The South Shore Art Center press release for September/October 2020 exhibition:
From North Shore to South Shore…Gloucester Comes to Cohasset
Featuring three artists: COCO BERKMAN, PIA JUHL, JUNI VANDYKE
Cape Ann artist printmaker Coco Berkman creates images that delight her and hopefully others through the process of linoleum printmaking. Inspired by literature, the natural world, and the free play inherent in drawing, Berkman uses sharp Japanese tools to carve images into sheets of linoleum and then prints them one color at a time over several months to complete an edition. A member of the Boston Printmakers, Berkman’s work is represented by 13 Forest Galleryin Arlington and The Square Circle Gallery in Rockport.
Pia Juhl, is well known for her light filled paintings depicting quarries and giant rock formations indigenous to her surroundings. She has had numerous exhibitions in Europe and on Cape Ann including Jane Deering Gallery.
Juni VanDyke will exhibit paintings related to her connection with Gloucester. “The Cape Ann landscape is a subliminal force directing my art and tethering me to a love of color and the infinite configurations of abstraction. Traveling to my work in Gloucester, I cross over the elevated Annisquam Bridge where below the sea is an ever changing miracle of patterns and light holding promise for later.” VanDyke’s work is held in the permanent collection of Cape Ann Museum. Her work is represented by Jane Deering Gallery, and throughout the US by Room and Board, Inc.
Open Sundays July 18-August 30th or by appointment
press release:
The Unitarian Universalist Society of Rockport (UUSR) is hosting its 4th annual photography exhibit by Rockport native Sue Bonior, July 18 through August 30.
The gallery features many new works with a lens focused on Cape Ann vistas and nature portraits from shoreline to hillsides, fields, gardens, quarries and woods.
Thirty full color images are mounted on stretched canvas by Cape Ann Giclee of Gloucester. Reprints of previously exhibited images may also be ordered at this time.
View the exhibit with the artist on Sunday afternoons in August, 3-5 pm at UUSR, 4 Cleaves Street, Rockport, or by appointment via email at suemac292@gmail.com. A portion of sales will benefit UUSR’s work in the community.
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Cape Ann Museum’s special exhibition of works by artist and illustrator Harrison Cady (1877–1970)
Affectionately known to many as the bug painter, Harrison Cady (1877–1970) was a much loved member of Cape Ann’s summer art colony throughout the 20th century. A prolific illustrator, a printmaker and a painter, Cady was one of the last links to our nation’s Golden Age of Illustration, a distinction he earned through his long collaboration with writer Thornton Burgess. View from the Headlands, a special exhibition of works by artist and illustrator Harrison Cady (1877-1970) will open at the Cape Ann Museum on July 7, 2018, and remain on display through October 28, 2018.
Cady began his 70-year career as an illustrator with the Brooklyn Eagle and later worked for numerous popular American publications, including Life magazine, Ladies’ Home Journal, the Saturday Evening Post, and Good Housekeeping. His syndicated comic strip “Peter Rabbit” ran in the New York Herald Tribune for 28 years.
A frequent visitor to Rockport, Massachusetts, Cady made it his permanent summer home in 1920, purchasing a seafront property known as “The Headlands.” With his studio “the Silo” located nearby, Cady shifted his focus to painting landscapes and harbor scenes. Cady was an early member of the Rockport Art Association, founded in 1921.
View from the Headlands draws on public and private collections throughout the region with examples of Cady’s early magazine illustrations, his work with writer Thornton W. Burgess, and his later landscape paintings. The exhibition reflects the Cape Ann Museum’s commitment to preserving and presenting work that celebrates the area’s culture and history.
Harrison Cady (1877–1970). Lane’s Cove, c.1930s. Oil on board. The James Collection, promised gift to the Cape Ann Museum.
Walter Harrison Cady was born and raised in Gardner, Massachusetts, and headed to New York City at eighteen. The successful artist eventually had an eight room studio in the Sixty Seventh Studios building at 27 West 67, NYC. The Cadys purchased a summer house and studio on Atlantic Avenue in Rockport (see photos above). In addition to this exciting and rare chance to see original work by Cady at Cape Ann Museum, there is a new book celebrating Cady’s art currently in production: Madness in Crowds: The Teeming Mind of Harrison Cady. Cady had long ties with the Rockport Art Association and local artists. Cady’s work is in the collection of the Library of Congress, Metropolitan Museum of Art, and various private collections and institutions. The Archives of American Art has a gifted collection of Harrison Cady (sketchbooks, correspondence, estate papers digitized. How fantastic that work will be acquired by the Cape Ann Museum.
photos below: Harrison Cady sketchbook, ca. 1943. Harrison Cady papers, 1902-2002. Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution.
Library of Congress
Life Magazine, Volume 62, number 1616, page 658 (1913-10-16) Savannah College of Art and Design
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from a studio visit with Stephanie Benenson Nov 2017
You can join in Stephanie Benenson’s fascinating big vision, Harbor Voices, a public art and cultural piece that’s made from light, sound and community participation. Part of the project is a large-scale and temporary LIVE light & sound installation which will happen on ten minute loops from 4-8pm on Friday December 8th, and Saturday December 9th, one of many featured events for the 2017 Middle Street Walk. Harbor Voices will be held inside the Kyrouz Auditorium in City Hall , 9 Dale Avenue, Gloucester, MA.
Come experience a sweeping ocean of sound, stories and light, drawn by the voices and acts of generosity of neighbors and friends.
Benenson, a Rockport native and North Shore based fine artist, received a prestigious and competitive RISD grant to create Harbor Voices. Benenson collected over 100 stories in eight languages of recent and ancestral immigration to Cape Ann. For the past year she led (and continues to lead) practical and creative storytelling sessions and workshops at area schools like Veteran’s Memorial and Gloucester High School, as well as community organizations and centers such as Sandy Bay Historical Society. Students talked with Benenson about “their ancestors* and families bringing cultural heritage to Cape Ann.” She said that kids mentioned “family members that started businesses here (like Jalapenos, Sclafanis, and other cultural destinations on Cape Ann)…and how meangingful that was to them…and people that they had deep respect and admiration for…” They discussed “family recipes, music, food and how immigration historically has made American art and culture come alive.” Mayor Romeo Theken was the first story collected. Other Cape Ann storytellers outside of the schools and non profit partners include: Jean Testaverde (Portuguese fishing ancestry), Ingrid Swan (Swedith quarrying ancestry), Heather Lovett (descendent of Roger Babson), Sal Zerilli (Awesome Gloucester and Rockport), Jan Bell, Buddy Woods, Susannah Natti (Finnish and descendent of Folly Cove designer), Rich Francis (GHS teacher), and Celestino Basille (GHS teacher).
Depending upon age and preference, stories were written, recorded, or drawn. All were mixed into materials and audio that will choreograph connections directly into the light installation, and an enlarging community. At first, Benenson thought the light might guide any audio. Instead voices continue to guide the light.
Every story and act of generosity is linked to the installation and transformed into light.
Blurring the lines between public art and social sculpture, LIVE happening and virtual action, Harbor Voices emblematically presents stories, shared connections and actions. Participants of all ages are encouraged to interact with the project www.harborvoices.com and its installation– to bathe so to speak in a community of vibrancy and waves of interconnectedness and support. Benenson adds that from 4-6PM during the two days of this installation iteration, “children will be offered a small flashlight to engage with this artwork, allowing them a tangible moment to consider their part in this interconnected network of community and local history by creating their own beam of light.” Also, before the installation opens to the public, one hundred Gloucester High School students –including some who have already added into the piece– will come to City Hall to experience Harbor Voices.
Benenson’s promotion for Harbor Voices launched in September. Leveraging attention for this remarkably ambitious project is an essential component as more involvement means more impact. Straight away it fostered community and brought opportunities. For example, Benenson spoke about the project and shared audio of the stories with Rose Baker seniors, Gloucester Rotary and the Cape Ann Museum’s Red Cottage Society. Someone from Beverly has already underwrittten support for a class at Veteran’s Memorial Elementary School. She spoke about the project with Joey as part of GMG podcast #253
As a third generation Cape Ann artist, Benenson is especially excited to “create art and conversations around our cultural heritage and our contributions to the vibrant mix of people that live on Cape Ann.”
Yes, we do have an arts scene. While we love our artistic heritage (William Lester Stevens, Aldro Hibbard…I could go on and on), many people don’t realize that a vibrant community of artists is based here still. Now. In the 21st century. And to underscore the point that Rockport’s appeal for artists hasn’t waned, our village is playing host to one of Cape Ann’s best for the entire month of December: Eugene Quinn. His paintings are both timeless and contemporary, featuring subject matter that doesn’t seem entirely locked in any place or time. A few summers ago in Rocky Neck I bought one of his small studies of Back Beach in Rockport and I often myself taking a moment to stare at it as I go through the mundane tasks of the day (it hangs near our dining room table). Even without being a finished painting, it so completely captures the quality of the early morning light (the sun hitting the clock tower of the Old Sloop Church) that for a minute I am someplace else entirely, pulled away from feeding time and all the mess associated with giving pre-schoolers their breakfast. This fact alone makes the Eugene Quinn painting I have very near and dear to my heart. Better than a pharmaceutical. Now if only artists were compensated as well as drug companies, the world would be a better place.
Detail of a Painting
Don’t miss Eugene Quinn’s “2010 Light and Sea Exhibit” for the month of December, located at the Thistle Fine Art Gallery at 8A Main Street in Rockport. Open Monday – Saturday from 10 – 6, Sunday 12 – 5. (Call 617-894-1552 to schedule an appointment or reserve a painting). The artist himself is available for questions and conversation – always a plus – and he makes his process available as well by providing his studies for browsing (and purchasing) as well as his larger works. An Exhibit Reception will be held on Saturday, December 11th, from 4-9pm. Below are a few photos from the exhibit, with apologies for my inability to do the work justice:
Gallery View
Clouds Over Lake. (My favorite - not that this matters)
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George Anderson is a contemporary artist specializing in marine / nautical, abstract, mexican, rural and urban motifs. George resides in Rockport, MA, where he owns an oceanside gallery. He is well known for paintings that reflect marine or nautical subjects found along the New England coastline.
He is most recognized for his “Gloucester Waterfront” Series, in which George conveys the lives of the port’s hardworking fishermen with bright colors and abstract shapes. His most recent motif “City Streets” is based on experiences during his many visits to Manhattan. A series of large oils on canvas, “City Streets” uses mixed media techniques which combine images of the streets with the objects collected from them.
Good Morning Gloucester 