their rainy tone familiar to any city dweller. Next to both, little cards on the wall marked their price as $1,600 each and, beneath that, hand-scrawled, all-caps notes that read "SOLD."

“Oh, these kids are for real," I thought. Read more.

By Sasha Patkin - 8/22/23 - 11:43 am
Maravilla's flight across the United States as a child

Maravilla's flight across the United States as a child. Photo by Sasha Patkin. See it larger.

Our experience of art doesn't solely consist of the impression we get in the moment as we stand in front of a painting or sit in the audience of a performance. It's also infused with all of the prior experiences, traumas, and memories we carry with us everywhere; they continue to reverberate through our mind and inform the way we see the world well after we've left a museum or theater. Read more.

By Sasha Patkin - 8/18/23 - 12:37 pm
'Antoine’s Organ' by Rashid Johnson on display at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum

"Antoine’s Organ'" by Rashid Johnson. See it larger. Photo by Sasha Patkin.

The Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum is one of my favorite museums in Boston, which has to do with its unique history (who doesn't love an unsolved art heist or a quirky female philanthropist?), its hodgepodge and personalized way of displaying art (mixing genres and time periods exactly as Isabella wanted, and mainly unlabelled), its curation of everything from European bench pews to sculptures to personal letters, but most of all its constantly-blooming courtyard garden, which constitutes the heart of museum in every respect. Read more.

By Sasha Patkin - 8/16/23 - 2:29 pm
Detail from one of Gu Wenda's pieces on display

Detail from one of Gu Wenda's pieces on display. See it larger.

Ed. note: Starting today, UHub will be posting Boston-area reviews of local cultural happenings and restaurants by Sasha Patkin of the Independent Review Crew, a new initiative of the nonprofit Online Journalism Project. Let us know what you think!

The introductory video to Gu Wenda's "United Nations" exhibit, currently on display in the Peabody Essex Museum in Salem, states that a single strand of hair contains enough DNA to identify one of us from a billion of us. When the Chinese-born artist creates his pieces from the combined hair of thousands of people, therefore, his work becomes a collective portrait that both transcends and unites the singular human experience.

By adamg - 8/13/23 - 1:56 pm
Scenes from new pathway near Fenway station

Scott is loving the newly decorated path along Samuels and Associates' 401 Park, formerly Landmark Center and before that the Sears Building in the Fenway.

The path to Fenway Station, with the whimsical, kid-friendly fauxpiary, is nicer than it needed to be. Well done!

By adamg - 7/15/23 - 9:45 pm

But he is Not Identified.

Subscribe to art