Nearby Gallery Exhibits Strong Trio with Into the Ether

While New Englanders enjoy a culturally rich region, there are always precious few opportunities for local artists to see their work exhibited in high quality spaces. Nearby Gallery in Newton, Massachusetts, was founded during the pandemic to share the work of emerging and mid-career art-makers in their community. On view through July 13, 2022, the gallery’s current exhibition Into the Ether is the product of an open curatorial call hosted by the space. The resulting show brings together works by Massachusetts artists Monica DeSalvo, Tatiana Flis, and Rob Trumbour. The exhibition is excellent and serves as a testament to the talent of the exhibiting artists as well as the vision of those behind Nearby Gallery.

Nearby Gallery’s dramatic brick clad main space sets off artworks on display.

Featuring work in a variety of media, from prints and collage to hand-made books and sculpture, Into the Ether is a survey of three artists probing issues around loss, grief, and fragility. Many of the artworks on view are achingly sensitive and entice audiences to experience them with a distinct depth of feeling. 

Monica DeSalvo is an artist and graphic designer based in Arlington, Massachusetts. Much of her work is influenced by her caregiving for her late father, who experienced dementia. DeSalvo was one of the artists featured in a strong recent installment of the Attleboro Arts Museum’s lauded 8 Visions Exhibition. Into the Ether provides viewers an opportunity to see another selection of DeSalvo’s work thoughtfully presented alongside two fellow artists who also relish in craft, surface, design, and texture. One standout is her Resting on Water, a collection of ten small mixed media works that juxtapose forms and invite close examination. Lines and surfaces appear to buck and sway, throwing the viewer off course and challenging them to recalibrate. A graduate of the University of Massachusetts at Dartmouth, DeSalvo is an active exhibitor and is now a Core Member of SoWA’s Fountain Street Gallery. 

Monica DeSalvo’s Resting on Water on view at Nearby Gallery.

Tatiana Flis creates works that are, like DeSalvo’s, multi-layered and incisive. The overlaps between Flis and DeSalvo tend to be a keen sensitivity towards design and construction of images. In Flis’ Prairie Night, multiple ambiguous geometries overlap and interplay across the surfaces of a large triptych. Nearby, a monoprint titled What Goes Unseen #1 sees Flis’ technique played out on a smaller scale. The installation of two works at such divergent sizes alongside one another shows off how the artist’s sense of structure, composition, and precision serves her artmaking in whatever format she chooses. Working out of a studio in Millbury, Massachusetts, Flis has exhibited widely. She completed her BFA at the Ringling College of Art and Design in Florida and earned her MFA at Cranbrook Academy of Art in Michigan.

Prairie Night and What Goes Unseen #1 by Tatiana Flis.

Rob Trumbour is both an art-maker and an architect. An associate professor at the Wentworth Institute of Technology, Trumbour earned his Master of Architecture at the University of Texas at Austin and his MFA at MassArt. His contributions to Into the Ether push boundaries and meld media from sculpture to printmaking to create a cohesive body of work. At the heart of the show, Trumbour’s Before Half of Two is a three-dimensional work that tilts into and out of space. Created using burnt out fallen tree limbs in cast concrete, the sculpture has the aroma of fire. Another strong entry by Trumbour is his collection of carbon composite prints titled Becoming, in which burnt casts are employed again. The finished pieces play with language and obsolescence. Trumbour’s work is complementary to that of Flis and DeSalvo, bringing to bear different forms of making with no less attention to detail.

Rob Trumbour’s triptych of prints titled Becoming.

Nearby Gallery bills itself as an “artist-owned showroom and community art space”, but it could also be called one of the sleekest venues in the region. A vast space by retail gallery standards, Nearby Gallery offers artists the opportunity to share their work in an environment where viewers can step back and look at things more deeply. A large open gallery at the front of the space is clad in brick, while two smaller rooms at the rear counterbalance the aesthetic with pristine white walls.

In addition to Into the Ether, a collection of works in a range of scale and style by other artists associated with the gallery are on view in their own space. The resulting installation is something akin to a contemporary salon show, celebrating many talents at once. Both the main show and this space offer works at accessible price points, with many pieces on offer at less than $500.

Another space within Nearby Gallery is dedicated to an eclectic display of many artists’ work.

Nearby Gallery’s Into the Ether offers three sensitive takes on issues of concern to many. Whether marveling at the artistic acumen of any of the three artists, or reading into their works for meditations on loss and impermanence, there is much to appreciate in this show and it is well worth seeing before it closes on July 13.

Nearby Gallery is located at 101 Union Street in Newton Centre, Massachusetts. The gallery is open Wednesday and Thursday 1-6pm, Friday and Saturday from 1-8pm, and Sunday from 11am - 4pm. Into the Ether continues through July 13. Learn more and plan your visit at www.nearbygallery.com.

Attleboro Arts Museum Presents Eight Compelling Visions

Through August 28, an exhibition at the Attleboro Arts Museum explores the remarkable variety one can find within the work of just eight artists. The show, titled 8 Visions, features photographic collages by Monica DeSalvo, drawings by Craig Elliott, ceramics by Lindsey Epstein, textile-based work by Virginia Mahoney, paintings by Kat Masella and Alexander Morris, photographs by Lisa Redburn and jewelry by Chuck Tramontana. The process for selecting these eight artists began with sixty applications, first juried down to twenty finalists by Jennifer Jean Okumura, with exhibitors selected by Anne Corso and Lauren Riviello. The result is an impressive group that speaks to the richness of style and technique that can be found in the New England art community.

The show is wonderfully varied and viewers will find captivating details around every corner of the museum’s generous gallery located in the heart of downtown Attleboro. Across a spectrum of media, the exhibition brings out the individuality of the featured artists. The connecting thread is often a distinct interest in texture and surface, be it real or illusion. Particular standouts in the exhibition include the highly tactile drawings and paintings of Craig Elliott and Alexander Morris, the poignant mixed media works of Monica DeSalvo, and quiet photographic triptychs executed by Lisa Redburn.

Craig Elliott, an artist who trained as an architect, exhibits a series of charcoal drawings undergirded with thoughtful design. Included in the exhibition, one finds a collection of diminutive preparatory sketches for Totemic, one of Elliott’s large scale drawings. This gives a deep sense of the artist’s knack for craftsmanship and informs a better appreciation for the completed works on view. The little drawings, though preliminary, are actually quite exquisite and hold their own against the more “finished” works on offer.

A wall of Craig Elliott’s large charcoal drawings invites close inspection.

When looking closely at the surfaces of Elliott’s images, one can find folds in the underlying paper layered over with shadowy details that have a sculptural sensibility. Elliott’s artworks elevate charcoal, often considered an elementary medium, bringing it to the same level as painting. Once completed, the artist’s intricate drawings are varnished. This technique has the effect of coalescing the surfaces of his images into velvety and satisfying wholes. 

The painter Alexander Morris, originally from Utah and now based in Rhode Island, is exhibiting a collection of highly textured works that include, among other details, great use of mysterious calligraphic line. Morris’ paintings in the exhibition are tall and columnular, a scale and format which takes on an almost architectural significance. One can return to his work again and again, constantly finding new details. It is tempting to puzzle out how exactly Morris has applied his paints but the weathered quality of his work tends to hold its secrets even to the sophisticated observer.

Like Elliott, Morris has a smaller study included in the exhibition. Although tiny by comparison to his wall-height paintings nearby, Crow’s Nest has an equal compositional power that is impressive and merits admiration.

Wall-height paintings by Alexander Morris are rich in weathered textures.

Monica DeSalvo’s contributions to 8 Visions are deeply personal and unravel issues related to her care of her late father, who experienced dementia. In layered artworks that collage and enhance photography and found objects, DeSalvo excavates her father’s archive, unearthing materials that she combines with imagery to evoke his own words near the end of his life.

An accordion book titled What Do You Think About When You’re Not Sleeping? brings a wonderful dimensionality and duality to the experience of DeSalvo’s work, which will be impactful for the many viewers who have experienced dementia first-hand in their own families.

An accordion book by Monica DeSalvo stands out alongside her two-dimensional collages.

Some of the textural complexity found in artworks on view is captured with great sensitivity by a camera lens, rather than by pencil, pen, or brush. In alluring triptychs, Lisa Redburn utilizes a well-known historical template to honor nature. While the format with which she frames her images echoes tiny altarpieces, Redburn’s subject matter is bright and botanical. In her photographs, one finds a certain meditative quality that can also be found in the solace of the natural world, on a hike, or in a garden. They are beautiful photographs with a hint of Transcendentalism. 

A collection of Lisa Redburn’s triptych photographs paired with ceramics by Lindsey Epstein.

While Redburn, DeSalvo, Morris, and Elliott have some of the strongest works on view, all of the participating artists should be lauded for the aesthetic verdancy of their contributions to this delightful show. 8 Visions is a thoughtfully assembled exhibition that invites visitors to relish in an exciting variety of art-making by talented creators living and working in New England today.

8 Visions is on view at the Attleboro Arts Museum through August 28, 2021. The Museum is open Tuesday through Saturday, 10am - 4pm each day. Masks are required for all visitors regardless of vaccination status and admission is a suggested $3 donation. Learn more at www.attleboroartsmuseum.org.