Botanical Explorations:
Mosaics and Paintings by Lisa Houck
February 19 – May 14, 2023
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: It Flowers all Year Long, 2020, Mosaic
TAG
Contemporary New England Painters
March 25 – June 25, 2023
For this exhibition we asked painters to pick other painters and they did. They 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 New England based, and even that rule was bent. The result is an organically grown exhibition with a wide ranging view. Artists in the exhibition include, Carol O’Malia, Kevin Kearns, Tula Telfair, Chil Mott, Angela, Godnoy, Peter Waite, Jack Hollant and Gina Volpe.
Shown: Untitled, from the Sill Lifes series, 2018, Chil Mott, oil on board
Draw to Live, Live to Draw: Prints by Wanda Gág
March 25 – June 25, 2023
October 22 – January 14, 2024
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: Cats at the Window, 1929, Wanda Gág, American, Wood engraving, 80.248
Aaron Norfolk: Full Sonic
May 21 – August 13, 2023
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: Nightsong, 2018, Aaron Norfolk, Oil on canvas
Unsettled Pieces
August 20 – November 5, 2023
Four 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. Cynthia Fisher’s use of pattern and color are focused on the transcendent beauty and wildness of Patagonia, Chile. 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.
Shown: Patagonia Impressions, 2019, Cynthia Fisher, glass, vitreous glass, pate de verre, unglazed porcelain, smalti, stones, broken pottery and ceramic shards
50/50: ACM Collects the Future
August 20 – November 5, 2023
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: Maynard Spring, 2011, George Nick, American, Oil on linen, 2012.03
Andrae Green
November 12, 2023 – February 11, 2024
Shown: Divers V, 2021, Oil on canvas
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Winter Sundays are for reading in front of the fireplace! This fireplace, illustrated by American artist Wanda Gág, belonged to Lewis Gannett, editor of the New York Herald Tribune with whom she had a love affair in the 1930s. The chiaroscuro effect of light and shadow mingles with a vibrant line, almost causing the andirons to “dance.” Some art critics noted the Disney-like characteristics of Gag’s inanimate objects.
🔥☕️📖
Wanda Gág, American, 1893-1946
Lewis Gannett’s Fireplace, 1930, wood engraving
80.244
#WandaGág #americanartists #winterweather #winterinnewengland #millionsofcats #winterreading #americanlithography #americanprintmaking
The Art Complex Museum is hiring! We are looking to hire a full-time Communications and Programs Coordinator, to begin in the spring of 2022. We have hired a search firm to help us with the process, and a link to the full job profile can be seen on their website, here: museum-search.com/all-searches/2021/1/24/art-complex-museum.
This new person will be in charge of our communications and PR strategies and will work with all staff to coordinate and advertise our public programming. We are looking for someone with excellent writing and editing skills, a good photographer and someone who can increase our social media presence and content. This person should also be someone willing to step out and develop relationships with media contacts and other cultural connectors. We also want this person to live locally, within a reasonable commute to the museum. Thank you!
#jobopportunity #nowhiring #communications #museumjobs #massachusettsmuseum #artsandculture
American artist John Singer Sargent was born on this day in 1856. This important canvas from the ACM's permanent collection was created during the summer of 1914. Following the outbreak of World War I, the world-renowned painter and his English travel companions were detained in the Austrian Tyrol (a region of the Austrian/Northern Italian Alps) without passports or money. Sargent settled himself at two residences while in South Tyrol, at the Cappella Inn in Kolfuschg, and at the house of an old acquaintance, in Sankt Lorenzen.
During his stay, Sargent found interesting and unusual subject matter in Tyrolese crucifixes and graveyards, which he painted. The dark palette and religious nature of this work suggests the somber mood that affected the artist’s holiday as a result of the war. The melancholy theme of The Confession is slightly tempered by the opulent sheen of the confessor’s black cloak and the warm cream and gold tones found in the celebrant’s robe, the wall and picture frames.
John Singer Sargent, American, 1856-1925
The Confession, 1914, Oil on canvas
53.09
#sargentsbirthday #artcomplexmuseum #religiousart #americanartists #johnsingersargent #artistbirthdays
🎂🎉
Brrr! Winter has arrived!
Snow is falling in New England today! ☃️❄️☃️
Many of artist Martin Lewis’s images are snapshots of the activity on the streets of New York City. Lewis especially liked creating compositions from unusual perspectives, depicting inclement weather and using interesting sources of light. Stoops in the Snow is among Lewis’s many masterful achievements. To suggest accumulating snow on the streets, stairs, and stoops of this sidewalk scene, Lewis used a density of dots by pressing sandpaper into a soft-ground coating on the etching plate. In other areas he selectively scraped the plate clean to create wispy white lines that represented gusting wind, pounding rain, or swirling snow. The hunched-over figures celebrate the Ukiyo-e prints by Hiroshige and Hokusai that the artist studied while living in Japan.
🎨Martin Lewis, Australian American, 1881-1962
Stoops in the Snow, 1930, drypoint and sand ground
92.079
#artcomplexmuseum #martinlewis #americanprintmaking #americanart #snowstorm #newenglandweather #ukiyoe #influence #newyorkcity #snowscene #letitsnow #snowystoop
Happy New Year from the Art Complex Museum! 🎉🍾We hope you enjoy a safe celebration ringing in 2022. 🎉🎉🍾🍾
This colorful lithograph created by Alexander Calder was among his early prints from the 1960s that included mostly lithographs. The artist felt that printmaking was a distinctive medium with which to create artwork. One of America's best-known sculptors, Calder became famous for his kinetic abstract mobiles and stabiles that were first shown in the United States in 1932.
Alexander Calder, American, 1898-1976
Composition (Yellow Boomerang with Blue, Black and Red Shapes), 1962, colored lithograph, 2019.9
We wish you a Merry Christmas from all of us at the Art Complex Museum! May your holidays be happy and healthy! 🎄🎁🎄
This etching , Christmas, by Robin Tanner originally created in 1929, was a study made at Castle Combe, a village in Wiltshire, England, one moonlight night. In his autobiography, Tanner describes their midnight excursion. He worked surrounded by the snores of sleeping villagers, hearing every creak of their bedsprings, 'it was an eerie feeling, working through the small hours in that empty village where the moonlight lay in sheets of silver so bright and constant, that we drew as easily as by the day.'"
Robin Tanner (English, 1904-1988), Christmas, printed in 1970, etching
#happychristmas #happyholidays #artcomplexmuseum #christmasday #robintanner #englishprintmaking #englishprintmaker #nocturne #etching #merrychristmas
Twas the night before Christmas and all through the house... not a creature was stirring not even a mouse! Netsuke were carved toggle-like sculptures with a long tradition in Japan. They were carved out of boxwood, other hard woods and ivory, into figures or animals, like this little mammal. Beautiful and functional, this little guy is sure to spy Santa Claus putting gifts under the tree tonight!
#christmasmouse #netsuke #japanesenetsuke #mouseart #artcomplexmuseum #twasthenightbeforechristmas #christmaseve
The weather outside is frightful... although the month of December has been warmer than most, it is New England... get the firewood ready! 🔥🎄
Loading (1931), created by Clare Leighton, shows timber workers stacking snowy logs onto a carrier in the woods. Leighton focused on bucolic, rural scenes that featured working men and women. She wrote an illustrated many books praising the virtues of the countryside and the people who worked the land. The best known of Leighton’s books include The Farmer’s Year (1933), a calendar of English husbandry, Four Hedges, a Gardener’s Chronicle (1935) and Tempestuous Petticoat: The Story of an Invincible Edwardian (1948) describing her childhood and her bohemian mother.
Loading, 1931, Clare Leighton, American (1898-1989), wood engraving.
#clareleighton #countryside #artcomplexmuseum #americanprints #woodlandscene #woodengraving #firewood #theweatheroutsideisfrightful
Virginia-born artist, Anna Mary Robertson Moses, known by her nickname Grandma Moses, was a folk artist who began painting at the age of 78. Painting was a creative outlet for the Bennington, Vermont-based artist. Her paintings recalled her childhood memories of working in fields, ice skating and other winter pastimes. Inspired by the seasons and rolling hills, she set them to canvas. Moses produced over 2,000 works in the last two decades of her life.
Her colorful works, including Go For Him Rover, with its horse drawn carriage, brightly colored barns and farmyard animals, exemplify the artist’s talent for visual storytelling interwoven with nostalgia for rural American life.
Anna Mary Robertson Moses, American, 1860-1961
Go for Him Rover, 1948, oil on board, 81.090
#Grandmamoses #Snowday #artcomplexmuseum #holidayart #tistheseason #annamoses #americanartists #womenartists
Great morning to sleep in... and rest up to finish your holiday shopping! This print created by Wanda Gág, Siesta, shows a favorite feline activity.. napping! Gág adopted several kittens to use as models for book illustrations, and they became her favorite subjects.
Gág wrote and illustrated the book Millions of Cats (1928), considered a classic in children’s literature. It is the oldest American picture book still in print. The book won a Newbury Honor award, one of the few picture books to do so, and the Lewis Carroll Shelf Award.
Wanda Gág, American (1893-1946)
Siesta, 1937, lithograph
#catnap #siesta #wandagag #americanprints #lithography #childrensbooks #millionsofcats #artcomplexmuseum #holidayshopping
