Closing chapters
It can be difficult, even impossible, for us to see clearly the vital people in our lives while we are living through turbulent, critical moments. We only gain a true sense of things with enough time, distance, and contemplation.
By Rebecca Rafferty
May 1, 2013
Book review, An Early Work, Bill Whiting, Danny Allen, Rochester Memorial Art Gallery, 1970's Rochester, drugs, suicide, local artists, Corn Hill, biography
One hundred years of solitude
I was still noticing previously overlooked works and nuances within works on my third visit to the Memorial Art Gallery's current exhibit, "It Came from the Vault: Rarely Seen Works from MAG's Collection." I recently spoke with MAG Director of Exhibitions Marie Via about how more than 200 objects included in the show were selected from the more than 12,000 objects in the museum's permanent collection, and about the ways in which both the museum and the community may benefit from an exhibition such as this, which contains a story of obscurity and opportunity for expanded understanding.
By Rebecca Rafferty
Apr 24, 2013
Exhibit review, MAG, Memorial Art Gallery, Collection, Marie Via, Sarah Gerin, Daniel Arthur Allen, Bill Whiting, Chiyo Ueyama, Tom Phillips, Nancy Norwood, Paul S. Berry, Janina Konarska
A healthy helping of bad news
During the Industrial Revolution, we moved systematically away from traditional, deliberate ways of feeding ourselves. And as this basic element of survival slipped from ours into bureaucratic hands, we became less reliant on our communities for genuine needs, and our relations grew brittle for lack of practice.
By Rebecca Rafferty
Apr 10, 2013
Rochester Contemporary, RoCo, Eat It, Food, Consumption, Stefani Bardin, The Counter Kitchen, Brooke Singer, Christine Chin, Brady Dillsworth, Tatiana Kronberg, Andrzej Maciejewski, Spurse, Foodlink, Freegan
Four local male artists broaden traditional stereotypes of "crafts"
If the term "craft fair" brings up imagery of all things sweet, delicate, and pretty, with hair clips, jewelry, knittery, and journals, think again. While it may be true that the local-focusing craft markets have been mini-femme fests, lately there has been an increase in male artists mixed in with the gals.
By Rebecca Rafferty
Apr 3, 2013
Cover Story, Video
Blink and you'll miss the arrival some new additions to our
city's ever-growing art scene. JGK Galleries, located at 10 Vick Park A, is a
gorgeous space comprised of three smallish rooms divided neatly while
maintaining the feeling of a hip, open loft.
By Rebecca Rafferty
Feb 22, 2013
JGK Galleries, Local art
Disintegrating lifelines
The souls of artists and philosophers are never still; their vigilant senses are buffeted by the urgently calling winds and tides of change that they often detect before others. As such, some artists serve as the most honest of social critics.
By Rebecca Rafferty
Feb 20, 2013
Slideshow
Ray Easton/Jean K. Stephens at the Oxford Gallery
The current exhibit at Oxford Gallery showcases the current works of two skillful Rochester-based artists, Ray Easton and Jean K. Stephens, whose gentle reverence for nature lends a breathtaking sweetness to each work. Through their eyes, we see nuance and minutiae as crucial and worthy of our attention.
By Rebecca Rafferty
Feb 6, 2013
This is a year for Rochester's arts and cultural institutions to celebrate big anniversaries. Both the Memorial Art Gallery and the Rochester Museum and Science Center are continuing their 100th year of operation.
By Rebecca Rafferty
Jan 23, 2013
A decade in review
Anyone who lived through the 1960's remembers the period as one marked with tumult, conflict, and social revolution; a time of youth breaking out of the constricting 1950's ideals and trying to reshape their world. For many who were born after this time, the 1960's as a decade have become a thing of fascination, a period rife with changes we take for granted, and before which it is difficult to imagine living in such an alien American society.
By Rebecca Rafferty
Jan 9, 2013
Myth busters
Endless clichés are encountered when a dominant culture casts only a vague glance at a dominated culture, and these clichés serve the purpose of keeping a little-understood situation tucked into two convenient dimensions. The current show in the Grand Gallery of the Memorial Art Gallery explores the ways in which contemporary Indigenous artists from the Northeastern and Southeastern regions of the United States and Canada are creating works that interpret or redefine traditional media, blend traditional and contemporary subject matter, and seek to define identity for themselves amid questions of cultural assimilation.
By Rebecca Rafferty
Dec 19, 2012
Art and history in East Rochester
The trains that thunder by every dozen or so minutes just a few yards from the oldest standing building in East Rochester are part of the history of the place, which was originally a boarding house off the railroad tracks. The space houses East Rochester's young gallery, Art and Vintage on Main, which is managed by Rosa Arnone, who seeks to make the space into a kind of "mini Hungerford" in the suburbs.
By Rebecca Rafferty
Dec 19, 2012
Exciting news concerning the future of Rochester
Contemporary Art Center was announced tonight amid the 300 works that make up
the 22nd Annual Members Exhibition. Art Center Executive Director Bleu Cease
thanked the people who have supported the institution throughout its nearly 36
years before he released the news that RoCo, which
throughout its history has been a tenant of various area buildings, now has a permanent
address, as it has purchased the building that currently houses its galleries
and studios at 137 East Avenue.
By Rebecca Rafferty
Dec 6, 2012
Rochester Contemporary, RoCo, Rochester Art
"Contemporary African American Printmakers"
In “Contemporary African American Printmakers,” the show currently on exhibit at Nazareth College Arts Center Gallery, curator Deborah Ronnen has brought together more than a dozen artists whose works speak powerfully to identity, history, and the future.
By Rebecca Rafferty
Dec 5, 2012
Voices whispering in the leaves
I recently read a brilliant Carl Sagan quote regarding the existence of books as "proof that humans can work magic," in that they are a tool by which we have broken "the shackles of time," through which we are able to hear the voice of another human, across millennia, and gain from what they have learned about any subject at all. Many of us feel this way about reading — we speak of being transported through story — but perhaps forget the simple fact that we are, for a space of time, privately joining our mind with that of another.
By Rebecca Rafferty
Nov 28, 2012
