New Work from me, Tim Barner, and Susan Aaron in:
Fall07 opening Thursday, October 4 at 13FOREST Gallery, in Medford, MA.

Please join us for any or all of the follow events:

Opening Reception Thurs., Oct. 4 6pm - 9pm
Artist Talk (me!) Thurs., Oct. 25 7pm - 9pm
Closing Reception Thurs., Nov. 15 6pm -9pm

For Directions or more information, see www.13Forest.com.

Hope to see you there!

from the show announcement:

In the spirit of being here now, 13FOREST Gallery is presenting a fall exhibit of paintings and works on paper by three artists whose aesthetic philosophies have developed through career changes, experimentation and chance. The show, titled FALL07, features artists Rachel E. Mello, Tim Barner and Susan Aaron through November 15.

Rachel E. Mello began her artistic career as a set designer who cut and painted materials to create new worlds. She adapts this craft as a painter by building images onto surfaces that have been cut and shaped into silhouettes. The results are paintings in which space is physically real and the form of missing objects is emphasized. Among Mello's works at 13FOREST is Charlie's Birthday, where sky and clouds hover above urban houses, telephone poles and power-lines that are linked in a landscape by their absence. In Waiting for the Red Line, Waiting for Spring trains in blurred colors move past the empty outline of passengers standing on a platform. Though they could be anyone, their being rendered in negative space emphasizes their presence, as though they are a permanent part of urban life no matter how quickly it moves on. Recently Mello took her aesthetic explorations into the world of printmaking by using her cut canvases as ink surfaces. In the print Static Mirror II a woman enters a composition in which a man bends over groceries on his front porch. Printed in a single tone, the composition in one coherent silhouette is the mirror opposite of its parent painting, where solid objects are voids and space finds solidity.

Tim Barner is a landscape architect whose abstract paintings are unbounded by the representational precision required by his day job. Still, they contain hallmarks of excellent design: balance, varied texture and form, composition-defining color, and the ability to rouse one's imagination. At 13FOREST Barner presents large and small oil paintings that document where he has traveled as an artist over the past two years. Opting primarily for the quickness of a palette knife, but not adverse to using sticks, flower buds or his fingers as tools, Barner sometimes thinly stains his canvases and scratches images into them; other times he layers deep color fields that evoke images of the natural world without actually depicting them. With In the Shade, for instance, Barner manages to abstract the feeling of daytime coolness beneath a fir tree, while in Red Field he portrays the patterning of light and shade on fallen leaves but without using the objects as reference points. The Plain contains ethereal images from the artist's sleep. With Untitled, 07.06 and Untitled, 07.07, Barner continues his explorations into building canvas surfaces by incorporating wood chips and sawdust from a recently felled tree, as well as charcoal, ash and dirt into deeply saturated paint. At times reading like topographical maps in their texture, these paintings quite literally contain the world that continues to inspire Barner.

Susan Aaron set out to be an artist who would methodically plan drawings in her mind before committing them to paper. The results were frustration and a growing number of doodles and freeform experiments she had made to keep herself from putting down her pen and brush altogether. To Aaron's surprise in these diversions she found appealing, spontaneous forms and an unselfconscious relationship between them and their paper boundaries. This marked the beginning of Aaron as an explorer, which is well documented in her collection of drawings and watercolors at 13FOREST Gallery. In three works comprising the Blue Lantern series, she envelops well-defined structures in various saturations of Prussian blue watercolor to produce the weightlessness of objects surrounded by fog and clouds. In much the way she began liberating freeform designs from paper margins, the artist has cut each of these three works from a common whole. She uses the same editing process in another series in the show titled Tidal Pool. Here the origin of each of its component pieces was a line that Aaron first associated with the zing and zap of Japanese anime and then interwove with green seaweed-like forms to create images that are graphically bold but without doubt organic. In homage to Surrealism, the drawing Swiss Miss is an image of a cuckoo clock that Aaron imbued with the humor and spookiness she finds in a bizarre object that over the centuries has been relegated to the mundane.

Thursday June 21, 2007
6:00pm - 9:00pm
The Boston Convention & Exhibition Center
415 Summer Street; Boston, MA 02210

Please come enjoy an arts celebration and reception for the closing of the Summer Street Solstice II exhibition, at the Boston Convention and Exhibition Center.
Part One of this show was open from June 2006 to January 2007, and Part Two has been open since January 2007 and will close soon.

I have one piece in the show. You can see some preview images of the show at the Massachusetts Convention Center website

From the MCCA invitation:
The Massachusetts Convention Center Authority's Art Program is proud to present another showcase exhibition featuring more than 50 outstanding artists from across the Commonwealth of Massachusetts: Painters, Sculptors, Photographers, Cyber-Artists and more!

There will be catering, cash bars, and, I believe, live music.

There is an RSVP-request on the invitation (with a deadline that's past) but I've been assured that it's absolutely fine to invite people after that deadline.

The Convention Center is a short walk from the Red Line South Station stop, or shorter walk from the Silver Line World Trade Center stop, or the number 7 bus from South Station stops directly in front of the building. Onsite parking is also available.

I'll look forward to seeing you there!

Now on display at the Somerville Museum through the end of May, Imagining Somerville: Discovering a City Through Art. (directions at the end of this post)

Whether by promoting new ideas, instigating change, or simply provoking awareness, working artists play a vital role in the cultural life of any city. The work in this show seeks to influence the way that Somerville is perceived and defined as a physical place as well as a social, cultural and historical construction. The exhibit will include work produced by local youth and community groups as well as individual visual artists.

While I don't currently have a comprehensive list of the artist included, I'll be sure to post an up-date when I do. I'm happy to have a few pieces of mine included in this show.

There are several events scheduled to celebrate:

Receptions:

Friday, May 11, 5-8 pm
The public is invited to join us for a Special Preview Party for Tisch College of Citizenship and Public Service, Tufts College, School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Participating Artists and invited guests.

Saturday, June 9, 5-8 pm
Join us for the Opening Reception with Participating Artists at the Somerville Museum.

Special Events:

Sunday, June 3, 2-4 pm
How Art Grows from Community Activism, panel and discussion. Participants Lawrence Paolella of Mystic View Task Force, Bob Nesson of Somerville Transportation Equity Partners and Joel Bennett of Friends of the Community Path will open a conversation about the relationship between community building and the art process.

Saturday, June 23, 5-8 pm

The Bagel Bards Imagine Somerville. Poetry Reading and Writing Workshop, hosted by Bagel Bards founder Doug Holder, with readers Barbara Thomas, Mike Adamo, Gloria Mindock, Pam Rosenblatt, Luke Salisbury, Irene Koronas, and Julia Carlson. Workshop conducted by Molly Lynn Watt and Mignon Ariel King. Workshop participants should bring 10 copies of a poem or short narrative. Workshop is limited to 8.

VISIT THE SOMERVILLE MUSEUM:
by MBTA
#85 from Kendall Square or Union Square
Get off on Central at Westwood.

#88 from Davis Square or Lechmere Station
#90 from Sullivan Square
Get off on Highland at Central (at a Dunkin Donuts, naturally). Somerville "old timers" will know this as "Where the Elk used to be." Walk two blocks down Central.

By Car use your favorite mapping software to:
1 Westwood Rd., in Somerville, MA.

Somerville Open Studios is coming soon, and this year, for something completely different, I will not be opening my studio. That's right, after five years of participating, I am finally taking a year to go see the work of all my collegues through-out Somerville. This is going to be great!

To see my work, check out the shows I'm in this month, in other News & Events postings, including The Green Line at the Nave Gallery, and the Tufts Fourth Annual Juried Summer Exhibition.

For more information about Somerville Open Studios, visit www.somervilleopenstudios.org.

Spend the whole weekend wandering the city seeing all sorts of art, even ride the trolley and be entertained by performance artists and poets, or ust stop into one studio on your way to someplace else. Either way, you're likely to see something wonderful.

Throughout Somerville, MA. 12noon - 6pm, Saturday and Sunday, May 5 + 6, 2007

May 31-July 29, 2007 in the Aidekman Gallery at Tufts University
Opening Reception, Thursday, May 31, 5:30pm - 8:30p

This year my work has been selected to be included in the Tufts University Fourth Annual Juried Summer Exhibition. This is a very exciting show, in a great space. I am very, very pleased! The gallery selected the artists to include, and then the curator, Rachael Arauz, came on a studio visit and selected the specific works to include. It was a great visit and thoroughly enjoyable to hear her impressions of my work.

Click here for directions to the Aidekman Gallery at Tufts.

This should really be a fantastic show. I'm completely thrilled to be in it, and I sincerely hope to see you all there!

I'm delighted to announce that two of my pieces will be included in the upcoming show, The Green Line, coming up at the Nave Gallery in Somerville. The list of included artists looks great, and I'm really looking forward to seeing everyone else's take on the theme of the Green Line coming to Somerville.

My piece Waiting for the Red Line, Waiting for Spring will be included, as well as a brand-new piece, Waiting in the Morning, Waiting for the Green Line.

The show runs from Apr. 27 to May 27
Opening Reception Friday Apr. 27, from 6pm to 8pm

I'll be at the reception, and will be "gallery sitting" on Sat., the 28th in the afternoon. I hope to see you there!

Directions and hours follow below, after the postcard.

address & directions:
The Nave Gallery
Clarendon Hill Presbyterian Church
155 Powderhouse Blvd., Somerville, MA
map of gallery site

MBTA: From Davis Square take Bus 88 - Clarendon Hill Highland. Exit at Broadway and Curtis St. and walk 3 blocks north on Curtis Street. Turn right onto Powderhouse Blvd. and find gallery on your left. Free and open to the public. No wheelchair access.

Parking: Available in the West Somerville Neighborhood School after 5:00 and on weekends. Lot is located on Raymond St. Turn right at intersection of Powderhouse & Curtis onto Curtis and take your first left onto Raymond. Lot is located about 1 block down.

If you do not have a Somerville resident sticker you will be ticketed on neighboring streets.

hours
Fridays 5:00-8:00 & Saturdays 1:00-5:00 & Sundays 1:00-5:00
Extended hours 12-6 during Somerville Open Studios, 5-6 May 2007

Just a quick reminder:
I'll be hosting a reception for my small show it the CCTV Gallery on Prospect Street off Mass. Ave in Central Square, Cambridge, Thursday, Mar. 1 from 6:30p to 8p.

Please drop by and say hello, and take a look at some of my newest pieces.

Hope to see you there,

-Rachel

for more information, see my post about the show in News and Events, or visit the CCTV Website.

I'm delighted to announce that my work was selected in the Somerville Arts Council (LCC) Artist Fellowship Grant competition for 2007!

With the grant award I was able to cut back my teaching load and put that much more time into my studio work. Also with the grant award is an expected "community service" component, which probably means I'll paint one of the switch-boxes in the Somerville Area this summer—a project I'll greatly enjoy.

Congratulations to all of this year's grant recipients!

I have a small show of my work hanging in Central Square Cambridge right now, in case you're in the area and might want to swing by and take a look.

I'll be having a little opening reception on Thursday, March 1, from 6:30pm to 8pm.

It's at CCTV's "Drive-by-Gallery," which, if you're in the area, you've probably, in fact, driven by on Prospect Street, just north of Mass Ave.

CCTV lists their address as 675 Massachusetts Avenue, but the gallery is around the corner, at what would be 41 Prospect Street, if it had an address. You can walk by and look at the work through the window, or come in to the station and look in the gallery if you want. [You can visit CCTV's site at www.cctvcambridge.org]

I've decided not to exhibit during Somerville Open Studios this year, so that I can finally have a chance to go around and get to other studios in Somerville this year, so this mini-show may be your best bet to see my newest pieces.

I hope everyone is keeping warm and well, and maybe I'll see you at my little reception?

The Massachusetts Convention Center, in South Boston, maintains a rotating display of work from artists across the state.

Currently my piece "Home Shopping: Red and White Awning" is on display there through July of 2007. There will be a Gala Party event at the end of the show, so look back for more information on dates and times as that gets closer.