Models as Friends

Models as Friends

Over my 22 years as an artist I have taken a lot of pictures of  young women, some to serve as guides for paintings,  some to use simply as photographs. I met the two above, the redhead Laura and Hannah with blond dreadlocks while I was having lunch with two Berkshire Eagle friends not long after I had retired. These two  Neo-hippies, came in with one’s young brother, maybe 10 years old. They were talking and smiling and including the kid instead of ostracizing him as I thought teens would. “I’d love to have them as models,” I announced...
In Fields of Gold

In Fields of Gold

The Field Farm overlooks Mount Greylock and the Hopper. We drove to the Field Farm in Williamstown recently to walk the trails alongside its splendid fields of mown hay. The sun was shining (oh happy day). And we were feeling in harmony with all this open land and the woods surround it and the mountains of purple and soft browns. Down past the modern cottage  and alongside the pond where beavers had built two lodges that climbed the banks and overlapped the trail. We didn’t see any beaver. I think they’re pretty much nocturnal. The farm’s...
MASS MoCA Stages Monumental Show

MASS MoCA Stages Monumental Show

 You’d think that Ledelle Moe’s monumental memorial to the murdered and the slain would be a real downer. But it isn’t.  As you descend the steps onto the exhibition floor in MASS MoCA’s biggest gallery, you’re confronted by three giant concrete heads lying on the concrete floor as if they’d just fallen from the guillotine.  Their section is relatively dark, But beyond them, sun streams through the room’s countless windows and the sculptures are so remarkable they cast a metaphoric brilliance of their own. Moe started...
Jim Allen’s Monumental Protest Against War

Jim Allen’s Monumental Protest Against War

This painting by Jim Allen, heroic in scale and steeped in one of philosophy’s conundrums, packs a knockout punch at the Berkshire Museum of Art in North Adams. Called “Not Just Another Pretty Picture,” the exhibit was put together by Eric Rudd , the artist-entrepreneur who bought the church and transformed it into a showplace for his and other artists’ work. The  stone church is located across from the monument at the end of Main Street in North Adams.It  can be viewed Saturdays and Sundays from noon to 5 through October 13....
The Art of Eroding Memories

The Art of Eroding Memories

Here’s the portrait I didn’t see in my first visit to Installation Space in North Adams. Photo by Grier Horner. For a week I’ve been trying to come up with the best one-word description of Robert Maloney’s installation at the Installation Space in North Adams.  Brilliant. That was one of the first words I came up with. Brilliant isn’t a word to use lightly. So I went up to North Adams Saturday to take a second look at his installation at Anna Farrington’s Installation Space on Eagle Street. I wanted to make sure I could defend...
Bold, Beautiful – and Happy

Bold, Beautiful – and Happy

Jesse Tobin McCauley in her studio in the Lichtenstein Center in Pittsfield. Photo by Noel Henebury For Jesse Tobin McCauley her current show at the Lichtenstein Center for the Arts in Pittsfield is a sentimental journey. Just six years ago she had showed with Group W at an exibit at the Lichtenstein. Although he lived near Pheonix, her father, FX Tobin, whose work was wild and woolley and often X-rated, was the spiritual leader of this “industrial strength” art tribe. The other members were her uncles,Jay and Bill Tobin, along with Mike Melle and...