In a few words, describe Bostonians' attitude towards art.
Boston is pretty schizophrenic about art. On one hand our collectors are pretty conservative, which leads the commercial galleries to show fairly tame work. On the other hand, we have the colleges and universities which support a range of experimental and conceptual work, some of it very edgy.
Many of the experimental spaces in Boston were created by art school grads looking for opportunities. Two current iterations are the Berwick Research Institute and Axiom, and I can think of 20 or 30 others that have come and gone in the last decade.
How does the Boston art scene differ from the New York art scene, if
at all?
How does Toledo differ from Paris?
How is the online community and blogging changing the art scene in Boston?
It is bringing a lot of attention to art that might not get seen by too many people otherwise. Sites like Big RED & Shiny, Greg Cook's blog, HubArts and a few others are talking about what we find interesting, most of which is in out-of-the-way places. It's hard to see everything, so I like to think of the Big RED & Shiny archives as a sort of collective memory for a certain perspective about art.
Before we started Big RED, there was no place for people to find out what was going on outside of Newbury Street and the MFA, so there were a number of small, isolated groups working in different parts of town. Now, online dialogue puts them together, gets them collaborating. Occasionally this spills over to substantive change, like working with the Deval Patrick administration on health care issues, or supporting one part of the community that needs help.
What other trends are occurring right now in the Boston art scene?
The art scene in Boston is contracting dramatically. The biggest shift I have seen is the decline of independent alternative spaces, the kinds of places where artists go to experiment. The result is that many schools have been taking on this role more actively, especially MassArt, AIB (The Art Institute of Boston), NESAD (New England School of Art and Design), and SMFA (School of the Museum of Fine Arts).
The other big trend, across the art world generally, has been a rapid attempt to adapt to the art fairs. So we have seen a rise in fairly simplistic, flashy, vapid art that survives in that context. Galleries have moved in that direction because of the spread of the fairs, but now as the economy implodes many are rethinking that program. It's hard to say what we'll be seeing a year from now, but I would predict more contemplative and "hard" work, rather than the "easy" stuff created for the art fairs. The List at MIT, and Judi Rotenberg Gallery
on Newbury Street, seem to be the bellwether galleries in town right now, and both have moved toward a more craft-oriented, understated and contemplative style of work recently.
Can you briefly name a couple of up and coming artists and what
they're doing?
Here, I can really only tell you my favorites and who I'm rooting for. I love Scott Listfield's Astronaut paintings http://astronautdinosaur.com (I own one and I'm buying a second). I'm a huge fan of Andrew Mowbray's installation/performance work in the tradition of Joseph Beuys http://andrewmowbray.com (I just recorded an audio article for Aspect: The Chronicle of New Media Art about Mowbray), and I'm also a huge fan of Jeffu Warmouth - http://www.jeffu.tv/. Darren Foote had two successful shows this year, and Ria Brodell -
http://www.riabrodell.com/ seems to be on the rise, as is her partner Georgie Friedman - http://www.georgiefriedman.com/georgie_friedman.html. And, of course, the Miracle5-http://themiraclefive.com/ have been making big waves lately.
I'm also a huge fan of our homegrown type of social intervention/performance art, which includes the Institute for Infinitely Small Things -
http://www.ikatun.org/institute/infinitelysmallthings, Platform2 - http://www.myplatform2.com, and the work of Jane D. Marsching - http://www.janemarsching.com. Can I plug my own Harvey Loves Harvey http://harveylovesharvey.com/cgi-bin/HLH.cgi here too? Oh, and let's not forget the Collision Collective.
The ICA, List, universities, etcetera will feature a lot of the social intervention and new media listed below; the commercial galleries will push the salable work. Sometimes they cross over (Marsching, for example) but rarely.
http://bigredandshiny.com/cgi-bin/retrieve.pl?&issue=issue100§ion=article&article=DARREN_FOOTE_4195418
http://www.bigredandshiny.com/cgi-bin/retrieve.pl?section=review&issue=issue83&article=COLLISION_COLLECTIVE_SUPERARTIFICIAL_2565540
Will the Boston Art Awards program be a success for years to come?
The Boston Art Awards were created as a response to the end of the AICA awards last year. Greg Cook and the Big RED team had talked about picking up where they left off, with a dirty blogger aesthetic. This year's event came together pretty quick, but we were happy with it. The Beehive is already talking about next year so it might happen again -- and if it does I'm sure it will be bigger than before.
How do you feel about purchasing art or prints over the Internet?
I'm not opposed to it, but I'm a believer that the art, the artist and the transaction are
all part of the give/take of the community. I like to talk with the artist, know their ideas about the work, what they are working on in the future. In one case, the artist even came to my house and installed the work in my library, art directing and micro-managing the whole thing! To me, that is the best part about belonging to a
community of creative people, so why forego that if you can get the pleasure of that interaction?
I know some galleries and artists are trying to find models that work for selling art online. Some may be more successful than others; I think it depends on the type of work, the type of collector, and the expectations created by the transaction.
How do you feel about the number of galleries closing due to the
recession?
I've already written about this. Here is a link:
http://bigredandshiny.com/cgibin/retrieve.pl?&issue=issue83§ion=article&article=THE_STATE_OF_2565619
What do you love most about Boston and art? And why do the two make this a great place to be an artist or an art lover?
Boston is a city that never gets old, never gets tired, never gets boring. Every fall a lot of students show up, and every spring a number of them graduate into the community. They bring their energy, their excitement, their fresh vision. No one I know who spends real time among the art community of Boston gets old, gets lazy, gets out of touch. It's impossible because you are always confronted with new ideas, new inspiration, and new faces.
What's the coolest part of your job as the publisher of an art blog?know if I'm changing people's minds or not, but it's pretty cool to be given a platform to talk about art, all because a few friends and I started writing about what we saw in galleries on a pink website!
I've gotten to share my thoughts in a number of fun contexts. Recently I was part of a panel talk at the MFA; I've hosted studio tours of my favorite artists for MIT funders; I've spoken at more universities then I can count.
inspiring conversations every day.
Q&A with publisher of the popular art blog "big RED & shiny"
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