Exhibitions

Botanical Explorations:
Mosaics and Paintings by Lisa Houck

February 19 – May 14, 2023
Reception: February 19, 2023 1:00 – 4:00 pm

About being asked to create a mosaic for the Frieda Garcia Park in Boston in 2003, Lisa Houck says, “It was the beginning of my involvement with this wonderful, colorful, shimmering medium of mosaic. I have been working with it ever since. My heavily patterned paintings in watercolor and oil led very naturally into this new way of working with small reflective tesserae. With these irregularly shaped pieces, I create vibrant, imaginative images filled with color and pattern. I fabricate some of the ceramic pieces that are in these mosaics. These mosaic trees embody personalities: some are quiet and shy, some are dizzy and easily swayed, some are larger than life. I often use patterned, circular imagery that can evoke cells, flowers, droplets, planets, spirals and seasonal cycles in the natural world.”

Shown: Lisa Houck, It Flowers all Year Long, 2020, mosaic

TAG

Contemporary New England Painters
April 2 – August 27, 2023
Reception: May 21, 2023, 1:00 – 4:00 pm

For this exhibition, we began by asking artist Carol O’Malia to be in the show. She then asked another painter to be in the show. That painter then chose another painter, etc. Hence the name “Tag.”  The artists picked friends, studio mates, former classmates, and other artists whose work they admired. Like a game of tag there were not many rules, other than being based in New England, and even that rule was bent.

The result is an organically grown exhibition with a wide-ranging view.  Artists in the exhibition include Angela Godoy, Jack Hollant, Kevin Kearns, Chil Mott, Richard Neal, Carol O’Malia, Tula Telfair, Peter Waite, and Gina Volpe.

Shown: Chil Mott, Untitled, from the Sill Lifes series, 2018, oil on board

Wanda Gag:
Artist, Author, and Illustrator

April 2 – August 27, 2023
Reception: May 21, 2023, 1:00 – 4:00 pm

A prolific printmaker, Wanda Gág was best known for her children’s books, especially Millions of Cats published in 1928. Gág devoted much of her practice to drawing, a commitment that became a personal motto that she recorded in her diary, “draw to live, live to draw.”  She pursued her passion at the Art Students League in New York, working as an illustrator and sending money to her orphaned siblings. Her work as a children’s book author and illustrator brought Gág international fame. This exhibit features prints from the Art Complex Museum’s collection.

Shown: Wanda Gág, Siesta, 1937,  lithograph

Aaron Norfolk: Audio-Visio

May 21 – August 13, 2023
Reception: May 21, 2023, 1:00 – 4:00 pm

The Boston-based painter’s large, color-rich paintings begin with what he hears, not with what he sees.  He says, “Sight and sound run parallel in our perception, and these works do not intend to confound the two.  Rather, the interest is for the viewer to switch back and forth across subjectivity, allowing sound its visual memory.  As a word becomes a sound’s visual placeholder, so these paintings become their portrait.”

Norfolk began painting as a teenager and earned a BFA from the College of William and Mary before coming to Boston University for his MFA where he has been a School of Visual Arts Lecturer and Painting Fellow-

Shown: Aaron Norfolk, Untitled, 2021, oil on panel

Unsettled Pieces

August 20 – November 5, 2023
Reception: August 20, 2023, 1:00 – 4:00 pm

Three artists have chosen mosaic as the common language to explore issues affecting the planet, each in her own style.

Debora Aldo uses her signature material—pebbles—along with up-cycled contemporary materials, to infuse her lines with meaning. Nikki Sullivan and Anabella Wewer both use classical andamento to form their lines, but Nikki often uses a large found object as her focal point, while Anabella breaks down uncommon materials into regularly sized tesserae.

Each artist has embraced one or more topics within our changing world, and brought to it the unusual and uncommon set of skills that it takes to create a mosaic.

50/50: Fifty Years of Collection Art

September 17, 2023 – January 14, 2024
Reception: September 17, 2023, 1:00 – 4:00 pm

In continued celebration of the Art Complex Museum’s fiftieth anniversary, this exhibit examines the museum’s expanding permanent collection, amassed since its founding in 1971. Assembled after the museum opened, these art works reflect the collecting interests of founders Carl and Edith Weyerhaeuser, along with museum directors and curators as the ACM builds for the future.

Shown: Prilla Smith Brackett, Touchstone: Glimpses of Noon #2, 2004, acrylic and oil on canvas

50/50: Collecting the Boston Printmakers

September 17, 2023 – January 14, 2024
Reception: September 17, 2023, 1:00 – 4:00 pm

The Art Complex Museum has collected work by members of the Boston Printmakers since the early 1970s. This exhibit features winners of the Ture Bengtz Memorial Prize, selected from the group’s Biennial exhibition, which are part of the museum’s permanent collection.

Bengtz was the Director of the Art Complex Museum from 1971-73, and began a tradition of hosting exhibits of work by members of the Boston Printmakers at the museum. He remained at his post for three years, until his sudden death in 1973. A memorial award in his honor, the Ture Bengtz Memorial Prize began shortly afterward.

Established in 1947, the Boston Printmakers was formed by a group of students assisted by Ture Bengtz (then Director of the Graphics Department at the Museum School, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston), Otis Philbrick (instructor for the Massachusetts College of Art), and Arthur Heintzelman (printmaker and curator of Wiggin Gallery at the Boston Public Library). The students included Bengtz’ pupil, Richard Bartlett (president), Shirley Thompson Hadley (vice president), and Gladys Wilcock (secretary/treasurer). Initially a regional group, the Boston Printmakers soon expanded its reach to include the national and international art world.