Jane Smaldone, Nora and Isabel on the Blue Chair, oil on linen, 29 x 32", 2006.

The Nielsen Gallery proudly presents new work by gallery artists Jane Smaldone and Sachiko Akiyama. Jane Smaldone’s eighth solo exhibition at the Nielsen Gallery features her highly meticulous, sensitive, and surreal still lifes, as well as portraits of family members and friends.

Smaldone captures the subjects of her paintings, be it a portrayed sitter or a vase of freshly cut flowers, in a dreamlike landscape embodied with mystery. Smaldone commented that her paintings try “to tell a simple story about what it means to be alive, the mystery of life, and what we go through each day to be human and to continue our lives.” Sachiko Akiyama unveils her new figurative wooden sculpture in the viewing room at the Nielsen Gallery.

Akiyama, a recent recipient of the Massachusetts Cultural Council Grant and the Joan Mitchell Foundation Grant, chisels wooden blocks to produce intimate portraits of herself and family members. The exhibition will feature one life-size sculpture and a half-dozen smaller pieces.

Montserrat College of Art Gallery

Electric Wasteland: Urban Art from L.A.

Dave Kinsey, In Honor, acrylic and ink on chipboard, 8 x 10", 2005.

Influenced by graffiti, street art, Mexican murals, folk art, and cartoons, a new wave of art-making is sweeping across the U.S. Exuberant and eclectic, it is characterized by a dark sense of humor, chaotic compositions, and gritty graphics. Most of it seems to center on Los Angeles, a city that continues to assert itself as a hub of creativity and visual culture. Blurring the boundaries between fine and street art, folk and contemporary, illustration and design, Electric Wasteland showcases five Los Angeles-based artists: the Date Farmers, a collaboration between Carlos Ramirez and Armando Lerma; Dave Kinsey; Jeff Soto; and Aaron White. Using the urban environment as both a canvas and a source, they draw inspiration from the contrasts and tensions that exist between the wealthy and the poor, the city and surrounding suburbs, and the manmade and the natural. Meanwhile, beneath their distinctly urban vibe, their work reveals a reverence for the world around them.

Installation view of The Annual AIDS Exhibition, 2005.

Featuring Chuck Close, Philip Guston, Jenny Holzer, Donald Judd, Sol LeWitt, Sally Moore, Jullian Opie, Liliana Porter, Richard Serra, and Kiki Smith. This exhibition will feature a selection of works that engage space in different ways. From a site-specific wall drawing by Sol LeWitt to a wall installation that cuts into the wall by Liliana Porter, the pieces in this show ask the viewer to move beyond traditional representations of pictorial space.

Anything but Paper Prayers: The Annual AIDS Exhibition

This annual benefit features pieces donated by approximately one hundred artists. All works are available to be taken home in exchange for a donation of $350 to either Boston Pediatric/Family AIDS Project, based out of Dimock Community Health Center in Boston, or the African AIDS Initiative, Inc., based out of Harvard, but focused on the situation in Africa.

The Winfisky Gallery is proud to showcase six exhibitions during the spring semester of 2007. Raphy Kertenian will be in the gallery from January sixteenth through February eighth. New England Wax: Encaustic I, a group show of encaustic artists includes Kim Bernard, Binnie Birstein, Janet B. Goodman, Jeanne Griffin, Lynette Haggard, Susan Katz, Beverly Rippel, Cheslye Ventimiglia, and Charyl Weissbach, and will be on view from February twelfth through March eighth. Jennifer Maestre will be in the gallery from March twentieth through April twelfth.

The Student Awards Show runs from April sixteenth through twenty-seventh. The annual Salem State College Student Honors Exhibit will showcase the work of Wala Alasarabi from April thirtieth through May fourth, and the last show of the season will be the Salem State College MAT Capstone Exhibition from May seventh through eleventh.

Michael Bergt, Imagination, egg tempera on panel, 2003. Courtesy Turner Carroll Gallery, Santa Fe, NM. Photo: Michael Bergt.

The Chapel Art Center is very pleased to join The Arnot Art Museum in hosting a midcareer retrospective for Mr. Michael Bergt.

Mr. Bergt is at the crossroads of a very propitious artistic adventure. His work has brought him to a place of high regard for both his masterful egg tempera paintings and his captivating sculptures. His works are infused with a reverent regard for human life in all its aspects. The artist has achieved a most unique status as one who bravely synthesizes myriad meanings and interpretations. The forthright symbolism of his work is both candid and profound.

Michael Bergt is well-known across the country from Santa Fe to New York. His works are beautiful, thought provoking, and resolute in their discovery of the human spirit.

A full color catalogue will be available for sale during the exhibition.

El Anatsui, Adinkra Sasa (detail), aluminium and copper fabric, 487.7 x 548.6 cm, 2003. Collection of the artist. Photo: Noel Brown.

El Anatsui is one of Africa’s most powerful contemporary artists. His work dwells on the continent’s history, drawing simultaneously on traditional African idioms and contemporary Western art. Having worked over the years in paint, wood, clay, and metal, his recent works use large quantities of discarded everyday objects to comment on contemporary West African culture, history, and society. This exhibition features large tapestries made from thousands of flattened liquor bottle tops and seals, including the spectacular metal cloth Hovor—which the Hood Museum of Art recently acquired—and other three-dimensional sculptural works made from recycled metals. This exhibition is El Anatsui’s first solo show to travel to the United States.

El Anatsui: GAWU is an Oriel Mostyn Gallery touring exhibition supported by the Arts Council of Wales, Wales Arts International, and View Design. The presentation of this exhibition at the Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth College, is generously funded by the George O. Southwick 1957 Memorial Fund and the Hansen Family Fund.

Esther Pullman, Doors.

As both photographer and gardener, Esther Pullman has long been attracted to settings where plants are grown. The artist divides and recomposes the space of greenhouses to explore atmospheric effects, translucencies, and the painterly qualities of patina and limited color palettes. The subjects of the photographs are greenhouses from the immediate vicinity of Regis College. According to Pullman, “what more compelling or life-affirming symbol could there be than the greenhouse: a temple of light, modulating the energy of the sun; a stage for life, death, and rebirth; and a selfcontained environment mirroring our own condition of life on the planet?”

Susan Jane Walp, Study for Blueberries in a Black Etruscan Cup, 13 3/4 x 18", 2005.

Recollecting the techniques of old master drawings, Susan Jane Walp creates studies in pencil, gouache, and egg tempera of ordinary compositions one may have on a kitchen table—nuts or berries nestled in a bowl. Recalling the palette of Piero della Francesca, Walp prepares her papers with Renaissance washes of mustards and sea blues. The washes set the tone for the subjects as they emerge from the paper. Carefully shaded blueberries come to life with a dash of white gouache in Study for Blueberries in a Black Etruscan Cup. In addition to the studies on toned paper, Walp has made a simple series of contour drawings. Unpretentious and immediate, vases of zinnias are broken down into their simplest forms. The common beauty of the objects in Susan Walp’s drawings become majestic under her patient eye and exacting hand, renewing us by formalizing the ordinary.

19th–20th Century French Drawings for Design

This colorful and vibrant exhibition pairs design drawings for symbols of turn of the century modernity such as motors, gears, and structural steel engineering, with decorative art designs for jewelry, textiles, wallpaper, porcelain, and tiles. This juxtaposition highlights how advances in technology influenced art nouveau designs.