South Coast Art Celebrated at DeDee Shattuck Gallery

Community-based art organizations serve a number of important roles and among them naturally is their capacity to give artists space to celebrate their town or region. South Coast Artists (SCA), a non-profit collective of creatives based in Southeastern Massachusetts and Rhode Island, is one such organization. On view through May 29, 2022, SCA is hosting its Spring Invitational Exhibition at DeDee Shattuck Gallery in Westport, Massachusetts. A richly varied salon-style show, the exhibition includes many highlights which find inspiration locally and further afield.

Featuring one hundred and seventy-five artworks by seventy-five SCA artists, the group’s Spring Invitational Exhibition is an opportunity for viewers based in the South Coast area to explore a survey of artworks by their neighbors. Works on view boast a wide range of media, from paintings and photographs to metal, ceramics, and mixed media. The styles employed are equally diverse and run the gamut from intense photorealism to gauzy abstraction. The show fills the generous exhibition space nearly from floor to ceiling and merits a lengthy visit.

Nearly two hundred works are on view in the exhibition at DeDee Shattuck Gallery in Westport.

Among the highlights in the show, many draw on themes specific to the South Coast region, which SCA defines roughly as the towns of Westport and Dartmouth in Massachusetts and Tiverton and Little Compton in Rhode Island. The scenic localities have close ties to both the farming and maritime communities, which both show up repeatedly throughout the exhibition. 

In Road Kill, a super illustrative painting by JP Powel, a gnarled and leafless tree takes up the foreground of a landscape sliced through by the sun-dappled asphalt of a country road and the stone walls which characterize the area. Carolyn Baker’s, Toven, a multi-part work executed in painted wood and vinyl, hints at compasses and nautical maps in an inventive format.

The coastal connection shows up in many artworks in the exhibition. Ron Fortier probes whaling history in his paintings, one of which features a ghostly sailing ship with flames rising from the deck under moonlight. Barbara Healy’s painting, Waiting, focuses on the prow of a sailboat within the context of the marbled surface of water. Not all of the artists look outdoors for their subjects, though. Jim Wright’s Austere Interior is a pensive meditation on domestic space.

A variety of media and stylistic approaches abound in the Spring Invitational Exhibition.

While some of the favorites pull from local places, other strong works in the show find inspiration elsewhere. A collection of three portraits by Dina Doyle utilize punchy primary colors to set off their subjects in highly refined oil paintings. Nearby, a large-scale image of a cactus by Elizabeth Larrimore invites viewers to look more closely at an abstracted view of a familiar botanical subject. 

Abstraction is the basis for yet another subset of works on view. Alongside a staircase in the center of the gallery, a series of works by Marjorie Jensen, William Kendall, Beth Russo, and Cindy Sachs explore varying aspects of non-obective art making. Jensen’s mixed media work, which includes a rough-edged canvas surface, is particularly appealing.

The range of media in the show is wonderful. A series of wool felt paintings by Stephanie Stroud have a fantastically tactile quality. Serena Parente Charlebois exhibits an image of a piazza using another novel method: a gilded photograph on vellum. The result is a modern day illuminated manuscript.

The architecture of DeDee Shattuck Gallery encourages visitors to look to the landscape beyond the artwork.

DeDee Shattuck Gallery, which is playing host to the SCA Spring Invitational, is one of the region’s premiere exhibition venues. Housed in a spare and barn-like building within a pastoral setting, the gallery is a place where any artist would be delighted to see their work. The main exhibition space is soaring and light, and windows and the four corners of the structure look out onto the bucolic landscape of Westport. The quality of the gallery elevates this exhibition of artists connected with and dedicated to their locale.

In a show packed with local inflection, perhaps those most celebratory of the South Coast are submissions by Josie Richmond. Employing intaglio printmaking combined with velvety encaustic, Richmond layers imagery of nearby flora and fauna on maps detailing the intricate contours of the many coves and inlets that define the South Coast. Inventive and enjoyable, they are full of community pride.

The South Coast Artists Spring Invitational Exhibition is a celebration of local art made in and around a series of charming towns nestled by the sea. The show at DeDee Shattuck Gallery invites visitors to travel to Westport to experience a fine array of artworks as well as the environment that inspired their authors. With its walls piled high with art of the region, the exhibition is an ideal opportunity to discover art made on the South Coast. 

The South Coast Artists Spring Invitational Exhibition is on view at DeDee Shattuck Gallery at 1 Partners Lane in Westport, Massachusetts, through May 29, 2022. Gallery hours are are Wednesday - Saturday from 10am - 5pm each day and Sunday from 12 - 5pm. Learn more at www.dedeeshattuckgallery.com, or at www.southcoastartists.org.

DeDee Shattuck Gallery is located at 1 Partners Lane in Westport, MA, and will host the South Coast Artists Spring Invitational Exhibition through May 29, 2022.

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.