Cloudburst

Cloudburst
Elise Wagner (b. 1966)
encaustic on birch
48x48 in.
Image: Chase Gallery

I just got the June/July issue of Art in America. When I get a new issue I flip through the gallery ads first, making note of images that peak my interest. I then go back through and head to the internets to see more of the particular artists' work. Sometimes it makes its way to the blog. I think it is great to introduced to work of artists working and exhibiting today who aren't uber-well known.

While I was initially drawn to the bleeding color of the image, I was excited to see that the medium of the work is encaustic. I briefly worked with encaustic in college. It is essentially a colored wax that is heated to a liquid and applied with a brush to the canvas (in this case to the birch wood) and fuse it to the surface with a heat gun. You can play with the application, thin or thick, you can mold or etch. Encaustic is wonderfully versatile.

As many of you know, I'm an abstract girl when it comes to many of my art loves as well as my own work. One of the things I love about work like Wagner's is how much else you can see in it. Even before looking at her fairly descriptive titles, you can feel the weight natural affiliations in her work. If you look through her other current work you'll find an affinity for the celestial. "The texture and complexity of the surfaces often represent the great unknown and celestial, while the scientific symbolism suggests the accurate and quantifiable." (artist statement)

She also creates what look like wonderful monoprints, using another facet of the versatility of encaustic paint.

See more of her images that you can zoom in on in a show currently at Chase Gallery, in Boston

Poet's Fair

Poet's Fair ca.1953/54
Jules Aarons (1921-2008)
Image: linternaute.com

I discovered Jules Aarons when visiting the DeCordova Museum and Sculpture Park in Lincoln, MA, 6 years ago. His work struck me in such a way that I brought a catalog of his show of photographs that day. I came home last night, headed over to my shelf of art books, and pulled this one off.

A physicist and engineer by trade Aarons also excelled at the art of photography. With his background in science he found the technical aspects of photography interesting, mastering them on his own. Luckily for us, he also studied the history and art of photography. Unfortunately his work is not known far beyond his home of Boston, but his rich, sympathetic and earnest photographs hold their own alongside known greats such as Henri-Cartier Bresson... Aarons spent much of his time photographing the neighborhoods of the West End and North End in Boston as well as documenting his travels around the world. A great street photographer catches moments, snapshots of life, they see the unique wonder in what many allow to pass them by. This wonderful parallel portrait, Poet's Fair, taken while on a Fulbright to Paris embodies this.


Jules Aarons Collection at the Boston Public Library.

The Common

Boston Common at Twilight, 1885-86
Childe Hassam image and location: MFA Boston
A comment on yesterday's image of Paris made me think about other city scenes. One of the first to come to mind is a painting and artist that I discovered on my first trip to the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston soon after I moved there in 2000. Always surprised at the time to be attracted to 19th c. American art (it continues to become more common), let alone Impressionism, this is a painting I return to on every visit. Hassam was a native of Boston, eventually spending some years in Paris and then settling in New York. He focused much of his creative energy on these cities in his paintings, many of the scenes taking place in the winter. A city I love, a season I love in a beautiful painting. This view of Boston Common comes off as nostalgic yet focuses on the modernization of this area of the common, with the trolleys and buildings in view.

I highly recommend seeking it out the next time you are in Boston, the MFA is a wonderful museum. (Check out the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum down the road while you are there!)