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
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.
Shown: Will the Birds Still Sing, 2020, Deborah Aldo
Cut pebbles, smalti, blue calcite crystals on a series of dimensional substrates
50/50: ACM Collects the Future
September 17 – January 14, 2024
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: Touchstone: Glimpses of Noon #2, 2004, Prilla Smith Brackett, American, Acrylic and oil on canvas, 2015.10
Andrae Green
November 12, 2023 – February 11, 2024
Shown: Divers V, 2021, Oil on canvas