Even though we at Take get to look at art made by different New England artists all day long, we are still regularly, pleasantly surprised by the work of someone new—or several someones, as you’ll see here in our third annual listing of artists to watch.

We asked curators from esteemed galleries and museums to tell us about artists they’ve been especially impressed by lately who deserve a wider audience, and were thrilled to get input from Trevor Smith, curator of the Present Tense, and Lydia Gordon, assistant curator for exhibitions and research, both at the Peabody Essex Museum in Salem, Massachusetts; Elizabeth Spavento, visual arts programmer at SPACE Gallery in Portland, Maine; Lindsey Stapleton, codirector of GRIN in Providence, Rhode Island; Suzette McAvoy, executive director and chief curator at the Center for Maine Contemporary Art in Rockland, Maine; Will K. Wilkins, executive director of Real Art Ways in Hartford, Connecticut; and Alan Chong, director and CEO of the Currier Museum of Art in Manchester, New Hampshire.

With such an illustrious panel, we know you’ll want to keep an eye on these artists in the coming year—and beyond.

Nicole Duennebier

Nicole Duennebier, Still Life with Meat Pile, 2017, acrylic on panel, 24 × 30 in. Photo by Christian Skorik

A bona fide New Englander, Duennebier was born in Hartford, went to college in Maine, and now lives in Boston. “Riffing off the formal tradition of Dutch still lifes, Duennebier is obsessed with excess and growing, throbbing masses,” says Gordon. “Yet, she spends a great amount of time on delicate surface treatments, complete with glimmers of gold and super fine detail. They’re repellant and beautiful at the same time.”

Duennebier has been experimenting with making clay models to help her visualize specific forms and textures in her paintings. The results of this process, including a brighter color palette, will be on display in a solo show at 13FOREST Gallery in Arlington, Massachusetts, in May.

Heather McPherson

Heather McPherson, Bupropion, 2016, painted chiffon, cast epoxy, drawing pad, 36 × 20 in. Photo by Karen Philippe

Although she freely incorporates colorful sheets of chiffon, puddles of clear epoxy, and plexiglass sheets into her work, “Heather is a painter inside and out, whether she’s making traditional paintings or animating a video—it doesn’t seem to matter,” says Stapleton. “Her language is recognizable as her own, full of history and self-reference.”

McPherson, who is based in Providence, makes decisions through the physical, experimental process of making, but that’s not to imply her work is only about mixing materials. In the pieces she’s currently creating, she’s exploring the ways art has been used throughout history as a spiritual tool.

“Last time we were in her studio, she had an enviable pile of massive primed canvases on her wall,” Stapleton says. “Something astounding is going to be on those bad boys next time we’re there, I just know it.”

Dell M. Hamilton

Dell M. Hamilton, To Haunt Is To Love: Reina #6, from Fallen Angels: Making Sense Out of Nothing, 2014–present, color film and unique digital scan on paper, 25 × 37 in. Photo courtesy of the artist

A true interdisciplinarian, Boston-based Hamilton has been tackling topics as diverse as the United States’ influence on Honduras and the history of desegregation in Boston through performance, writing, installation, curation, and more. Gordon recalls, “I had the pleasure of witnessing Hamilton perform at Boston University’s 808 Gallery. Sharing a contemporary response to historical narratives steeped in collective trauma and memory, her gestural performance involved thinking, making, and doing at the service of imagining a better future. It was really a transformative viewing experience.”

At press time, Hamilton was in the middle of producing a body of two-dimensional work called Punta: Pregunta (translated as Point: Question). She’s exploring the intricate tangles of family identity, trauma, and personal neuroses through large-scale, flat, mixed-media artwork, though she isn’t sure how two-dimensional they will stay.

Sarah Tortora

Sarah Tortora, Last Bastion of the Loser, 2016, steel, felt, cotton, hardware, 54 × 46 × 72 in. Photo courtesy of the artist

Vermont-based Tortora “is a machine, and her sculptures are the real deal,” Stapleton says. “Her craft and execution is always impeccable. She was making pretty massive work last year, but we’ve seen some small, intimate pieces on her social media that look outstanding.” (Look for her on Instagram.)

Past work includes painted wood wall pieces that resemble letter forms from an unknown language, and full-size abstractions that hint at marching soldiers or classical architecture. “One of my favorite things about her process is how she titles her work,” Stapleton continues. Titles such as Septum, Pallbearers, and Power Bottom “really solidify each sculpture’s identity in a way I haven’t experienced,” she explains. For 2018, she’s developing a new series of sculptures titled Witness Mark, which will reference the way museums illustrate geological time.

Belleau + Churchill

Belleau + Churchill, The Red Ghost, part of Fantasia Colorado, 2016, mixed media, 18 x 132 x 72 in. Photo by Caleb Churchill

This artist pair from Providence was nominated by two members of our panel. Raina Belleau and Caleb Churchill “make interesting work about history and the environment. They are sweet individuals and masterful craftspeople,” says Spavento.

“We are really into how their projects are visually interesting and accessible while ultimately being heavily research-based,” adds Stapleton. “The work is fun, but still challenging.” For a 2016 installation titled Fantasia Colorado, the pair created memorabilia such as “vintage” postcards, handmade rugs, and historic portrait busts to re-create and commemorate an odd piece of American history: a failed attempt by the U.S. Army to use camels as pack animals in the Civil War; the ultimate release of the animals into the wild; and the terrifying, truth-stretching stories of camel–human encounters that ensued.

“2017 has been a lot of residency and research work, and we’re really excited to see what comes out of that time spent in development,” Stapleton says. Indeed; as of press time, the two were planning to study the concept of utopias—and learn Esperanto, a language created in the 1800s in the optimistic hope of unifying the world—at the Wassaic Artist Residency in Wassaic, New York, in October. 2018 will see their second solo exhibition at GRIN in Providence.

Hong Hong

Hong Hong, Passage II, 2017, cellophane, wood, steel, 8 x 228 x 144 in. Photo courtesy of the artist

Born in China, Hong immigrated to the United States at the age of nine and now calls Hartford home. Working with materials as humble as mulberry fiber, mylar, Scotch tape, and fishing line, Hong creates large-scale pieces that suggest, interact with, and (when made with mylar) literally reflect their environment. She’s been making massive sheets of paper—as tall as 12 feet—using buckets and water pistols to manipulate pulp on homemade screens. Far from being precious about her finished pieces, Hong has no qualms about taking work that’s been shown and resoaking it, turning the paper back into a slurry of fiber that can be reused and remade. The work becomes cyclical, self-feeding. Wilkins says, “Hong Hong delves into the mysteries of deep time, even as her work is imbued with the sensuous presence of here and now.”

Hong had a solo show at Real Art Ways that ran from August through October, and she has an ongoing relationship with the Hartford arts organization. “We are commissioning a new work titled Everlasting Ephemera, which she will be working on during the coming year,” says Wilkins. The piece is a yearlong investigation of the temporal nature of human perception, and how those parameters affect our environment and our culture.

Farzaneh and Bahareh Safarani

Farzaneh and Bahareh Safarani, a still from Cocoon, performed at the Boston Center for the Arts, 2015. Photo by Hannah Bates

Having trained as painters at the University of Tehran, twin sisters Farzaneh and Bahareh have been branching out into video and performance while they continue their studies in Boston. The Safaranis use their twin-ness to full advantage, acting as each other’s mirrors or as dual selves on stage. “In their melding of meticulous realistic painting, extraordinary performative discipline, and the most exquisitely subtle use of video, the Safarani sisters create an uncanny sense of intimacy,” says Smith.

And it is truly a melding. The two decide which form their art takes—painting, live performance, both—by determining which will explain their idea better. They’re now hard at work on a series of paintings that each act as a paragraph in a larger story, but performance will certainly be a part of their future. In 2018, you can see their internationally recognized work in Los Angeles, Berlin, Armenia, and Iran.

Emilie Stark-Menneg

Emilie Stark-Menneg, Big Kitty Picture Show!, 2016, acrylic, oil, house paint, and sand on canvas, 70 x 105 in. Photo courtesy of the artist

Stark-Menneg was enthusiastically chosen by two of our curators. Spavento says, “Her paintings are delightful, expressive and totally singular in their vision and content. I would recommend her for everything—I’m so in love with her work.” McAvoy agrees, “Stark-Menneg is one of the freshest and most exciting young painters I’ve encountered in a while. Her work is smart, sassy, inventive, and skillful all at once, plus it is a hell of a lot of fun.”

A Massachusetts native, Stark-Menneg was based in Brunswick, Maine, until recently, when she relocated to Providence to enter an MFA program at RISD. At school, she plans to continue to explore ways to depict the shared energy found between people and places, and to examine how technology distorts and relocates our physical bodies.

Wang Yefeng (Frank)

Wang Yefeng, a screenshot from Drifting Stages, 2016, dimensions variable

Wang is a digital media artist whose surreal, disorienting animation should really be seen in motion to be fully appreciated. In one of his video pieces, generic, vaguely Asian MIDI music backs a tableau of Hooters waitresses with C-3PO heads holding meat grinders that cascade blood onto a plastic toy figure of a man in a suit, who’s lying in a bathtub with pigs’ feet, and . . . well, it’s better to visit his website and see it for yourself.

As a Rhode Island–based digital media artist with a sculptural background, Wang has been recently rediscovering his love of working with physical materials, including 3D-printed objects. Over the coming year, he plans to experiment further with mixing multiple disciplines to discover the best ways to make his ideas real.

“He’s making work unlike what we typically see in New England, probably in part because he splits his time between the United States and China,” Stapleton says. “There’s always a narrative—usually a surprising, semi-autobiographical one—behind his work, but it never gets too personal. There’s reservation in his lavishness, and now that he’s back in the States for a while, we’re looking forward to what he will come up with.”

Vivian Beer

Vivian Beer, Forth Bench, 2011, stainless steel, pure pigment, ferrocement, 96 x 48 x 48 in. Photo by Alison Swiatocha

While not unknown to us—Take profiled Beer last December, following her win on Ellen’s Design Challenge, a furniture designers’ competition à la Project Runway—Beer’s work isn’t as well known as it should be. “Vivian Beer is an exciting local artist who is pushing the boundaries of furniture making,” says Chong. “Inspired by various forms, from airplanes to high heels, her industrial chic work is both strong and beautiful.”

The streamlined, retro-industrial shapes in Beer’s work are clearly informed by her 2014 Smithsonian Artist Research Fellowship at the National Air and Space Museum—a fitting place for an artist working primarily in materials such as steel, cement, and automotive paint. “Her inventive and stylish forms have crossover appeal between functional furniture and sculptural works of art,” continues Chong.

Over the last year, Beer has been sharing her appealing design skills through teaching residencies and public art commissions across the country. She also moved her furniture studio from Manchester to Pembroke, New Hampshire, where she plans to build out a space for holding design workshops. As for the work itself, Beer will be developing a line of limited-production furniture (all of her previous pieces are one-of-a-kind) in the spring.

top image: L to R: Wang Yefeng, Dell M. Hamilton, Farzaneh Safarani, and Bahareh Safarani. Photo by Izzy Berdan; composite image by Aaron Taylor-Waldman

The post Artists to Watch in 2018 appeared first on Take Magazine.

This article originally ran in our April/May 2016 print issue. 

Curators and working artists Lindsey Stapleton and Corey Oberlander—neither of whom is yet 30—have an ambitious remit to “exhibit the work that we feel deserves the spotlight,” particularly by artists just starting their careers.

Since opening in 2013, the duo have staged more than 30 shows at a breakneck pace, including the first Rhode Island edition of Bring Your Own Beamer, a worldwide series of pop-up exhibitions where groups of artists project their work on bare walls. In addition to attending annual art fairs like Art Basel Miami Beach and the SPRING/BREAK Art Show in New York City, they recently curated GROUND RULES at the University of Arkansas’s sUgAR Gallery.

The inspiration to start an unjuried, democratic space has its origins in Stapleton and Oberlander’s student days at Massachusetts College of Art and Design, where they grew frustrated by how difficult it was to show “in a real space that wasn’t a café or a basement.”

That challenge stayed with them. After graduating in 2009 and 2010, respectively, the two lived on opposite coasts (Stapleton in San Francisco and Oberlander in the greater Boston area) until escalating rents forced them to look for a more affordable, art-friendly city. A Google search for “live/work/Providence” landed them squarely in The Plant, a sprawling mixed-use complex in the heart of Olneyville, a working-class neighborhood often called Providence’s “second downtown.”

Starting a gallery wasn’t their plan—at least not at first. “We knew we wanted it to be a studio space,” says Stapleton. “But we didn’t really figure out what we were going to do until we moved in and realized what Providence could handle.”

It took the duo a couple of months to realize that the city was hardly oversaturated with galleries showing emerging contemporary art. Researching Olneyville, they saw an opportunity to contribute to the growth of an up-and-coming arts community that includes feminist collective Dirt Palace (which celebrated its 15th anniversary in 2015) and neighboring art space Yellow Peril, which opened in 2011. “It was the perfect place for us to be,” explains Stapleton. “Not overly gentrified, still close to downtown Providence. And in the larger art-world scale, still close to Boston and New York City.”

The Transplantable, 2014 | Sarah Tortora | wood, wood composites, paint | 60×96×24 inches

GRIN’s inaugural exhibit was a group show titled Some Place Here that asked artists to riff on the prompt “home.”

“We try to do one group show to three-to-four solo shows,” says Stapleton. “We like solo shows. We like working with people who have the ability to put together a really solid body of work that can make a whole collection.”

Defining the GRIN aesthetic is a tricky business, because the work is so wide-ranging. Whether big or small, two-dimensional or three-, the guiding philosophy is playfulness and sly humor. (“Expect anti-jokes and anti-art,” reads the one-sheet for the recent group show, Besides.) Rough edges are welcome, self-importance is not.

Materials are frequently abused or subverted, as with Leah Piepgras’ day-glo clouds made of quartz, resin, or Styrofoam, or Charlie Smith’s punctured, cut, and drilled wooden assemblages that bend, snake, and contort.

Exploiting the tension between fantasy and domesticity is another frequent theme. Allison Baker’s mordantly funny video Party Girl crops tightly on two sharp-taloned hands as they carefully rip layer after layer of garish wrapping paper off a succession of gifts. The clichéd femininity of the trappings (long pink nails; hyper-saturated pink and polka-dotted paper; explosions of glitter) serve to underscore the Sisyphean punch at the end: the gifts are never revealed. The viewer remains stuck in a purgatory- loop of almost psychotic expectation.

Eddie Villanueva’s witty Guitar Ride reengineers a staple of American childhood, the kiddie ride, swapping in a classic symbol of American manhood, the electric guitar, in place of the pony. Drop 50 cents in the slot, and the guitar shimmies out the famous droning chord from “Tomorrow Never Knows” on the Beatles’ Revolver. Both curators work closely with the artists on the installation, which often becomes part of the art-making process itself. One of Smith’s early GRIN pieces, Strips, was actually created on site. “He came one day when we were de-installing the previous show,” explains Oberlander. “We were taking down a partition wall, and he asked if he could have it. ‘Sure, but it’s broken into pieces already.’ He was installing the next day, and I left for lunch. When I came back, the wall had been tipped on its side so it was a big diamond, and there’s a big 2 × 4 that’s been drilled into it. It turned into an additional piece—his reaction to the space—and it served perfectly for his show.”

That ability to “take risks and try weird ideas,” as well as collaborate outside the glare of the mainstream art world, gives the tight-knit Olneyville community its big advantage.

“As neighbors, we’ve developed what I call a ‘Spirit of Coopetition,’” notes Yellow Peril director Vanphouthon Souvannasane. “Besides aligning our opening nights, we share competitive intelligence on the international art market, specifically art fairs and other opportunities to extend the reach of our represented artists.”

Now that Stapleton and Oberlander are more enmeshed in the greater Providence arts community—including the Rhode Island School of Design, where the curators regularly sit in on portfolio reviews—they have come to appreciate the city’s long-term value for artists, particularly how it can help support more organic artistic growth. They’ve seen far too many students jump directly from graduation to a big city like New York or Boston without realizing that they may be leaving opportunity—and affordable incubator space—behind.

“When [such migration] comes to our attention, it’s like, Could you think about this?’” says Oberlander. “[Providence is] really close, and you can still access that New York scene or Boston—especially with the way that social media works.”

He and Stapleton say they have “a million different ideas” about how they can grow GRIN in the near future using the momentum they’ve built. Oberlander smiles: “It feels like we’re building a team.”

GRIN

Top image from the installation Gibberish: Sapient Fool’s Gold, 2015 | artist Jeannie Lynn Hulen | Image courtesy of GRIN Gallery

The post GRIN Reapers appeared first on Take Magazine.

For Keith Souza, the idea for a hybrid recording studio and art gallery just made sense. And thus, Machines with Magnets, a recording studio and small, independent arts and performance space, was born.

Like many creative communities, the art and music scene here are very much intertwined. It’s rare that an art opening isn’t accompanied by a musical performance, and many musicians today are inspired by or incorporate elements of visual or performance art into their work. “Many of our permanent art pieces in the performance space and gallery were made by people we’ve recorded. We’ve also featured many artists in the gallery that have either performed or recorded here,” said Souza.

Machines with Magnets live room

Located in the city of Pawtucket in Rhody, Machines with Magnets is housed in a space with very few parallel surfaces, making it great for acoustics. “I think one thing that sets us apart from other studios is the space itself,” said Souza, “the building is very unique.” With thirty-two channels running to the performance space and enough high-quality equipment where it doesn’t feel like the sound is being compromised anywhere, whether they’re tracking or mixing, they’re able to do studio quality recordings of live shows.

“We like to incorporate the sound of our rooms in our recordings rather than always relying on synthetic space,” said Souza. “Each room has its own distinct characteristics and that comes across in our recordings.”

Machines with Magnets Gallery

Souza and Co-Chief Engineer and Producer, Seth Manchester, who have been working together for well over a decade, are just scientific enough in their approach to recording which, paired with their experience and work ethic, causes Machines with Magnets to stand out from the crowd. “We care about quality and we’re not afraid to think unconventionally. I’d like to think we have a good aesthetic,” said Souza. They book quality, see-them-here-first shows, 2016 has been very busy for the studio. In addition to a slew of local talent, artists from New York City, Washington D.C., Portland, Austin, Columbia, Brazil, England, Japan, and Serbia, have paid the space a visit this year. The recent addition of a cocktail bar completes the evening of fun trifecta.

“Looking forward to the rest of this year and early next year, we’re planning on making records with Tigue (a percussion ensemble from NYC), MorganEve Swain from Brown Bird’s new project The Huntress, Way Out, the Volcano Kings, and Alec K. Redfearn and the Eyesores,” said Manchester.

On the gallery side, the space most recently hosted a fundraiser for the Providence-based GRIN Contemporary Gallery and prior that that, an exhibition titled “Playpen: New Works by Vamba Bility and Fernando Pezzino.”

For more about Machines with Magnets, visit their Website, Facebook, or twitter handles: Shows and Studio.

Top image courtesy Machines with Magnets

The post Attracted to Machines with Magnets appeared first on Take Magazine.

Providence’s Raina Belleau comes to us by way of Minnesota and one can see a mid-western influence in her work, especially in the treatment of the faux-taxidermy elements which figure prominently. While they may be positioned at odd angles or made up critters altogether, there’s a sense of Native American spirituality with the respect paid to them, and nature in general, represented in her work.

The Oracle, 2016 | 60 x 24 x 42 Acrylic paint, apoxie sculpt, bandage, chair, door mat, electrical components, extension cord, faux fur, jeans, LEDs, mirror, paper mache, plaster and spray paint

We watch miniature bugs crawling through a tiny campsite in her video Everlasting, there’s The Oracle sculpture, a human-polar bear hybrid with two left feet, and she’s also shown us a shaggy faux fur piece called Companion with fleshy bits that could be creating or consuming marshmallow-shaped objects – a most interesting pet indeed. All of these odd pieces carry a sense of fun, but her work seriously reckons with ideas to our relationship with our natural environment. There’s always something a bit decrepit that’s happened, mushrooms show up in a few of her installations.

Still from Everlasting, 2014 | Duration: 2:54 Video, color, sound

Ian Alden Russell, the self-described curator/strategist/educator, points out that Raina’s status as an emerging artist may be evolving towards the next step, “They’re someone who is already having shows, transitioning from self-started projects, to where opportunities are manifesting themselves…”

We’re looking forward to her collaboration with Caleb Churchill, entitled Fantasia Colorado, for Satellite Art Show, coming up at Miami Art Week with GRIN contemporary gallery and congratulate her on her recent Rhode Island State Council on the Arts (RISCA) fellowship grant for 2017.

Top image Companion, 2014 | 38 x 12 x 18 Faux fur, recycled insulation, polymer clay, foam, cast resin, dog collars, acrylic paint, music stand

All images by Caleb Churchill

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