Above Our Mantels
The Valley’s got artists aplenty, and it’s nigh unto impossible to list all the worthy works of art that grace gallery walls Valley-wide. Here’s a short list of our favorite Western Mass. exhibitions this year, followed by a few works we’d sell cheap.
Matthias Leutrum, Human Cannonballs: Who doesn’t love flying through the air?
Burns Maxey and Maggie Nowinski, Reflections: Turning Eastworks into a Valley Mass MoCA.
Michael Oatman, All Utopias Fell: Climb inside a spaceship?
The Making of a Picture Book: The Marriage of Text and Art: An exhibition examining the collaborative processes of local children’s book authors and illustrators.
Leonard Nimoy, Secret Selves: A photography exhibit that exposes the inner desires and/or unknown personalities of 100 Northampton-area people.
In Our Tag Sales
Megrit (Meg Michael), Tea Party. Artist Meg Michael’s snoozer of a painting of a cup of tea and a teapot “represent[s] unique realism.” It’s meant as a rallying image for political tea partiers, which makes its bright orange and purple color scheme all the more inexplicable.
Thomas Kinkade, Bambi’s First Year. The “Painter of Light” has, unfortunately, begun to destroy cherished cultural icons, also including “Beauty and the Beast” and “The Wizard of Oz.” He’s also just been sentenced to 10 days in a California hoosegow for drunk driving, making us wonder if he’s more of a “Painter of Bud Light.” (See www.thomaskinkade.com/magi/release/list.do and http://www.artinfo.com/news/story/36637/light-sentence-painter-thomas-kinkade-thrown-in-jail-for-drunk-driving).
J. Seth Hoffman, Penn Ruderman and Meera Deean’s proposed and so far unrealized shower curtain, Curtain, for the Northampton rail bridge.
Brice Marden, Getting in a Pickle. Winner of the 2010 Turnip Prize for Bad Art. (See www.neatorama.com/2010/11/25/winners-of-the-2010-turnip-prize-for-bad-art/).
