Little Rhodie

This week I found myself in Wakefield, RI, visiting the historic Hera Gallery. A pioneer in alternative exhibition spaces and one of the earliest women’s cooperative galleries in the US, Hera is unusual in having been established in a non-urban setting – and just a stone’s throw from the water. You really couldn’t ask for a nicer locale!

Currently on view is a selection of works from member artists featuring this particularly excellent staged photograph of sculpted cake icing (as a fan of Ace of Cakes, I couldn’t help but love this) and some smart constructions by Michael Yefko.



Mara Trachtenberg



En route back to Boston I dropped by the David Winton Bell Gallery at Brown in Providence where outgoing curator Maya Allison and AS220 director Neal Walsh curated a sharp round up of Providence painting. Shawn Gilheeney took the back wall and transformed it into a ghostly, layered mural of a decaying landscape while Lisa Perez takes paint into the sculptural with fantastic constructions that play off the wall with color and form. Local writer Greg Cook has a nice write up about it on his ever-fantastic blog.

Shawn Gilheeny

Lisa Perez

And finally, you can’t leave Brown’s art building without stopping in at the stairwell (which you’ll need to do anyhow if you need the bathroom), which Brown art and art history students have been tagging for years. A wise and fun take on the hallowed halls of academia…

-         Dina Deitsch

NATURE SPECIAL - deCordova on the Greenway, Part I

Opening crowd at Boston Harbor Islands Pavilion

July 16^th was a day of spectacles. Along with the Stanley Cup touring through Boston streets and bars came another exciting unveiling in Boston—Nature Special, a video installation in the brand new Boston Harbor Islands Pavilion on the Rose Kennedy Greenway. Curated by associate curator Dina Deitsch, Nature Special features five videos about our mediated relationship to the great outdoors by artists Jim Campbell, Sam Easterson, William Lamson, and Suara Welitoff. The installation inaugurates a guest-curated video program, a fantastic way to expose audiences to new ways of interacting with public art and a program that we hope continues well into the future. Shown on two 8 x 10 foot low-resolution LED screens, the installation is housed in the structurally and ecologically beautiful new Pavilion designed by the architectural and design firm Utile that transforms the greenway into compelling destination to welcome visitors to the Boston Harbor Islands national park area. 

Boston Harbor Islands Pavilion

Don’t miss Sam Easterson’s video of the burrowing owl peering out of its little home. The footage was created by a micro-video camera and like many Easterson videos places us within the viewpoint of the animal. Visitors to the Pavilion will be mesmerized late into the night by this little bird!

Nature Special will be on view in the Boston Harbor Islands Pavilion each evening from 7pm-11pm, Jun 16, 2011 - Oct 31, 2011.   

Sam Easterson, Burrowing Owl, 2010

Jenny Gerow

Curatorial Intern