This is the story of two people who build mystical worlds from plywood, metaphor, and the electricity of collaboration. Megan and Murray McMillan construct sets in gritty, forgotten places, then stage and record performances that read like dreams. Their videos unspool inside art installations.

In the beginning—the late 1990s—Megan was a writer, and Murray was a sculptor. Now, they’re both more like multimedia producers—or kids building a treehouse to play in on a ridiculously sophisticated scale. “You taught me about narrative,” Murray says to Megan, “and I taught you about space.”

Murray and Megan McMillan, a still from Explode Every Day: An Inquiry into the Phenomena of Wonder, 2016, video. Photo by the artists

They’re sitting in their new studio, a carriage house behind the home they recently bought in Cranston, Rhode Island. The downstairs is crammed with a lawnmower, camera tracks, and brawny wooden boulders they made for Explode Every Day: An Inquiry into the Phenomena of Wonder, an exhibition at MASS MoCA that ran from May 2016 to March 2017. By this summer, it will be their fabrication space. Upstairs, the open door of the hayloft looks across treetops to Narragansett Bay. In six weeks, they say, the loft will be renovated into a state-of-the-art design studio. Upstairs, dreams will be plotted. Downstairs, they’ll be made real.

“Megan and Murray are constantly engaged with the notion of wonder, of time stopping and being in an in-between space,” says MASS MoCA curator Denise Markonish, who organized Explode Every Day. The couple’s ambitious installation for that show, In What Distant Sky, took four years to design and build. The piece began in a massive coal bin on the museum’s campus. “It was like being in a Richard Serra piece,” marvels Megan.

They’re drawn to settings crusty with history. For What Stands Between Us and the Sun (2010), they built an artificial lake inside an abandoned mill building in Central Falls, Rhode Island. This Land is a Ship at Sea (2015) unfolded in the catacombs of Fort Warren, an old fort and Civil War prison on Georges Island in Boston Harbor.

A place’s specific textures—rust, grime, seared wood—set the stage for their work. So do unlikely materials. The video installation What We Loved and Forgot (2010), in which people ritualistically construct giant daylilies, came about after a contractor’s young widow gave the couple some leftover industrial-grade yellow plastic. “She found out we were artists,” says Megan. “She said, ‘Use it to make something really beautiful.’ We didn’t know how to do that for a long time.” Then they thought of daylilies, whose blooms remain open for just a day, then wither and fall.

In that shoot, the McMillans turned the camera on their own process. The video follows a man as he walks past the flowers being assembled and into a space near where a woman makes sushi—the food that would feed the project’s cast and crew. “We try to make it great: great food, a fun party experience,” describes Megan of filming. “And we have life happening alongside these cinematic moments.” They always invite friends to play. “We like to work with people we know, to stitch their stories together,” says Megan. “We think of it as visual poetry.”

One friend, aerialist Thea Ulrich, performed without a safety harness in In What Distant Sky standing on a boulder that rose several stories. On the way up, she encountered a Japanese couple on a balcony making tea, played by Hirokazu and Hiroko Fukawa. Hirokazu was Murray’s first sculpture teacher. The piece required sprawling vision and exacting execution—a typical McMillan cocktail of creativity and limitation.

Murray and Megan McMillan, in their carriage house studio. Photo by Natasha Moustache

There’s a meant-to-be quality to the McMillans’ love story. The couple met growing up in Dallas and dated as teens. The romance sputtered when Murray went to college, but they reconnected and married young in 1997. Both were creatives: Megan edited poetry journals and played cello until Murray’s art invited her in. He’d tell her about his pieces, and she’d give him feedback. “Really good feedback,” Murray says, looking at his wife. “Then I realized there’s as much of you in this work as there is of me.”

“We realized quickly that to do the work we wanted to do, there wasn’t enough time to keep separate projects,” adds Megan.

At first, they moved frequently. In St. Louis, they found a dusty, unused auditorium in the local veterans’ hospital, and staged Channelbone (2007), a video in which veterans with paralysis in wheelchairs pull helium balloons and dancers tango on a high balance beam. They screened the video, its themes teetering between freedom and limitation, inside a fabricated whale’s skeleton.

The McMillans never intended to land in Rhode Island, but Murray was offered a teaching job at Roger Williams University. Megan teaches, too, at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts at Tufts University. Teaching fits in the same wide net of collaborative energy that kindles their work. In In What Distant Sky, Murray’s former teacher whacks rocks together to light a fire to warm the tea. “It’s also about sparking, banging rocks to create a catalyst energy,” says Megan. “That’s what teaching is. You have the fuel and someone gives you the spark.”

They love Rhode Island because the artist community here provides its own sparks. When they started constructing the boulders for In What Distant Sky, Barnaby Evans, who created WaterFire, a pageant of bonfires on barges in Providence’s rivers, offered them free fabrication space—a sizable donation.

Murray and Megan McMillan, Channelbone, 2007, installation with video, 50 x 16 x 16 ft. Photo by the artists

After collaborating as artists for 15 years, Megan and Murray started a new, familial enterprise. The arrival of sons Arlo, 5, and Jack, 1, prompted their move from Providence to Cranston. In Providence, the McMillans’ studio wasn’t nearby. Now that it’s just outside, they have more flexibility as artists and parents.

Their next project is home based. “We like the idea of embracing the studio as a limitation,” Murray explains. “What can we do right here that returns us to our roots?” Their plan—and who knows how closely they’ll follow it; they like to improvise with glitches that arise—involves a camera filming from a hoisted bucket, a fake landscape, the hayloft, and a sand pile.

Always, they’re in conversation. “It’s a really fun part of our relationship,” says Megan. “We have this rhythm together: ‘What if we do this?’ ‘What if we do that?’”

The new piece has a smaller scale and a faster turnaround than recent projects, but there’s a new twist: Arlo will play a part. Megan has a picture of Murray overseeing construction at MASS MoCA with Arlo snuggled against him in a BabyBjörn baby carrier. Wrapping the kids into the work seems like a natural evolution: it syncs with their spirit of play, and with the family feeling they foster among their collaborators.

Children can be brilliantly creative, but they aren’t always the easiest or most willing coworkers. It’s the next added degree of difficulty for a pair of artists who thrive on a blend of comfort and complexity. “It has a lot to do with letting go of control,” admits Murray, the man who oversaw a project that hoisted high a harness-free aerialist on a wooden boulder. “I feel that’s what I need right now. I’ve had too much control.”

Megan and Murray McMillan
Cranston, Rhode Island
Website

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On day three of Miami Art Week, all the press previews and openings are over, but the fair perusals don’t stop here. Back when this art extravaganza was first organized, these first three days were key. Folks would flood to the openings and previews (or vernissage for those in the know), see the works at a few fairs, make their art purchases and/or sales, then take the weekend off. Today, it’s a much different game. Not only are there more buyers than ever, but each gallery owner and, in some cases, the artists who accompany them, have to remain present and working until late in the evening Sunday.

First up for us on this third day of holy art fair perusals is one of the longest running art fairs in Miami and the last big Miami Beach art fair we haven’t visited; PULSE.

Katelijne De Backer, the newly anointed director of PULSE, says the fair seeks to create more accessibility around the kind of works being presented at Art Week. “Even for those who cannot collect, the fair offers an opportunity to meet and talk with artists you would never otherwise have access to. I think this kind of generosity is important, especially now,” she told the New York Times.

William Baczek, owner at William Baczek Fine Arts in Northampon Massachusets, agrees that the fair is more accessible not only for folks who aren’t art collectors, but for smaller galleries that are essentially locked out of the larger Art Basel scene. Baczek presented paintings by Jaq Chartier and Jana Burke as well as sculptures by Anne Lilly. By the time we caught up with him, Baczek had already made a few sales.

After leaving PULSE, it was time to see a good Take Magazine pal — one of our 2017 Artists to Watch, Tanja Hollander. We met Hollander in the swanky VIP collectors’ lounge at Art Basel, easily the largest and most talked about fair at Art Week Miami. MGM Resorts Art & Culture presented her work as a participatory installation where attendees, much like at her past Mass MoCA installation, can add to her growing collection of sticky notes where people write their definition of a “true friend.” The folks at MGM Resorts Art & Culture chose to include one of Nick Cave’s sound suites in the suite, making the interactive exhibition felt like a spiritual continuation of her work with Mass MoCA since her installation there was positioned immediately before the entrance to Cave’s sullen yet sparkly meditation Until (both shows curated by Denise Markonish). 

One of two interactive installations by Tanja Hollander at Art Basel | Presented by MGM Resorts Art & Culture

Though most of the fairs are populated by galleries from Chicago, Los Angeles, New York City and San Francisco (and all the other art hot spots across the world), there’s still much to explore in terms of New England artists, galleries, and their intimate connections to the broader art world.

Check in with us tomorrow for more coverage of Art Week in Miami when we chat with Auerus Contemporary of Providence Rhode Island and Mary Sky of Hookset, Vermont. 

Top photo interior of the collectors’ lounge at Art Basel featuring Nick Cave’s sound suite and Tanja Hollander’s interactive exhibition entitled Are You Really My Friend presented by MGM Resorts Art & Culture.

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At Art Week Miami, UNTITLED, Art Fair Miami is one of the big fairs. Though there are nearly endless booths to peruse featuring galleries and artists from around the world, UNTITLED seems even more concerned with providing novel experiences for the art kids and elders frequenting the fair. Ten limited edition free posters by famous artists, six different “special projects” installed and curated by UNTITLED throughout the fair, and nearly moment-to-moment programming add up to create what feels less like an art fair and more like a bazaar.

Anyway, amongst the madness were two New England galleries: Steven Zevitas Gallery from Boston, Massachusetts, and LaMontagne Gallery from Winchester, Massachusetts.

Alex Jackson | (C)(S)ell(ar)(er), 2017, oil on canvas, 72 x 66 inches

Steben Zevitas Gallery showed selected works from Alex Jackson, who graduated from the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture, in Skowhegan, Maine in 2015 and then went on to earn an MFA in painting and printmaking from Yale University. His works are daunting, both in size and thematic exploration.

Excuse MeKim Faler, 2017, Graphite Print

LaMontagne Gallery brought works from two New Englanders and one New York artist. Kim Faler’s work was on the scene alongside two of Joe Wardwell’s large wordy collages, sort of a minimized version of his massive work on view right now at MASS MoCA in North Adams, Massachusetts.

What They Want I Don’t KnowJoe Wardwell, 2016, oil on canvase, 60 x 50

Though Take Magazine isn’t necessarily a space for promoting art from outside New England, we can’t help but mention a few folks in this roundup. First, Eugenio Ampudia’s kinetic sculpture that morphs from the word “time” into shapes and patterns, then back again, serenely offers viewers a soothing, tangible work that found a way to assert itself amid the din of the fair (fun fact: the artist’s name was just scrawled into the wall below the piece, near the floor with no description and barely legible.)

A post shared by JohnW (@microwavedkale) on Dec 5, 2017 at 3:46pm PST

Additionally, the New York City-based gallery The Hole presented a selection of languid portraits by Eric Yahnker that spoke to basically everyone who walked by the booth. Donald Trump blow-drying his hair, a late-Victorian mother nursing her baby with a two-liter bottle of Mountain Dew and Justin Bieber painted in reverence like the Madonna Child all done in a sfumato that would rival da Vinci.

Mother’s Dew Eric Yahnker, 2017, Oil pastel on paper, 68.5 x 52″

Check in with us tomorrow as we give you the exclusive first look at SCOPE and INK Miami. 

Top photo courtesy UNTITLED, Art Fair

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Yes, of course, we’ll be at Art Basel. However, there’s so much more to Miami Art Week than the big fairs pushing big name artists and throwing parties. Art Week in Miami also consists of dozens of smaller fairs showcasing emerging, mid-career, and straight-up famous artists from all over the world. We’re looking to take our talents beyond South Beach and explore any and all fairs with New England connections. Yes, it’s an audacious task, but we think we can pull it off. Here’s our plan

UNTITLED, Art
Dec. 6 – 10

“Untitled, Art is an international, curated art fair founded in 2012 that focuses on curatorial balance and integrity across all disciplines of contemporary art. Untitled, Art innovates the standard fair model by selecting a curatorial team to identify, and curate a selection of galleries, artist-run exhibition spaces, and non-profit institutions and organizations, in dialogue with an architecturally designed venue.”

Hot New Englander(s) on-site: Kim Faler & Joseph Wardell, both represented by LaMontagne Gallery.

INK Miami
Dec. 6 – 10

“The Ink Miami Art Fair transforms the historic Suites of Dorchester Hotel into distinctive art galleries, surrounded by a verdant and tranquil courtyard. Visitors are invited to explore our main galleries offering a wide range of works on paper including new and noteworthy editions.”

Hot New Englander(s) on-site: Childs Gallery, which will have its whole booth transformed into an immersive print environment by multimedia artist Sara Zielinski.

Adam’s Nest at Art Gasel 3
Hotel Gathering
Dec 6 – 10

“Adam’s Nest is an idea that has been brewing for ages and the universe provided an opportunity to grab a retail space in Provincetown’s east end. The physical shop opened its doors in June 2016. We are located right next to Wired Puppy coffee and feature art, apparel, jewelry, and whatnot! We select items that appeal to our unique sense of humor, values and our lifestyle. We seek out artists and items through friends, our travels and various social media avenues and are always on the lookout for something interesting to share.”

NADA Miami 2017
Dec. 7 – 10

Mrs. Gallery out of Maspeth, New York, will be presenting varied works from Portland, Maine artist Elizabeth Atterbury.

Tanja Hollander at Art Basel

We’ll be visiting the Maine-born, Facebook-famous photographer Tanja Hollander at the Art Basel Collectors’ Lounge where Hollander will be signing copies of her new book Are Your Really My Friend, which is a collection of photographs that originally appeared in her installation of the same name at MASS MoCA this year.

PULSE Miami
Dec. 7 – 10

“Founded in 2005, PULSE Contemporary Art Fair is an established part of the annual art calendar and is recognized for providing its international community of emerging and established galleries with a dynamic platform for connecting with a global audience. PULSE offers visitors an engaging environment in which to discover and collect the most compelling contemporary art being produced today.”

Hot New Englander(s) on-site: William Baczek Fine Arts from Northampton, Massachusetts

This is just a few of the artists, fairs and galleries we plan to check on over the next week. Come back to our website everyday for more Art Week Miami updates and follow us on social for up-to-the-minute coverage.

Top photo courtesy PULSE Miami

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The Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum, the only institution in Connecticut devoted solely to contemporary work, boasts 17,000 square feet of gallery space and a two-acre sculpture garden. Open since 1964, it has a history of showing now-legendary artists, including Agnes Martin, Robert Rauschenberg, and Frank Stella. Admission is just ten bucks. So why haven’t you been?

For one thing, “We’re in a colonial-era town, in a historic district—not the normal place you’d expect to see contemporary art,” explains executive director Alyson Baker of its Ridgefield location. But far from displaying musty antiques, the former home of visionary collector Larry Aldrich shows only the most of-the-moment art. Aldrich grew to understand that keeping a permanent collection limited his ability to support current artists. In the 1980s, he sold his acquisitions, and the Aldrich Museum was reborn as a place able “to be nimble and responsive,” says Baker. “Often, we’re commissioning artists to make work.”

For example, take a look at Your Turn. Through April 22, artists Alex Schweder and Ward Shelley are living on either side of a wall-like structure comprising sliding modules—bed, desk, kitchen—that can only be used by one person at a time. Visitors can chat with the artists as they go about their day.

Baker hopes pieces such as Your Turn will make Ridgefield your next art destination. “Places like MASS MoCA have done a great job of making people understand that contemporary art can be seen in places that are non-traditional or unexpected,” she says. “You really have to make it a sort of pilgrimage.”

Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum
Ridgefield, Connecticut
Website

Illustration by Jen Epervary

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Five mysterious black structures that have appeared on the Mass MoCA campus are the work of architects Tessa Kelly and Chris Parkinson. Called the Mastheads, they’ll be there through October and offer writers a chance to get down to work, and to link their current efforts to the literary past of the Berkshires.

Kelly is from Pittsfield and began devising a Pittsfield-centric project while working on her master’s thesis in architecture at Harvard. Her partner Parkinson moved to Pittsfield with her, and the two concocted an architectural project celebrating something unique about Pittsfield. “The idea was to create something smallish scale that we could feasibly get done,” Kelly says, “and bring new creative people into the city of Pittsfield to introduce them to this place in hopes of secretly recruiting a younger creative set to look at Pittsfield in a new way.”

Each structure is based on the historic home of a Berkshires writer. This past July was the first season of the Mastheads program inviting five writers from around the country to spend the month working in the tiny writing studios placed around the Berkshires. The Melville and Hawthorne studios were at Arrowhead, now home to the Berkshire Historical Society; the Holmes and Longfellow studios were at Canoe Meadows, Holmes estate and a meeting place for the Fireside Poet group; and the Thoreau studio was in Springside Park, which was on Thoreau’s path to Mount Greylock.

Thoreau studio in Springfield Park, Pittsfield. Photo courtesy of the architects.

“The approach we took with all of them was to simultaneously look at the houses themselves but also to understand what works they were actually producing when they were in those houses,” says Kelly, “and to think about ideas we could take from the thinking they must have had to write those works, and then somehow set up those conditions in the studios.“

Portland OR-based writer John Lusk Babbott worked in the Holmes studio through July and said it was a productive time for him. “The interior was pale, grained pine and larch, and was fragrant with wood, pine tar, and stayed comfortable well into the afternoon despite the summer heat,” says Babbott. “To write in an environment like the one The Mastheads offers is to write truly in situ, and to do so as many hours as desired, for 31 days in a row.”

Hawthorne Interior. Photo courtesy of the architects.

Comfort was a big part of the architects’ consideration. Each studio features a built-in desk and bench, along with a chair, as well as various-sized operable panels in the walls. Cross-ventilation created by these keeps the atmosphere fresh, and the use of cross-laminated timber to build the structures maintains the night-time cool throughout the day.

Tessa Kelly and Chris Parkinson. Photo by Ben Garver of the Berkshire Eagle. Provided courtesy of the architects.

Kelly says that while they are unsure if Mass MoCA will repeat the project in 2018, it will return to Pittsfield next summer, though the Mass MoCA location has been unique to the architects, giving the studios a chance to stand united for a change. “When they were in Pittsfield, writers were alone in one vast studio, so this was our first time seeing them all together as a little community,” Kelly says.

Tessa Kelly and Chris Parkinson, architects
Pittsfield, Massachusetts
Website
Facebook
Instagram

Top image: The Mastheads at MassMoCA. Photo courtesy of MassMoCA

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From braiding and rituals to altering memories, Silvi Naçi uses the power of performance to uplift the voices of marginalized communities. Under the nom de plume Silver Projects, Naçi has produced an impressive body of work that includes an artist residency at MASS MoCA (summer 2017) and the founding of STAND UP: Women* You Should Know—an ongoing series of lectures, interviews, and exhibitions focusing on “showing the work of marginalized artists of different class, race, gender identity, religion, cultural ethics, and immigration status”—a 45-woman* group show that premiered at Boston’s Gallery Kayafas in July 2017.

Silvi Naci, Weight of Memory, 2016

Take: What was it like growing up in Albania, and when did you immigrate to the United States?
Silvi Naci: I knew I wanted to be an artist since I was six years old—studying in Fier’s art and music school, [Shkolla] Jakov Xoxa. My cousin, an established painter, taught me how to paint in oils. I continued to study art after moving to the States at the age of 14. Leaving Albania was heartbreaking—but my mother wanted to give my sisters and me the opportunities that Albania couldn’t offer for three ambitious women hungry for education.

T: What have your experiences been as an artist and immigrant living in Boston?
SN: I’ve always had this overwhelming sense of non-belonging to any place, except with my mother. Leaving Albania at such an important age definitely created a slit in my mind. Although I have lived in Boston on and off for 16 years, I have never felt at home. Just this past summer, I returned “home” to Albania after nine long years. I thought maybe I would feel at home there, or at peace. But much has changed, and I have changed. And although I miss even the smallest rock in Albania, I am now an outsider [there] as I am an outsider living in the States.

I often ask other artists if they would be making the same artwork they make in the United States back in the country where they are from, so I started to ask myself the same question. Being born and raised in a country of control, oppression, corruption, and fear, it’s strange to think about ideas like, “You can be whatever you want,” and “Anything is possible.” Lower-middle-class Albanians living in Albania right now do not have that luxury of thought. A lot of my work looks at this disconnect, the contrast, and ideals. I am always trying to build a bridge between these two cultures and traditions.

T: Your work focuses on uplifting marginalized communities such as women, immigrants, and the LGBTQ community. Why is this important for you?
SN: I believe that if I ever have any power to be heard, I must bring people with me. There is an African proverb I love: “If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together.” I can’t imagine anything I would rather do than work with others and create meaningful and impactful work together. My practice is motivated by providing vigorous learning experiences in the arts, and supporting the voices of disenfranchised and ignored cultures. My curatorial work focuses on similar issues that my art addresses: gender, race, social politics, identity, immigration, borders. It is important for me to look at how people are working with these ideas in ways that I have never seen before—not only so I can learn, but to engage with others as well.

Untitled artwork by Silvi Naci

T: How has being an artist engaged your political beliefs in this intensely divided climate?
SN: That can be a whole article in itself! When POTUS won, much like everyone else in our country, I was heartbroken—filled with anxiety and panic. My family and I had already read this book, about Albania—we know how it ends. But [having come] to the States for safety and a better life, we now thought, “Where do we go from here?” The day after the election, I deleted all of my social media accounts besides Instagram, and decided to only focus on art and education. That seemed like the only answer for me to continue living. I just turned back to art and working with people who want to have engaging dialogue instead of turning to hate.

T: Can you describe one of your favorite recent performances?
SN: An ongoing performance that is so dear to me is ONE: pairing myself with someone of another communist culture, past or present, with a similar traumatic history—we braid our hair together into one. Mother Nature intended us to be one people, but as contemporary Western practices promote individuality and uniqueness, we struggle to disconnect and pull apart from each other. Physically and mentally [it’s] a painful act, clear in our expressions. I have a long list of people/countries I want to represent in this work. I think in the end it will be a long video through which the viewer is traveling through the world, one braid at a time.

Silvi Naci
Dorchester, Massachusetts
Website
Instagram

Top image: Still of Naçi from KURV (“whore” in Albanian). Photo courtesy of Silvi Naçi

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You could almost set a timer —every 20 years or so, the Northampton-area music scene attracts national attention. Bands get signed, stories get written, hype builds. Then, like a lighthouse beam, the spotlight rotates away to the next town or sound. A couple of decades go by, and the whole process repeats: starting in the late 1960s with western Massachusetts acts like Arlo Guthrie, Clean Living, and Fat; continuing into the late ’80s and early ’90s with Dinosaur Jr., Sebadoh, and the Scud Mountain Boys; and moving all the way up to a crop of current groups that includes And the Kids, LuxDeluxe, and California X.

Yet as any music fan in the region knows, the local scene doesn’t rely on outside illumination to thrive. For more than 45 years, the sound of music in western Massachusetts—in Northampton, but also throughout the Pioneer Valley and the Berkshires—has been abundant and varied. Rock ’n’ roll, blues, punk, and various indie rock sounds have all taken root, along with heavy metal, jazz, and plenty of folk. Bands have come and gone; venues have opened, closed, and burned down; and the scene has flourished through it all.

“I just always marvel at the richness of it, considering how small the area is,” says David Sokol, who was music editor at the Valley Advocate from 1977 to 1993.

Dave Sokol, photo by Izzy Berdan

Billboard magazine expressed a similar sentiment in a slightly condescending frontpage story in 1992 that described the area as “a picturesque, place-that-time-forgot farming community.” Yet despite a population less than a quarter of the 3.4 million people in greater Seattle—the aspirational baseline for music scenes since the city birthed the ’90s grunge explosion that gave us Nirvana and Pearl Jam—the four counties of western Massachusetts have for years had the essential ingredients of any successful music scene: a creative class of musicians; places for them to play; audiences who will go see them; and supportive local media, including radio station WRSI-FM and the Valley Advocate, that will play their records on the air and write about them.

Western Massachusetts is also an affordable place to live, with a youthful atmosphere that flows from the local colleges, most notably Amherst, Hampshire, Mount Holyoke, Smith, and the University of Massachusetts. It’s also near the intersection of two interstate highways, which is helpful when it’s time to go on tour. Those attributes have made this area attractive to a continual flow of music-minded people, far more than there’s room to mention. Some of them got famous; more of them, then and now, play music simply because they love it and it’s fun.

“Northampton is an incredible place to emerge as an artist and to find that group of people who support what you do,” says folksinger Dar Williams, who moved to Northampton in 1992 and began building her career. So far it’s yielded 10 solo studio albums, including this year’s Emerald. Though she relocated to New York in 2000, she adds, “I would say it’s the reason I’m still doing what I’m doing.”

Ray Mason, photo by Izzy Berdan

The beginnings of the western Massachusetts scene date to the mid-1960s, when musicians like Holyoke native Ray Mason would play the local YMCA and slip an occasional original song into sets of covers of The Rolling Stones, Bob Dylan, and The Rascals. The covers-are-king attitude started to fade when bands like the Rockin’ Ramrods from Boston and The Wildweeds from Connecticut came through playing their own songs, almost as if they were demonstrating that such a thing was possible for regular guys from New England.

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Recently, it’s been the cultural trend to rope off the beginning of the year to catch up on all the moments, movies, music, and writings we missed last year. So, once you’ve caught up with Moonlight and/or finally get around to listening to the newest And The Kids album (released summer ’16), consider looking ahead to our Artists to Watch for 2017.

Though we do have favorites of our own, we could not adequately survey the region for artists to watch without consulting a few of our many trusted curators and friends: Abigail Ogilvy, Owner of Abigail Ogilvy Gallery in Boston’s South End; Randi Hopkins, Director of Visual Arts at Boston Center for the Arts; and Ian Alden Russell, Curator at Brown University’s David Winton Bell Gallery.

All of these artists sculpt, paint, record, and perform works worth following, especially considering our current social and political climate. Since we’ve recently been reminded that we cannot rely on the centralized leadership of our democracy to defend our integrity as human beings, or the integrity of thought through the defense of facts and mutual respect, we look to artists like these as our true cultural gatekeepers. The artists on our list are people we can trust to use bold expression, tenderness, and knowing imagery to question the status quo. Sometimes they hold up a mirror to our culture. Other times, they hold up a loudspeaker or a puppet mask, a paintbrush, a bouncy ball, or a digital camera.

These cathartic, sarcastic, pointed, paradoxical, and, most of all, inimitable artists are who we’re watching in 2017.

Nabeela Vega, Visiting Thahab (series, ongoing) | Photo courtesy Robin Allen LaPlante

Nabeela Vega | Boston, MA

Using photography, performance, and video, Boston-based artist Nabeela Vega creates immersive works that examine elements of our individual experiences of the social world as it intersects with identity, personal politics, and queerness. Oftentimes, the work calls into question our taken-for-granted notions about bodies, media, and gender. As Hopkins points out, “Vega’s rich exploration of the contemporary presence and experience of the Muslim femme takes forms that are performative, collaborative, generous, vulnerable, and exquisitely beautiful. The artist takes risks with their own body to think about our greater body as citizens and humans, work that feels vital and particularly brave today.”

Tanja Hollander | Auburn, ME

“This month sees the premiere of the entirety of Tanja Hollander‘s Are you really my friend? at MASS MoCA, the Maine-based photographer’s epic endeavor to photograph all 626 of her Facebook friends,” says Russell. “Bringing her across the nation and around the globe, the work probes the issue of friendship and connection in our digitally mediated age. Questioning the boundaries between personal, public, and online life, the project presents us with intimate portraits she took of the personal spaces and environments of the people she is connected to via social media.”

Teatime, 2016, Acrylic and mixed media on steel 18 x 12 in. | Photo courtesy Abigail Ogilvy

Katie Wild | Pawtucket, RI

“Wild’s striking, cinematic paintings transform the tradition of figure and portraiture to achieve a contemporary understanding of the human condition,” says Ogilvy. “In her most recent series, Steampunk, Wild references photographs she took of real people at a steampunk festivals. In 2016 she was a recipient of the Fay Chandler Emerging Artist Award in Boston, MA.”

Kai Franz | Providence, RI

“Originally from Cologne, Germany, Kai Franz makes sculptures and drawings that confront and complicate the relationships between process and artifact,” says Russell. “Testing and questioning the potential of computer-aided design while appearing as formal aesthetic statements in their own rights, Franz’s works and projects are strong examples of the tradition of critically and technologically-engaged art making in Providence.”

Mutsu Crispin, Mapping the Day, 2015, bouncy balls, plexiglass, stainless steel, 41″h x 41″w x 2.25″d | Photo courtesy Mitchell Giddings Fine Arts

Mutsu Crispin | Brattleboro, VT

Atlanta, Georgia transplant turned Southern Vermonter mutsu crispin (aka John DiGeorge) is a performance artist, filmmaker and. . .bouncy-ball sculptor? Last year, DiGeorge found a way to make those familiar, seemingly childish forms simultaneously fun and subversive. We’re sure we can find some comfort in these delightfully bright pieces as the year turns potentially darker. “. . . the balls float forward and back within their designs or wanderings, rhyming with their cast shadows, ghostly glows, nearby hardware and reflections,” says the artist. “These dear objects from our childhood are animated and transmogrified, speaking in a chorus at once lighthearted, humorous, mysterious, and ecstatic.

Matt Neckers, Crash Site, 2015, 72 H x 24 W x 24 in | Photo courtesy the artist

Matt Neckers | Eden, VT

“Neckers’ Portals hidden in forests, a rocket in a tree, a parachute caught in branches—Matt Neckers’ installations interrupt the serenity of the woods,” says Russell. “Fascinated by the impact of mechanization on our imagination, Neckers opens up earnest, generous, and sustained conversations about the world we inhabit, the others that may exist, and the precarious journeys between.”

Arien Wilkerson | Hartford, CT

“I am Arien aka TNMOT AZTRO aka ARI AZTRO.”

Wilkerson is one of Hartford’s many young Renaissance Men. His list of current projects is too long to add here; suffice it to say that Wilkerson, at age 25, is an uber-accomplished dancer, film artist, activist, artistic director, and overall creative mastermind. In the words of our dear friends at Breakfast, Lunch, and Dinner, “He’s too black, too vocal, and too flagrant. He’s also one of the few indispensable figures in Hartford’s ever-continuous push to art and cultural prominence. Say hello to the city’s new brash monarch.”

Toby Sisson, 2015 Black Tears, Ink and beeswax on paper 7″x5.5″ each, approx. 6.5’x16′ overall | Photo courtesy the artist

Toby Sisson | Providence, RI

“Toby Sisson‘s encaustic paintings and drawings rigorously explore the metaphoric potential of abstract form,” points out Russell. “Often contrasting shades of black with shades of white, Sisson’s works are informed by personal narrative and her mixed race heritage. Her images and forms offer open-ended prompts for poetic reflection on the assumed oppositions and conflicts with which we struggle—personally, emotionally, and socially.”

Michael Stasiuk, Marco the Magician, 2012, 25″ x 24″ x 10″ metal crumber pan, darning egg, rhythm stick fragments, assorted wood fragments | Photo courtesy Abigail Ogilvy

Michael Stasiuk | Portsmouth, NH

“His multimedia sculptures assemble found objects into playfully illustrated characters,” says Ogilvy, “each with a unique personality. His choice of material imparts a sense of nostalgia and memory, imaginatively re-purposing everyday objects that accompany us throughout our lives.”

J.R. Uretsky and Scott the cat | Photo courtesy the artist

J.R. Uretsky | Providence, RI

If you read Take, you already know we’ve had a crush on J.R.’s awkwardly signature brand of brave, big-feeling, truth-telling performance for a long time. Yet it’s not only her magically strange, emo-queer performances to watch out for in 2017. Specifically, it’s J.R.’s puppets that will lend you space to emote and bring us all solace as 2017’s social and political climate sags and twists. “The characters that emerge through her performances are relatable yet also alien and non-specific,” says Hopkins, “forging an ambiguous space where emotion is the remaining constant.”

Titus Kaphar, Space to Forget, 2014, oil on canvas, 64 x 64 x 2 3/4 inches | Photo courtesy Jack Shainman Gallery

Titus Kaphar | New Haven, CT

Kaphar creates new histories with each work he paints and sculpts. It’s through his careful reinterpretation of the past, mixed with artful exclusion and deconstruction of specific images that makes his work powerful, “In my work I explore the materiality of reconstructive history. I paint and I sculpt, often borrowing from the historical canon, and then alter the work in some way.” says Kaphar “I cut, crumple, shroud, shred, stitch, tar, twist, bind, erase, break, tear, and turn the paintings and sculptures I create, reconfiguring them into works that nod to hidden narratives and begin to reveal unspoken truths about the nature of history.”

Inside shot of Love Shack instillation featuring video loop of “Waking Up And Getting Up Has Never Been Easy”, instillation and video by Coe Lapossy | Photo courtesy the artist’s website

Coe Lapossy | Boston, MA

Ever wonder what it’d be like to wake up in a super-cozy, literally endless bed? Well, Lapossy has theorized it, and has many more other immersive, speculative works ready for the upcoming year. “Lapossy brings feminist sass and romantic charm to smart sculptural and installation work,” says Hopkins. “Pop culture seeps into her artistic vocabulary with ease, for example weaving 20th-century art history together with early 90s romantic-fantasy film in a setting that evokes the vaudeville vibe of the magician’s trick.”

Nabeela Vega – Boston, Massachusetts
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Tanja Hollander – Auburn, Maine
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Katie Wild – Pawtucket, Rhode Island
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Kai Franz – Providence, Rhode Island
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Mutsu Crispin – Brattleboro, Vermont
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Matt Neckers – Eden, Vermont
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Arien Wilkerson – Hartford, Connecticut
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Toby Sisson – Providence, Rhode Island
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Michael Stasiuk – Portsmouth, New Hampshire
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J.R. Uretsky – Providence, Rhode Island
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Titus Kaphar – New Haven, Connecticut
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Coe Lapossy – Boston, Massachusetts
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VISITING THAHAB AT SUPERNOVA PERFORMANCE ART FESTIVAL | PHOTO COURTESY THE ARTIST

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