Boston Magazine, February 2002

Artists in Residence

Steve Aishman holds up one of his large slick photographs and points to a Twinkie sliced in the middle to reveal the creamy white custard. Part of a series called Selling Half-Japanese, Aishman plays with the notion of multiculturalism in America and how we're often minimized to our basic origin. In Aishman's whimsical, yet poignant glossies, his Japanese-American roots are reduced down to the metaphor of a Japanese icon, say Poke Mon, or to a Twinkie, where he's yellow on the outside, white on the inside. Larger photographs in another series document his dad in Oklahoma fighting prostate cancer. Even in these dire shots, where his father weakens as the disease progresses, Aishman manages to infuse humor. In one picture he and his father flex muscles together in a shared show of strength. So when Nick Capasso, curator of the DeCordova Museum, found several of Aishman's works in a show at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, he included them in his exhibition on humor in art.

"I doubt that would happen anywhere else," says the 25-year-old recent graduate. "To be able to show at a major museum where a curator will come and look at a student's work is remarkable."

Museums taking a keen interest in area artists is one of the many reasons why Aishman and all the friends he made at the Museum School forego the chance to go to New York, the unmistakable center of the art world, and chose to stay in Boston to ply their trade. For decades, art schools like the Museum School, Mass College of Art, BU, and nearby Rhode Island School of Design (RISDI), have been churning out promising artists who grab their diplomas like a baton and run to the studios of Manhattan's Lower East Side and Brooklyn's Williamsburg section. Yet, faced with exorbitant studio and rent costs and impending student loan debts, many are forced to work in the corporate world. Not only does their dream of a one-person show in Soho or Chelsea fade away, but the reality of simply returning to their art becomes a fantasy.

There's no denying that the latest Boston housing crunch has pushed many artists out of the city limits into more affordable towns like Lynn, Lowell, and New Bedford, but the wealth of universities here offer artists a chance to teach on a part-time basis and thus keep their paintbrush to the canvas in the other waking hours. Even more valuable is that these same colleges offer exhibition space, so young emerging artists can get their goods up on the walls for gallery owners, curators, critics, and the general public to see. Obviously, this is essential for the longevity of any artist's career. Add the ring of museums in the suburbs-the Decordova, the Fuller in Brockton, the Danforth, the Addison in Andover, many of whom favor regional artists; the growing number of art galleries opening in the South End; flourishing alternative spaces like Gallery @ Green Street, set in a T stop in JP; and the renewed commitment from the ICA to show works of Boston artists in the museum and at public art venues around the city, and you might very well have more exhibition spaces per artist/per capita than any other city in this country.

At the forefront of this contemporary art renaissance are an ambitious core of curators who have taken posts at the city's major institutions within the past two to three years. Coming from a broad international experience, they have created a current art scene that's both vital and exciting. "They're morale boosters for young artists," says Kathleen Bitetti, director of the non-profit Artists Foundation, a group that's been in Boston for 30 years helping art school grads deal with important issues such as housing, studio space, and health insurance. "It's a real change," she says. "Before, curators didn't know who was in their backyard. Now they realize part of their job is knowing."

The name most often mentioned as having made a difference in the community is Bill Arning, Curator at the MIT List Visual Arts Center. Before coming to the List in April of 2000, Arning made his reputation at New York's White Columns, an alternative space that curated the first shows of many of today's top talent-people like Andres Serrano and Jonathan Kern. "I did some 1200 studio visits a year," says Arning. His enthusiasm has not waned since his arrival in Boston.

"Bill Arning walks into my show at the Artists Foundation and soon he's talking about the notion of a hybrid society in today's world," says Steve Aishman. "Much of it went over my head, but it was a thrill to have him talk about my work."

Few can understand Arning. The man talks a mile a minute and is so vastly passionate about art and is so knowledgeable about its concepts that, like a mechanic speaking car lingo to another mechanic, many of his theories zip over your head unless you're a well-versed curator like him. Indeed, curators from around the world frequently call Arning to ask him about the Boston art scene, and if chance they're in town to do a lecture, Arning will drive them around to his favorite galleries. Yet, Arning doesn't want to only impress his peers. "One of the reasons I took this job is that a large percentage of your audience are students," he notes. "Talk about corrupting the future minds of America. If we do a good edgy show here, something that engages them, then that's a particularly exhilarating position to be in."

Having held his job for more than 11 years, DeCordova's Nick Capasso is a virtual granddaddy to all the new curators in town. Like Arning, however, he likes to keep current, frequenting art schools, galleries, and open studios as much as possible. He looks at works for exhibitions inside the recently expanded museum and outdoors, at the 35-acre sculpture garden that covers the bucolic grounds. The majority of sculptures are on loan from the artist or their gallery for a few years and then returned, so the objects can continue to be contemporary. Others like Joe Wheelwright's Listening Stone (1995) are site-specific, created solely for the museum. During excavation to double the museum's size, they came across a large boulder. Wheelwright painstakingly chiseled away the rock to carve a head whose ear listens closely to the ground, directly engaged with the landscape.

Capasso found Wheelwright and five other sculptors at the Chapel Gallery in Newton. Other objects like Paul Matisse's organ-like Musical Fence, played by every child and the occasional parent who visits the museum, once sat at City Hall in Cambridge. Unfortunately, people couldn't resist trying the lyrical structure at 4 am (just grab a twig to bang away at the different notes) and the nearby residents got a bit testy. It's been on long-term loan from the city since 1983.

"We've done a lot of public art rescues," says Capasso. Leila Daw, a teacher at Mass College of Art, was commissioned by the Turnpike Authority to create four benches for two separate rest areas on the Mass Pike. As so often happens with public art, a change of political will at the Turnpike Authority decided they no longer wanted the structures and, adding to insult, Ms. Daw was not going to be paid. When Carpasso saw the benches, resembling folded maps of the state, he put them on the grounds and called Chris Temin at the Globe. The day after Temin's story ran in the paper, the artist was paid but her work remains.

With local and state governments constantly in flux, finding spaces for public art has never been an easy road. The ICA has teamed up with Boston National Historic Park to form an Artists-in-Residency program. Each summer, temporary works are developed to explore the history of the city and then exhibited at the Charleston Navy Yard, Paul Revere House, and other sites run by the BNHP. This coming April, Kelly Kaczynki and Scott Tiede will create a work that addresses the red line of the Freedom Trail. If it's anything like their massive ball of string the public helped build in the 1998 Cambridge River Festival, audience participation is mandatory.

Curator Carol Anne Meehan has only chosen Boston artists for the residency, because "they already have a feel for the city and are able to dig a little bit deeper into the scenes. It's also wonderful to give artists that have chosen Boston as their home a chance to test their mettle," she says. The Boston National Historic Park has been pleased so far with the partnership and are looking at other sites they run for future public art offerings, such as the Boston Harbor Islands,.

Like Meehan, fellow ICA curator, Jessica Morgan, is always on the lookout for local talent. "Our policy right now is to show Boston artists on the same level that we show artists that have national and international exposure," says Morgan. "So if I'm doing a group show, I have an eye out for people from the area." The ICA initiated the annual Artist Prize in 1999. Morgan and three other regional curators choose a local artist who's work has made great leaps and bounds over the past year. The winner is awarded a one-person exhibition at the Museum and a cash gift of $2500.

Ambreen Butt was the first recipient of the Artist Prize. Since coming from Pakistan in 1993 to go to grad school at Mass Art, she has reaped accolades with her paintings, receiving $10,000 grants, numerous residencies including one at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, three soldout gallery shows, and exhibitions at the ICA, Decordova, and Fuller Museums.

"I'm still a starving artist," she says, punctuated by a contagious laugh.

Sitting on a rug in the same Mission Hill apartment she's lived in since her arrival in America, Ambreen dabs her brush into seashells that contain various watercolors. Her home is her studio. She's been teaching at Mass Art on and off, but prefers residencies and grants so she can immerse herself into the work without distractions. As the painter Paul Gauguin once wrote to his mentor Camille Pissarro, "A man is incapable of doing two things at once. I choose to paint." In doing so, he left his job as stock broker, five children and poor wife, but that's another story-Somerset Maugham's The Moon and Sixpence .

The sacrifice to be an artist is almost as great today. "Grants are basically impossible for an individual artist to get," says Kathleen Bitetti. "And when that grant is used up, you're still going to be in the same poverty as before. So you teach or hold down two other jobs. Very few people actually make a living solely as an artist, even if they are successful," says Bitetti.

It doesn't help that, unlike Gauguin or his buddy Van Gogh who could feverishly whip up a painting in a day, even an hour, Ambreen often needs a month to complete one of her works. Her medium is traditional miniature painting which is created by putting many layers of mylar and paper together. Her originality in these figurative works stems from her ability to put a highly personal context into a centuries-old format. Themes cover the complexity of human relationships or a woman's self-doubt. In one of her recent works called Home and the World, a husband and wife stand comfortably alone at far corners of the painting sniffing roses. A red love line connects them, yet both are dwarfed by an immense circular design in the middle-a centrifugal force, or the world itself, perhaps splitting them up and then bringing them back together. In another painting, a woman sits contentedly in her garden as a rain of words, in English and Arabic, pour down on her. "Home." "Mistrust." "Uncertaintly."

"She's an amazingly skilled artist who offers an opinion without a sledgehammer," says Boston gallery owner Bernard Toale. "A visual narrative with clues, but not the whole story."

Ambreen met Toale at his former gallery on Newbury Street, when she walked in with her paintings under her arm and asked him to take a look at her work. "She did what I tell every artist not to do. Show up with your wares," says the soft-spoken Toale. "But as soon as I opened up her portfolio, I knew that there was something special here."

Three years ago, Toale moved from Newbury Street to the South End when his rent tripled in price. A handful of other galleries, including three that set up shop last fall, have joined Toale in this industrialized section of town coined SoWa. People were saying, "So what?" when he first made the move, wondering how he could possibly survive without the foot traffic of the Back Bay, but Toale insists he made the right choice. "The neighborhood has changed dramatically with one thousand condo units under construction and I happened to do very well last year," he says. With a good mix of photographers, painters, and new media artists, Toale has developed a reputation with both artists and collectors as being on the cutting edge of contemporary art. Three-quarters of his patrons come from the area and seek him out regularly.

Two floors above the Bernard Toale Gallery, Allston Skirt owners Beth Kantrowitz and Randi Hopkins made the move to SoWa last August after finding their own eclectic mix of clientele in Allston. "We've developed collectors who didn't realize they were collectors," says Randi. ""Yeah, people in their 30s who are finally getting rid of those college posters to purchase something a bit more substantial," adds Beth. With prices as low as $100, the art is affordable, but more important to the Skirties, as Bill Arning calls Beth and Randy, is accessibility. "Our main goal is to educate people and hopefully make contemporary works less intimidating," says Beth.

That's not to say that Allston Skirt shies away from bold works to hang saccharin still lives. In a corner of the gallery, Pia Schachter was busy drilling, building her latest installation, Bedroom. Complete with naked Iggy Pop pillow, headboard of Alice Cooper, and a bedspread of sexually explicit lyrics from rockers of the 70s and 80s, Schachter's bed parlays the influence rock and roll plays on a teenage girl. David Bowie wallpaper and curtains made of quotes from Pia's actual teenage diary furnish the rest of the room.

It's easy to be intimidated stepping off the elevator into Barbara Krakow's 5th-floor Newbury Street gallery and staring at a Jenny Holzer-inscribed bench that sells for a mere twenty grand. But then her two assistants greet you from behind the front desk and you roam around the spacious skylit gallery viewing works that are far more budget-conscious. Like mild-mannered Bernard Toale or the gregarious duo at Allston Skirt, Barbara Krakow is not in the least bit pretentious. Maybe, that's how she's become the Leo Castelli of the Boston art scene, having owned a galley on Newbury Street since 1964 and representing some of the biggest names in the business. Yet, Krakow refuses to rest on her laurels, exhibiting works by many young Boston artists. "It's important for me to be up to date. Otherwise, the gallery becomes fossilized and so do I."

Despite the six rows of books that tower toward the ceiling of her office, Krakow has no art history background. "I learned on the job. That's why I say there's no specific requirements for somebody to come to art." She's attracted to work that's visually stunning, yet has some relevance to people's lives."Overall, every artist deals with a basic simple thing called human emotion. It's the packaging art comes in that gets people confused," says Krakow. Thus, the reason why she's adamant visitors to the gallery ask questions about the work. "It's my job to tell you why it's important."

Having been in the business for so many years, Krakow has seen many Boston art school grads run to New York far too prematurely, never to be heard from again. "Just graduating, there's no way in hell I'd go there. Your work is not mature yet and you're competing against the best artists from Shanghai to Sweden." She recommends staying in Boston, surrounded by friends and mentors, attracting a local gallery with your work and building a resume. Bill Arning notes, however, that a certain point in your career you need to head to New York and network. "An artist with a regional loyalty is not in anybody's best interest. You need to meet with other talented artists, curators, and critics and information is transmitted," he says. Notwithstanding the September 11 tragedy, New York is also the market center of the art world, where big time collectors purchase most of their works. Finding a Manhattan gallery to represent you can only increase your bank account.

While Krakow has her fair share of walk-in clientele on Newbury Street, no exhibition space has a better location nor a more diverse crowd than Gallery @ Green Street. Opened in the Green Street T stop in Jamaica Plain in January 1998, thousands of commuters, including students at nearby Boston English High School, pass by its windows every day. Owner James Hull props the doors open in summer so people stumble into the gallery thinking it is the T stop.

Green Street is part of a growing number of non-profit alternative spaces-the Oni Gallery in Chinatown, HallSpace in Roxbury-scattered throughout the city. Many are housed in unused locales like this storefront Hull walked by every day, vacant since 1987. Now it's lit up every night so people can peek in the large windows and see that the gallery is a vibrant part of the community. In the heart of the city, these galleries expose a broad audience to contemporary works few would go out of their way to see. "It lowers your apprehension and raises your comfort level, even with works that are more challenging," says Hull.

Take Taylor Davis' pine and plywood structures. The most recent recipient of the ICA Artist Prize, Taylor's sculptures have the illusion of simplicity upon first glance. The minimalist design becomes far more complex spatially as you walk around each of the wooden troughs or pallets-items found on Davis' childhood farm, now transformed into a work of refined craftsmanship. "I've had carpenters come in and say I don't know if it's art, but it sure is well made," says Hull.

Hull scours the art schools and gives many young artists their first show, must-sees for curators like Arning, Capasso, and Morgan. More established talent find him, knowing that his non-profit status and ideal locale gives them the opportunity to do more experimental art with a built-in audience. Working artists in the neighborhood are thrilled to have a gallery in their backyard. Many have been working in JP for decades, helping to beautify and ultimately gentrify the neighborhood. Now, ironically, they're being forced out of the thriving community they helped create, because real estate has gotten way too high.

Skyrocketing rents and the development of the Seaport District are putting the squeeze on artists in all neighborhoods of the city, especially Fort Point, JP, and the South End. "It's the sad inevitability of every urban renewal that artists or those who take a cheaper rent are the first people pushed out," says Jessica Morgan.

Yet, never ones to hide their emotions, artists in Boston are fighting hard to stay where they are. The Fort Point Cultural Community (FPCC), an advocacy group for the largest art community in New England, has played a crucial role in getting the word out about the housing crisis. The Mayor's office has responded by hiring Susan Hartnett, former head of Boston Center for the Arts, to work as a consultant for the Boston Redevelopment Authority. Her job is to figure out ways the city can retain and increase the number of spaces available to artists in the city. Since coming aboard in 2001, she has found 29 apartments and condos in four different neighborhoods that will forever be deeded to artists.

If rising real estate does succeed in pushing Fort Point artists into other areas of the city and state, the public misses out on the rare opportunity to see so many working artists in one setting. Fort Point is one of the 18 neighborhoods in the city and suburbs to open up their studios to the public in the autumn months. Open Studios are a great way for the public to talk to artists and becomes more comfortable with the works. More importantly, artists have ideal showrooms.

"Whatever it takes for people to be innovative and get their art out there," says Kathleen Bitetti. Photographer Steve Aishman agrees. "I could be scrapping for fame in New York, but that's not the point of what I do. I want to share my ideas with as many people as possible. I have that opportunity here."