Discovery and Discernment…A Journey Back to Now

Featuring new works  by artists Diane Modica and Sandrine Colson

June 2-23

Opening Reception – Saturday, June 2, 6-9pm

Gallery hours: Friday-Saturday 2-6pm or by appointment

Atlantic Works Gallery
is proud to host

The Revolution Will Not Be…

May 4, 2018 through May 26, 2018

Opening Reception – Saturday, May 5, 6-9pm

3rd Thursday Reception and artist talks– May 17th  6-9pm

Gallery hours: Friday-Saturday 2-6pm or by appointment

Atlantic Works Gallery
is proud to host

Boston Biennial 5

presented by The Biennial Project

April 7, 2018 through Ap, 2018

Opening Reception – Saturday, April 7, 6-9pm

3rd Thursday Reception and capsule artist talks– April 19th  6-9pm

Closing Reception– Sunday, April 22nd, 4-6pm

3rd Thursday Reception and capsule artist talks– April 19th 6-9pm

“So much gorgeous and successful work from a diverse group of artists based around the country and the world. The Biennial Project’s commitment to building connections between artists here and elsewhere is utterly refreshing. To see them and their collaborators at work is to see artists at the top of their game – working without the net of institutional support, but obviously having a hell of a good time in the process – and nurturing personal and working relationships and networks that feel downright subversive in this day and age.” Critic Alec Onsemska on the Boston Biennial

Building on the very positive critical response to 2016’s Boston Biennial 4, The Biennial Project is excited to announce that the Boston Biennial 5 will take place at Atlantic Works Gallery this April, 2018.

This highly anticipated 5th installment of the Boston Biennial brings together art from all over the US, twelve other countries and 5 continents.

All accepted art work will be displayed via a large screen digital presentation in the gallery.

In addition, fourteen prizewinning artists chosen by The Biennial Project from among the accepted work will have their art exhibited in the gallery.

Gallery hours: Friday-Saturday 2-6pm or by appointment, and Saturday/Sunday April 21st and 22nd 12-6pm as part of East Boston Open Studios

The German Christmas markets sparkle in the European landscape as places where reality can be suspended and grown-ups can be kids again. Central Berlin alone has 10 Christmas markets, each market with its own personality. They run from late November to early January.

There are constants: Twinkling rows of small shops bring crafts and specialty street-foods from all over the country. Sausages sizzle. Beer foams. Wonderful smells waft. Gingerbread morphs into festive shapes. Some markets even have ice-skating rinks, amusement-park rides, and carnival games of chance.

Drinks are plentiful, the Glühwein (hot mulled wine) and hot rum grog are most popular because it is cold outside, and most drinking places are outdoors, around circular fire pits or at long tables. My modus operandi is strolling among crowds with a mug of Glühwein or a package of hot roasted chestnuts, or sitting at a fire pit.

My favorite market is at Alexanderplatz, where there is a giant Pyramide with life-size Mary, Baby J, Joseph, shepards, and kings revolving on a 5-story-tall replica of a common German Christmas table-top decoration, which at home has tiny tiers propelled by candle heat. The ground level of Berlin’s monstrous Pyramide is a beer garden, the second tier is a restaurant.

The Berlin Christmas markets are kitschy and crass, but within bounds. The mood seems a mix of merriment and nostalgia. Little kids are ecstatic with all the lights and movement, and adults are ready to drift into a realm of holidays long past with hope for the future. This is maybe why the killings at last year’s Berlin Christmas market seemed especially brutal. Its one-year day of remembrance happened this week in Berlin, and the observance was not without controversy.

When the attacker last year on Dec. 19th drove a 25-ton truck into the Christmas Market at Breitscheidplatz quickly killing 12 people and injuring 70 more, prime minister Angela Merkel herself seemed like a doe caught in the headlights.

She was blamed for the terror by the right wing for having allowed so many immigrants into the country (the driver of the truck was from Tunisia), and she was criticized from the left wing for showing so little compassion toward the victims and their families. She did not meet with the families after the attack. She did not write them personal letters. She did not offer government-funded reparation or funeral costs.

It’s not like terror is unknown in Germany. The 20^th century Germans unleashed much of their own on the world. But since the 1972 terror attack at the Olympic Games in Munich, which now seems long ago, modern Germany has gotten off easier than many other countries in terms of this sort of violence. Frankly, Merkel has had little practice in dealing with terrorism on her own turf.

On Tuesday of this week, Merkel visited the site of the killings, where an elegant and unusual monument to the victims was unveiled (see next blog entry on artistic monuments to terror) and where fresh flowers and candles have been constant since a year ago. The Christmas market was shut down that day for the ceremonies. Bells tolled in the Gedächtniskirche – the Church of Rembrance of WW II events, on the steps of which the truck driver had mowed down the 12 victims. On Wednesday, Merkel finally met with the families of the killed and the injured, and talked with them for 3 hours. Overdue, but kind.

In the past Germans have been critical of the way some nations report terrorist events – nations that name and lionize the perpetrators, and leave the victims nameless. In response to this act of terror, German journalists have made a point of naming all 12 victims in each coverage of the event. I will do it, too: Anna Bagratuni, Georgiy Bagratuni, Sebastian Berlin, Nad’a Cizmár, Dalia Elyakim, Christoph Herrlich, Klaus Jacob, Angelika Klösters, Dorit Krebs, Fabrizia Di Lorenzo, Lukasz Urban, Peter Völker.

Three-foot high, one-ton sections of concrete barrier now encircle the same market and life goes on in a bent direction.

May our celebration of the new season, the new year, in any holiday form we choose, signify a fresh start for us all.

X Bonnie Woods

Major Kaye in her Atlantic Works Studio, September 2016

Atlantic Works Gallery Member 

Marjorie Kaye’s sculptures reach out and in and up and beyond. The transcendent stacks of energy are constructed from pieces of plywood, which are cut into shapes with a jig saw, smoothed and then tinted with bold gouache color–or house paint washes. The pieces are assembled in sequences, one piece glued or nailed against the other, forming patterns that transit from basic schematics of color and size into higher, longer and wider dimensions that strive to be freed from the constraints physicality. In her gracious unfolding of form, Kaye considers the mechanics of duality, and the vibration between the laws of intention and those of magnetism.

Perhaps classical in inception, the sculptures are very particular to our present time and reflect the emotions of a meditation on internal space. “I reflect who I am as a person. I bring my inside experience outside,” Kaye says.

Kaye sculptures and paintings have been shown both locally and nationally. She has an BFA in painting and has done graduate work in printmaking. Her work has been reviewed in many publications including the Boston Globe and ArtScope Magazine. She is the founder/member/owner of Galatea Fine Art in Boston, MA, a large artist-run gallery.

In her most recent work Kaye breaks down the emotive qualities of sound, dissecting music, particularly the curvaceous, meticulous and musical chases composed by Bach. She appreciates Bach’s order and expression, pointing out that his arrangements are repetitive and sequential, like her art. “Bach didn’t express chaos. Order allows emotion to come through.”

Kaye grew up in the Boston area, in a musical environment. “It began in the crib–the listening, the appreciating, the dissecting. The family took me to Leonard Bernstein concerts, to musicals.” She remembers seeing, The Carnival of Animals with her grandmother. Kaye sang in oratorios. “In my mid-20s, after art school, I studied voice. But I found I was more interested in music theory than performance. The calibrations. Cadence. The ideas.”

“Yes,” she smiles. “I ride a lot of different horses,”  adding, “when I was young I  started a journey of many disciplines: music, the occult, theosophy, astrology, Judeo-Christian texts, the Kabbala. Eventually it culminated in Zen Buddhism.  And I’m still investigating, contemplating, researching…

“When I think about organized religion, I see no differences. Each is a system to look at the threads that join all of us together.” That thread is apparent in her art. “The most important thing in life is God and spirit. My  art is a spiritual practice; my ongoing contemplation is about the meaning of life. I ask: Who are we? What is nature?

She turned to sculpture as an expressive form when she and her companion, Artist George Shaw, began living together. “George is also a woodworker,” she explains. “There were of scraps of wood around the house. I started shaping the pieces and painting them. Finally I gave myself permission to do sculpture.“

Previously her painting (which she still practices and exhibits) had focused on the mandala. A mandala is a ritual symbol, representing the universe, that guides viewers into a sacred, internal space. “Instead of painting mandalas I began building them,” she says.

Marjorie Kaye’s sculptural mandalas

In 2016 Marjorie was awarded by the Provincetown Art Association and Museum: a Lillian Orlowsky/ William Freed Foundation grant. “On the application I wrote that with the funding I would get a studio and I did.” In June Kaye moved her tools, paints and wood to  a studio in East Boston, to 80 Border Street, Atlantic Works Studios.

In her studio she doesn’t listen to music. “I like complete silence. Plus I use power tools, and they make a lot of loud noise.” As far as color, the color of her work is bold. “The brighter the better,” she says. Orange seems to be the bridge color. “I use orange to pull everything together. To get from here to there.”

She can’t predict how having a dedicated art studio will effect her work. “For sure I have more opportunity to look and consider each piece,” she says. “But I worked hard in my home studio. I’m just a hard worker; it’s my nature. I’m process oriented. I make the best of any situation.”

Marjorie Kaye getting ready to use the jigsaw

MARJORIE KAYE’S ONGOING AND UPCOMING SHOWS:

The Poetics of Space. (with George Shaw) at Atlantic Works Gallery, 80 Border Street, East Boston, MA.  October 8-29, 2016.

Colo Colo Gallery, 29 Centre Street, New Bedford MA. December 2016

FOR MORE VISUALS and info VISIT www.marjoriekayeart.com