Artist Silvia Lopez Chavez has been collecting packing protectors and nailing them up on her studio wall. A combination of corner protectors and various holders for retail items, all made of paper pulp, the assortment looks a bit like a 3D, topographical map. But this isn’t an installation, or a new project that she’s working on: Chavez is simply storing them until she can figure out what to do next. “Paper is one of my most beloved mediums,” she says. “I have seen piles of these paper pulp packing items out in the dumpster behind my studio, and they are just beautiful. I am trying to figure out how I can utilize them rather than letting them go to waste, so they have been slowly building up on my wall.”

Fresh Air explored the environmental and political aspects within air quality issues in Chelsea, MA, inviting the community to participate by sharing their story and serving as models for mixed-media portraits. The one-year project was partly funded by a LCC, Massachusetts Cultural Council grant | Photo courtesy the artist

Chavez breathes art in her daily life. On any given day, she can be found fervently working away in her studio at the Boston Center for the Arts, where she is also a board member, or collaborating on brightly colored projects with children at the Boston Children’s Hospital, where she is an artist-in-residence two days a week. While in her studio, Chavez concentrates on making her signature layered multimedia works that utilize a mix of monoprint, illustration, watercolor, and collage. “I love color,” Chavez says, “and illustration is something I always go back to. I am an illustrator at heart.” In her series, Fresh Air: Portrait of Chelsea Project, Chavez focused her talents on the residents of Chelsea, her home court in Boston. The series of portraits addresses the growing health problems in her neighborhood, due to the high density of diesel trucks commuting through it to service greater Boston. As she notes on her website, “Chelsea is the third most environmentally overburdened community in Massachusetts.”

Chavez’s passion for her community is also deeply interwoven with her love for working with children. Her current artist residency at the BCH has opened her eyes to the capacity of art to heal. “It is hard in some ways,” she says, “but also very beautiful, because you are able to really see the power of the creative process, which is something I greatly believe in. The power of the creative process to heal, to connect, as a way to engage in something different and connect with yourself and with others.” Chavez teaches the kids at BCH how to do collaging and printmaking, much of what she does in her studio. “They get into that mode of making and completely forget they are at a hospital in a room full of cables and machines,” she says. “Instead, they imagine this world of color and characters; all of the sudden, they are not in the hospital, they are in their imagination.”

A series of collaborative pop-up art installations throughout Boston with artist Elisa Hamilton. The artists invite the public to identify their “lemonade.” Project was funded by the New England Foundation for the Arts Creative City Grant. | Photo courtesy the artist.

In the summertime, Chavez focuses her energy on public art. Last summer, in collaboration with artist Elisa Hamilton and with funding by the New England Foundation for the Art’s Creative City Program, she completed a pop-up series of “lemonade stands” in association with the Eliot School in different neighborhoods around Boston. Lemonade Stand was used as a project to bring children and their families together, to “identify their ‘lemonade’—that positive motivator that helps each of us rise above challenges, turning the sour to sweet in our day-to-day lives.” Other projects include creating public art and murals with teenage girls through a free program at Raw Art Works, as well as her own commissioned murals and public art projects.

Silvia Lopez Chavez might very well be the wonder woman of the Boston art scene. Her practice and artistry can be found on city walls as well as in galleries, public schools, and hospital corridors, lighting up the lives of children and adults alike. Unsurprisingly, she has many things in store for 2017, including two murals that are currently in the drafting process, as well as a series of mixed-media illustrations called Imaginary Islands that will debut in the spring. “I always have a hundred things brewing in my head because I get bored so easily,” she says. “I find myself constantly coming up with projects because I need to create for myself.” Details for these shows are still in the works, so we’ll keep you updated on dates and showings.

Chavez at the studio. The project behind is a work in progress, using found recycled pulp paper packaging | Photo courtesy the artist.

Silvia Chavez Lopez – multimedia artist and educator
Boston, Massachusetts
Website
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Top photo North Shore Community Development Coalition in Salem, MA | Photo by Dominic Chavez

The post From Lemons to Lemonade appeared first on Take Magazine.

On June 3rd, 2016, J.R. and her band Feminist Conference got the ball rolling at the Boston Center for the Arts Gala with a stage full of raucous. The unsuspecting crowd of movers and shakers of the Boston arts scene faced a barrage of discomfort and amazement as J.R. Urestsky crooned sappy 80’s ballads at full blast, eventually stripping off the majority of her floral print outfit to reveal red briefs and bare legs.

Feminist Conference performing at the BCA Ball | Photo by Michael Blanchard Photography

The response was a mixed bag of surprise and uncomfortable wonderment. Uretsky notes, “I like to set up all of my performances to be failures…where the ego or whatever you want to call it, the Leo in me, feels really bad about the fact that I worked my ass off for that performance and no one wanted to listen to me sing, you know, karaoke in my underwear. Like, why? This tension makes embarrassment function as the root of the performances, the almost disaster, the performer falling to pieces in front of you, that’s where the work really hits – for me anyway. ”

Much of J.R.’s work centralizes around what she calls “expressive confessions”, powerful performances that weave a messy ensemble of narrative arcs such as heartbreak, loneliness, and grief. “The characters that emerge through these performances are relatable yet also alien and non-specific, forging an ambiguous space where emotion is the remaining constant,” says Uretsky. “In short, I make ‘feelings porn’. Like pornography, pleasure is the main pursuit of my work. I want to make work that is entertaining, that feels good and that provides space for people—for me—to emote.”

Photo courtesy of the artist

Despite her emotionally charged subject matter (endearingly referred to as “sad bro art”), Uretsky creates an absurdist dreamworld of feelings through bright colors and character expressions frozen in time. Hailed in by the not-so-threatening nature of these gloriously fluorescent puppets, J.R. creates a sense of intrigue, while also suspending viewers in a space of discomfort. “I am sort of always feeling sort of weird about bodies and I think that manifests in the sculptures…the gestures are sort of folding in on themselves a little bit…they are bright and still kind of noisy. To me, they feel like they are not noisy on purpose. I think they look that way just because they do, not because they have a big personality”.

Uretsky utilizes performance, sculpture, music and puppetry to expose the messiness of human emotion that decentralizes the polite nature of our expected social selves; a composite and affective production that visualizes the internal struggle to be human, to be alive. Her puppets and sculptures are often constructed to be worn, so that their life is found in collaboration with body movement and sound. Her current exhibition “What I Found Out there” resides at the Boston University College of Fine Arts at the Annex. Leaning into scholar Sarah Ahmed’s writing on queer grief, Uretsky has constructed a series of visual art that integrates video, audio, and puppetry to examine pain and melancholia. With new music by Feminist Conference and intricately constructed puppets made of new and found small objects, Uretsky explores how the process of grief and mourning alter the body.

Still from J.R. Uresky’s video “Bromance”

J.R. currently lives in Providence, Rhode Island and spends most of her time laying on the floor with Scott the Cat while watching Star Trek Next Generation and feeling feelings. After dropping out of bible school for Christian Education at BIOLA University in Los Angeles, she received her BFA in Interdisciplinary Studio Practice and an MFA in Sculpture and Video from the University of Connecticut.  As a self-proclaimed masculine-of-center dyke, Uretsky spends a lot of time contemplating larger conversations about masculinity, visibility, queerness, and feminism. “I am trying to figure out if the layering of familiar objects, sounds, and environments mixed with the abstract and monstrous nature of my work can illustrate the emotional experience of other. What if everyone experienced what it felt like to be other? To be queer? Would we then feel less alone?”

J.R. Uretsky is a multi-media artist  living in Providence, Rhode Island. Her work is currently on exhibition at Boston University College of Fine Arts through December 11th. Be sure to follow J.R. on Twitter. 

Top photo courtesy the artist

The post ART/Crush: J.R. Uretsky appeared first on Take Magazine.

Art that takes you in and out of linear time. Music, photography, film, and video that create “incandescent, synesthetic quality” content. This is what viewers can expect from What Time This Feels, a multimedia installation in Providence, RI. Suara Welitoff, a Cambridge-based artist who works with found footage, original pieces, and filters to create photographs and videos, curated the show in collaboration with independent curator Micah Salkind, and 186 Carpenter curator and gallerist, Jori Ketten.

Take had the chance to chat with Salkind, one of the collaborators of What Time This Feels, to learn more about his and Welitoff’s work. Salkind is a curator and scholar working and living in Providence, RI:

Tell me about where What Time This Feels started:

It makes the most sense to start with saying that Suara is my aunt – she’s my mother’s sister. I’ve been exposed to her work since I was a young kid and she was making still photographs and playing experimental music, and when I moved out to New England, we became much closer. I would take the train up to Cambridge and we’d hang out. I’ve just been fascinated by her process as a visual artist and the way she treats the objects on which she works and the way that she relates to the media she’s interpreting and messing with.

I don’t know when we started having this serious conversation about what it would be like to put a show together, but I said to Suara that I had a relationship with Jori Ketten who is the curator (and gallerist) at 186 Carpenter – 186 is a really amazing low-profit, kind of community space, that Jori runs and curates. Jori was like, ‘yeah your aunt’s work is really right up my alley, I’d really love to see what you guys put together.’ Suara has never shown in Rhode Island – and she hasn’t really done this kind of show at a space like 186 Carpenter. So it was a really exciting opportunity for me to say, okay – let’s look at all the stuff that you’re currently in process with, and we’ll pull things together that tell a coherent story.

One of the things that I told her that I was always interested in was the way that she deals with time in her practice. Suara will work on something for months, leave it for years, and then come back to it suddenly out of nowhere and it’ll make total sense. So yeah! We’ve put together a show of about 10 different pieces. There’ll be several video pieces and several still images, some of which are pulled from video work and some of which are their own objects.

What’s been one of the best parts about working on the show together?

I think it’s deepened my understanding of where Suara is coming from as a maker. It’s been really fabulous to find this deeper connection through not only her work, but through this sense of empathy that she brings through her practice as an artist, which is something that really resonates with me as a curator.

What are your future projects? What can we expect to see from either of you?

I hope to continue working with Suara as she develops her practice as an installation artist, but I am also working on an academic monograph on Chicago house music. Suara continues to hone her process in collaboration with her Boston gallerists at Barbara Krakow and other non-profit galleries in Berlin and New York.

Suara Welitoff | Photo courtesy of Micah Salkind

What Time This Feels is a multi-media installation by Suara Welitoff. The exhibition opens October 30th through December 10th, with an opening reception on November 5th at 5:00pm.
186 Carpenter Street, Providence RI. 

The post What Time This Feels: Art that Challenges the Linear Progression of Time appeared first on Take Magazine.