As I was considering two concurrent South Coast art exhibitions, a lyric from Talking Heads 1983 album “Speaking in Tongues” kept running through my mind : “Guess this must be the place, I can’t tell one from another…”
Now to be fair, that’s not really true of “Spirit of Place” at the New Bedford Art Museum and “A Confluence of Place and Space” at the Grimshaw-Gudewicz Art Gallery at Bristol Community College in Fall River.
But there must be something more at play than mere coincidence. Perhaps there is something in the air, or the zeitgeist is making itself manifest, or there is a profound common ambient sensibility.
Both exhibitions feature small assemblages of highly talented visual artists (six at NBAM, five at the Grimshaw-Gudewicz) working in an array of media. Both groupings include a couple that work in tandem, either occasionally or regularly.
In a statement for the NBAM show, it is noted that the respective art of the participants says more about “ the psychic energy and mood of a place” than providing a description or recognizable locale.
In a similar vein, a curatorial writing accompanying the Grimshaw-Gudewicz presentation speaks to the “links between known territories and imagined landscapes.”
While not exactly the same thing, both statements reveal a stark and complementary commonality.
And it should be noted that neither Suzanne de Vegh, executive director and curator at the New Bedford Art Museum nor Kathleen Hancock, director and curator at the Grimshaw-Gudewicz, were aware of the similarly-themed exhibitions being on display at the same time until I mentioned it to them in separate conversations.
Though not intentional, the two exhibitions complement each other.
Something in the air, indeed.
At NBAM, sculptor Alex Buchanan, a former Coast Guardsman who is well-versed in nautical lore, maritime history and who is certainly the most significant knot artist in New Bedford since Clifford Ashley, displays a number of large scale knots, including “Green Horn,” a pale teal retired ship’s hawser line.
To locals of earlier generations, “green horn” (or more commonly, greenhorn) was an ethnic slur but Buchanan wonderfully reconfigures it as a term of endearment, an homage to the eager new recruit on any job.
His knot is not tied in the traditional clockwise direction but rather in the counter, and it is, as he notes, an attempt “to recognize the beauty in unfamiliar approaches.” It is a moving gesture and a nod to the place of the novice, where we all have been.
In an adjoining room are a series of images by RA Friedman and Mindy Véissid, who have traveled around the country, each taking photographs of the same exterior subjects — a paper plant in Lewiston, Idaho, a blast furnace in Scranton, Pennsylvania, and a massive pile of oyster shells on Bowers Island, South Carolina, for example.
The pair approach their common subject matter from vastly different perspectives. Most significantly, Friedman’s work is stark and his images are presented in black-and-white, evoking the romance of old film stills. Véissid’s lush, vibrant photographs embrace an expansive color palette. That simple distinction makes each feel of not quite the same era, and that too shifts one’s sense of place.
“Land,” an installation by Kathleen Moroney, is situated in a corner room of the museum. Fifty-six close-to-life-size hummingbirds, made of terracotta clay, are suspended via means of weighted plumblines. The room is dark by design with just enough illumination to capture an impossible moment of eternal hovering. Understood as memory, time itself can be a place, untethered to reality.
For artist Sunny Chapman, cairns are a recurrent motif within her collage and painted work and they suggest an intensely personal fairytale place.
Chris Page’s monochromatic manipulated inkjet prints nod to the movement of nature, alluding to wind and tide. His large abstract “Chaos and Dissipation IV” works as a topographical map of a place that doesn’t exist.
In its current incarnation, the New Bedford Art Museum with its gray walls, small rooms and alcoves is charmingly intimate, nestled in a vibrant downtown neighborhood. Almost 16 miles away, the Grimshaw-Gudewicz Art Gallery is on a semi-suburban community college campus. The gallery is bright and expansive in scale.
As exhibition spaces, neither is better than the other. Just different. Different places — and that is perfect for this synchronicity of theme.
At the Grimshaw-Gudewicz, Michele Provost displays works that were influenced by a visit to Normandy and Brittany in 2016. She speaks of “the convergence of memory and geography, of narratives both handed down or imagined.” If geography is the science of place, perhaps memory is its art.
“Stories,” her 42” X 46” mixed media, appears to be quickly rendered, with two flowers dangling upside down. It is a semi-abstract landscape with suggestions of grass and stream. Above, with maybe a nod to Leonard Cohen, there are birds on a wire.
Maria Napolitano’s landscape paintings are based on imagined or remembered observations, from daily walks she took in an inner city park during the Covid lockdown. “I Saw the Turtle” is a bit of a scavenger hunt but to the curious, well worth the gaze. “Evening Work 3,” with little but a gnarly barren branch, a path like a dagger, and a pale salmon sky, is nonetheless enchanting.
Mara Metcalf plays with one’s sense of perception in her mixed media works, with layers of fabric and cut out shapes and gestural marks. Light passes through and shadows are cast. “Spinning in Tandem” maintains a simple palette of black, white, gray and Pepto-Bismol pink. A magenta string dangles in a curve. It’s all about the space between the individual elements. And what is a space but a place?
Masha Ryskin’s “Danube Dialogues” is a river of off-white crumpled paper, running off the wall like a waterfall and pouring onto the floor, curving back on itself and returning again into the gallery. The material is decorated with seemingly meaningless scribbles in black, blue, gray and metallic gold. It invades the space, it threatens to take over the place.
Serge Marchetta has a series of site-specific installations within the gallery and they are a highlight of the show. He describes himself as having an interest in the ambiguity of perception. He is a contemporary Dadaist, creating work that is unanticipated, whimsical and irrational.
Marchetta uses everyday ordinary things to make commentary about the fetishization of common objects. The medium of that commentary, absurdly enough, is yarn, as when maroon yarn spills from the mouth of a meat grinder or when pink yarn oozes through the keyboard of an old I-Pad.
“Faire et Repasser,” with baby blue yarn erupting from the steam holes on the bottom of an iron, is positively Duchampian.
But what does it have to do with place? Think about how often an object defines a place. Remember Grandpa’s rocking chair? What was that place we used to go to with that bumper pool table?
“Spirit of Place” will be on display at the New Bedford Art Museum, 608 Pleasant St., New Bedford until March 24.
“A Confluence of Space and Place” will be on display at the Grimshaw-Gudewicz Art Gallery, Bristol Community College, 777 Elsbree St., until March 14.
Email Don Wilkinson at dwilkinson@newbedfordlight.org
