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‘Valentined’ showcases geek love at Craftland

Heart-felt
These missives don't have the swooning, steamy, bodice-ripping passion of romance novel covers.
By GREG COOK | February 08, 2012

Must-see music, comedy, and more

Where the fun is!
Welcome back! The holiday break has you reenergized and ready to hit the books, but first things first. Break out a fresh No.2 and pencil in some fun.
By CHRIS CONTI | January 24, 2012

‘Chicken Little’ and ‘Manchester Tracks’ at the RISD Museum

Discomfort and joy
The star of New York painter Nancy Chunn's epic installation "Chicken Little and the Culture of Fear" at the RISD Museum (224 Benefit Street, Providence, through April 15) is the fabled fowl — you know, the one who mistakenly thought the sky was falling.
By GREG COOK | January 10, 2012

Short films take over SPACE

On gallery walls
Having screened the first of this series back in June, it's good to see evidence that SPACE Gallery plans to show the whole "Project 35" collection.
By NICHOLAS SCHROEDER | January 04, 2012

Exhibits worth buzzing about

Vivid visions
After a couple of shaky years, 2011 saw the local gallery scene blossom again.
By GREG COOK | December 20, 2011

Chinese bronzes from thousands of years ago at Bowdoin

Alive with the past
Chinese bronzes are often felt, quite rightly, to fall within the purview of scholars and collectors who delight in detailed changes from one period or region to another.
By KEN GREENLEAF | December 07, 2011

‘NetWorks 2011’ is good — but it could be better

Incomplete picture
In 2008, local art collector Joseph Chazan partnered with the Newport Art Museum and AS220 to present the first "NetWorks" project.
By GREG COOK | December 07, 2011

Slideshow: ''Say You Love Me'' at Harvard's Carpenter Center; ''Hungry for Death: Destroy All Monsters'' at BU Art Gallery

Through December 22, 2011
Through December 22, 2011
By PHOENIX STAFF | November 29, 2011

Brian Chippendale and Jungil Hong’s dazzling new work

A sense of wonder
Brian Chippendale and Jungil Hong were at the center of the gang of artists who pioneered the rascally psychedelic art that boiled out of Providence's screenprinting/postering/comic book/puppet show/wrestlemania/noise rock underground in the late 1990s and early 2000s.
By GREG COOK | November 29, 2011

Friday sees a one-day-only art installation

No longer vacant
This week's Art Walk is replete with holiday shows, bazaars, and craft fairs.
By NICHOLAS SCHROEDER | November 30, 2011

“Nostalgia Machines” at Brown’s Bell Gallery

Reconsidering the future
Jonathan Schipper's Measuring Angst (2009) might be a complicated machine built to help you ponder whether your life would be better if you could take back the stupid thing you did last night.
By GREG COOK | November 21, 2011

Rebecca Macri, Dan Talbot, and Betsey MacDonald at AS220

Contrasts and comparisons
Some time back, Rebecca Macri embroidered a pillow with the rainbow bars of the old terrorism alert chart ("severe" to "low").
By GREG COOK | November 15, 2011

Bisbee + Fensterstock work their black magic at Aucocisco

Darkness visible
The similarities between Lauren Fensterstock and John Bisbee are manifold.
By NICHOLAS SCHROEDER | November 16, 2011

Intricate works on paper by one of Maine’s best abstract artists

Complete in themselves
Geometric shapes like rectangles and circles have been the formal ingredients of some of the most sophisticated abstract art.
By BRITTA KONAU | October 26, 2011

Slideshow: ''Dance/Draw'' exhibit at the ICA

The Institute of Contemporary Art | Through January 16, 2012
The Institute of Contemporary Art hosts the the "Dance/Draw" exhibit from October 7, 2011 through January 16, 2012.
By PHOENIX STAFF | October 18, 2011

Ellen Driscoll’s ‘Distant Mirrors’; plus, ‘Palimpsestic’

Floating ideas
A few weeks back, three artificial islands made of recycled plastic and dotted with little model buildings — houses, a watch tower, an oil refinery, the Tower of Babel — were floated down the Providence River and anchored just south of the Crawford Street Bridge at South Water Street.
By GREG COOK | October 19, 2011

Xander Marro takes over SPACE’s new annex

A wild imagination
From 1995 until its demolition in 2001, Fort Thunder was the core of Providence's artistic identity.
By NICHOLAS SCHROEDER | October 19, 2011

Works by Andrew Moon Bain, Elisa D’Arrigo, Serena Perrone

Shape shifting and dreamy visions
In "Talking Leaves," Andrew Moon Bain's show at AS220's Project Space (93 Mathewson Street, Providence, through October 29), his painting and collage Triple Black depicts a red mermaid and black seahorses floating atop a tumultuous sea amidst old sailing ships.
By GREG COOK | October 11, 2011

Jan Piribek decodes and encodes landscapes at Mayo Street Arts

Facing history
Sometimes it takes an act of art to care about something you otherwise wouldn't.
By NICHOLAS SCHROEDER | October 12, 2011

Rose Contemporary's 'Abstraction' show is more than enough

The thing itself
Abstraction is the process of moving from the particular to the general, from the thing itself to an idea about the thing that can thus be considered or communicated. All art is, in this sense, an abstraction. The soup-can painting requires no spoon.
By KEN GREENLEAF | October 05, 2011

FirstWorks’ eighth annual “Pixilerations”

Balancing act: tech and art
Rebecca Mushtare's StoryQuilt invites you to sit at a faux sewing machine and tell it a story, which the Mount Kisco, New York, artist's software converts into a virtual quilt that is projected on the wall above.
By GREG COOK | September 27, 2011

Abstract artists look at craft

A show of hands
Abstraction is currently getting a lot of attention in Portland.
By BRITTA KONAU | September 28, 2011

New works at the PAC, 60 Orange Street, Bannister Gallery

Around the town
"Outside the Lines: New Classics from Top Drawer Art Center" at the Providence Art Club (11 Thomas Street, through September 30) features 20 artists from Top Drawer's art programs in Warren for adults with developmental disabilities.
By GREG COOK | September 20, 2011

Underground no more, Kostas Seremetis comes home

He's now worthy
West Roxbury native Kostas Seremetis cut his teeth as an underground artist in Boston in the 1990s — his commissions included painting the walls of the Lansdowne Street punk club Axis, and creating movies for an unknown Boston band that went on to become the Elevator Drops.
By SCOTT FAYNER | September 21, 2011

Photos: Kostas Seremetis's ''Ready…Steady…Go!'' at the Fourth Wall Project

Fourth Wall Project | September 10–October 23, 2011
Kostas Seremetis's ''Ready…Steady…Go!'' exhibition is on display at the Fourth Wall Project from September 10 to October 23, 2011.
By ERIC ANTONIOU | September 21, 2011

Don Voisine’s careful placements at Icon

Reading shapes
In his essays on interpretation in the 1970s, Frank Kermode assigned a couple of conditions to the apprehension of a text: carnal and spiritual.
By KEN GREENLEAF | September 21, 2011

The docile docent

Failure
Museum-goers can be a handful.
By KARL STEVENS | September 15, 2011

Statewide exhibit series winds down; are photos next up?

Drawing conclusions
The fall months of 2011 have much to share for contemporary art lovers.
By NICHOLAS SCHROEDER | September 14, 2011

A British invasion and the local hall of fame

Autumn offerings
The art season follows the school year.
By GREG COOK | September 14, 2011

Brown’s “Building Expectation” showcases architectural visions

Back to the future
One of the curious things about the future, as Nathaniel Robert Walker observes, is that "nearly everyone can recognize the place where no one has been." It's all clean, efficient, gleaming metal and glass skyscrapers; pervasive digital technology; and flying cars. And, it turns out, it's a vision that has been with us for a century.
By GREG COOK | September 14, 2011