Art Review: COLOR at City hall
Mar. 4th, 2005 10:49 amSomerville's latest mayor is either (a) a DemiGod of Community Outreach, (b) sucking up to us something fierce or (c) has no life.
Job: Mayor. Hobby: Mayor.
I'm not sure. He shakes my hand at nearly every public Somerville event I attend. He turned up with DPW when a tree fell on
hauntmeister's street. (I'll even take a furtive look around The Diesel before I greet Sprout as Mr. Mayor. You never know when Handshake Man will appear.)
Ok, I guess Dot was everywhere too. Or, at least her name was. Maybe his is too and it's merely not as noticable as labeling everything "Gay". (Thank SO Much, Junior High School Indoctrination! sigh)
Among his solid good points is hosting regular art shows at City Hall, to showcase our scads of resident artists. Somewhat less impressive now that I know the offices are open late on Thursday anyway. Still, there's neat Official Mayor Swag in his office, even if the art bores. (Lots of stuporbowl stuff this time.)
::
Having the theme be "color" is broader than, say, "rectangular", at least if the requirement is akin to "must contain color" as opposed to "must be about color", which it seemed to be. Nattering about the cohesiveness of theme obliged inward chuckles.
Not that it wasn't nice work, livening up institutional walls (and windows).
Daniel Maher's stained glass pieces were nice, but his work is more about playing with light (which makes night viewing suboptimal), or working with recycled glass to create a narrative.
There were pieces in the stairwells that seemed mostly black and white, with orange accents. Colorful, I guess. They seemed too odd to truly "brighten the dwindling days of winter". Several pieces inferred insects, which would be reasons to lament the arrrival of spring.
However, the show did introduce me to the works of Resa Blatman, specifically a piece called In the lush. Check out the well-done web site. The overly abstract pieces don't grab me, but I rather like the plant studies. Brightly colorful, cheery and springlike, which was what I expected from the entire show.
Perhaps I'm just still bitter about arriving too late to see the Somerville Gates when they were brought there last week...
Job: Mayor. Hobby: Mayor.
I'm not sure. He shakes my hand at nearly every public Somerville event I attend. He turned up with DPW when a tree fell on
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Ok, I guess Dot was everywhere too. Or, at least her name was. Maybe his is too and it's merely not as noticable as labeling everything "Gay". (Thank SO Much, Junior High School Indoctrination! sigh)
Among his solid good points is hosting regular art shows at City Hall, to showcase our scads of resident artists. Somewhat less impressive now that I know the offices are open late on Thursday anyway. Still, there's neat Official Mayor Swag in his office, even if the art bores. (Lots of stuporbowl stuff this time.)
::
Having the theme be "color" is broader than, say, "rectangular", at least if the requirement is akin to "must contain color" as opposed to "must be about color", which it seemed to be. Nattering about the cohesiveness of theme obliged inward chuckles.
Not that it wasn't nice work, livening up institutional walls (and windows).
Daniel Maher's stained glass pieces were nice, but his work is more about playing with light (which makes night viewing suboptimal), or working with recycled glass to create a narrative.
There were pieces in the stairwells that seemed mostly black and white, with orange accents. Colorful, I guess. They seemed too odd to truly "brighten the dwindling days of winter". Several pieces inferred insects, which would be reasons to lament the arrrival of spring.
However, the show did introduce me to the works of Resa Blatman, specifically a piece called In the lush. Check out the well-done web site. The overly abstract pieces don't grab me, but I rather like the plant studies. Brightly colorful, cheery and springlike, which was what I expected from the entire show.
Perhaps I'm just still bitter about arriving too late to see the Somerville Gates when they were brought there last week...