ART NEW ENGLAND

August/September 2006

Fort Point Arts Community Gallery/Boston, MA 
www.fortpointarts.org

LOCAL POETICS: WINGED AND WHISPERED

“Tamara Krendel’s curatorial project Winged & Whispered brings together five artists who are at various stages of their careers. This is her fourth group show choosing artists who practice what she terms “poetic realism,” which is mirrored in the subjects of the artwork, all from nature: sightless and wingless insects, Luna moths pushing out their wings, wintering clouds of monarchs, empty nests, and a butterfly collection underneath a silent screened-in porch.

Subtexts proposed through the interplay between the paintings, sculpture, and installations is just one aspect of this engaging exhibition. This show succeeds because the dialogue it generates resonates beyond both the physical and conceptual boundaries of gallery space. The gallery is an extension of a mezzanine-level café in the middle of the Fort Point arts district in Boston. Its permeable setting provokes creative exchanges as evidenced by the formal opening (which included a live jazz presentation by The Krendel-Clark group), the informal gallery talk by participants, and the poetry reading by artist/poet Jenn Lawton Grassl. Maxine Yalovitz-Blankenship’s oil paintings employ symbolismm about treasures from her life: paper birds from carnivals, nests, and keyholes that she elegantly described in her gallery talk.

Krendel’s luminous watercolors convey the same care and dedication it takes to raise moths for two years, which she did fror primary research in her studio, foregoing even leaving for summer vacation. Riyo Hirota’s tiny silver forms combined with wood express her desire to communicate in a technically very difficult and demanding format. The semiabstract, heavily loaded oil paintings of Elizabeth Awalt play on the modernist grid, such as in two small works in which strokes of paint create a rough screen to separate us from the moth and dragonfly caught behind. Lawton Grasslrsquo;s Cornell-like box constructions house pinned-down lines of poetry, perhaps referencing her childhood memories.”

-Kate Farrington