Growing up in Germany, Nora Krug felt the weight of the past. Her teachers led her into detailed research on political figures and national movements, she says, but she had never talked with her own grandparents about their experiences in World War II …
Read articleWhen the fire has cooled, Karlene Kantner tells me, she will smooth the earth away from the top of the pit and look to see how her vessels have transformed. The heat and flame and smoke leave a patina on their curved sides, and she can never wholly predict the patterns.
She is a ceramics artist in West Stockbridge, and she has been telling me about her upcoming show at the Berkshire Botanical Garden. Even in midwinter, artists are working in their studios here, and curators are planning new shows.
They gather in people who have lived here for generations and people from around the world. And they tell me how it feels to take ideas and feelings, a web of them, and make them tangible.
Art in the Berkshires ranges this winter from 17th century drawings at the Clark Art Institute to EJ Hill’s rollercoasters and Amy Yoes’ abstract textile art at Mass MoCA. Contemporary artwork honors Shirley Jackson’s speculative fiction at Bennington Museum, and Hilary Knight, the illustrator and co-creator of the internationally known Eloise books, comes to the Norman Rockwell Museum … For recent stories and photos, scroll on down.
Photo by Kaelan Burkett
A solo rider coasts down EJ Hill's Brake Run Helix in Building 5 at Mass MoCA. Press image courtesy of Mass MoCA
It’s magic to walk with curator Alexandra Foradas through the long gallery at Mass MoCA at sunset while a rider sloughs down a roller coaster. We watch the light deepen, and we’re talk about EJ Hill and the years he has put on this body of work.
She draws out the themes he lifts up: the excitement and fear in an amusement park ride, the freedom in being able to relax. We talk about the courage in being exposed to public view.
And then on a winter morning Clark-Getty Curatorial Fellow Sarah Grandin talks about the days she spent in Paris, around the corner from the Tuileries, searching through 5 million works on paper at the national library that have never been cataloged.
She found sketches from artists 300 years ago. They were jotting in the margins when it was still new for most people to have paper and a pencil to draw with. They caught the movement of street scenes, hurdy-gurdies, draymen walking draft horses into stone stables with loose hay in the loft.
And they held the momentum of the daily world with a pulse we can still feel beating.
Artists on the loose
Daphnis and Chloe whisper in a sculpture at the Clark Art Institute. Photo courtesy of the Clark
Two owls from Cayenne look out from a charcoal sketch. Drawing in the collection of the Bibliothèque nationale de France, press photo courtesy of the Clark Art Institute
Eloise in the books by Kay Thompson — the indomitable six-year-old girl who lives in the Plaza Hotel — relaxes in a busy library. Press image courtesy of the Norman Rockwell Museum
Blue cloth brightens the walls in Amy Yoes' new installation, Hot Corners, at Mass MoCA.
Seed pods in the native garden at Bennington Museum still hold some of the white silk that lets the seeds float on the wind.
Birch trees stand on a shadowed winter hill in Nate Massari's 'A Shadow over Raven Rocks,' invoking recollection and memory. Press photo courtesy of Bennington Museum
A Black man plays the cello softly as a woman leans on his shoulder at dusk, in a photograph in Lorenzo Baker's new work at MCLA. Press image courtesy of the artist
Berkshire art stories
Clay from an outdoor fire-pit carries ‘Volumes’
Wood-firing ceramics in an open-face pit is a volatile craft — Karlene Kantner can spend 12 hours and more stoking the fire when she makes the clay vessels she has shown at Berkshire Botanical Garden.
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Spontaneous dance will invoke Eight Elements in Eight Hours
How does a body dance oxygen? How does a body dance trees breathing out and people breathing in — the invisible balance that keeps us alive?
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Tibetan art and tacos in the snow — #Berkshireweekend
It must be March. One day I’m braving the wind on North Street for tacos from Placita Latina, and the next I’m walking across a hayfield in the snow …
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Contemporary Tibetan voices navigate ‘Across Shared Waters’
Marie-Dolma Chophel’s 'Inner Dialog' holds me still as I navigate the new show of contemporary and traditional Tibetan paintings, photographs, sculpture and collage at the Williams College Museum of Art.
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Lama Tashi Norbu imagines links in spacetime
Lama Tashi Norbu forms a contemporary collage of bright color in paint and wood, and in the petals he sees a gulf and a bridge between worlds.
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Curing cabin fever with bright color — #Berkshireweekend
I’ve walked into the Plant Connector on a winter night, whenNorth Adams is quiet, and Meg Bantle and Laura Tupper-Palches from Full Well Farm are teaching a workshop on how to make flower crowns.
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Q-Mob explores Berkshire arts with a queer lens
A new community of friends is looking for stories like these and encouraging the telling. Tom Truss and Bart Church have helped to found a new affinity group in Great Barrington, Queer Men of the Berkshires. And among their friendly activities, a group is forming to explore the arts.
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Hands-on celebrations for Valentine week
Imagine sitting side by side with a quiet man in a slip-spattered t-shirt, in front of an electric pottery wheel. He is teaching you to center a lump of clay.
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Tibetan artists talk through time — Across Shared Waters
A new exhibit at the Williams College Museum of Art will gather traditional Thangka paintings and contemporary Tibetan artists from around the world.
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