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Posts Tagged ‘fort point arts’

The 13th Fort Point Artwalk was 4 to 7 today. (Saturday and Sunday, the Artwalk will be 12 to 5.)

We got started a little late because we had dinner first at Trade, but we definitely enjoyed what we had time to see.

The Boston Design Museum at the corner of Melcher and A streets had art made of moss in frames that caught my eye. We also liked seeing the models for the Street Seats contest that I blogged about a while back.

Across the way, Ari Hauben’s show was energetic and amusing. Hauben teaches art to kids with special needs in Boston, and he has strong feelings about the country’s current emphasis on standardized tests — especially for the student population he knows best.

He and an optical-engineer friend from Rochester, NY, acquired 50 Melcher Street, and for the current show, Hauben papered the floor with standardized tests. He put up large, green chalk boards with pedagogical insights and opportunities for guest commentary.

And he was eager to explain just how he creates the current works from Instagrams sent him by friends. The website says,  “His style could be defined as blending pop and street art techniques into mixed media works. The process predominantly involves newspaper, epoxy, spray paint, and layering techniques that are integrated into a variety of visual platforms.”

The prices are indicated by grades: A, B, C, D, F. I especially liked a picture of weathered yellow sheds and the work called Peach Farm, below. Lots more variety, here.

WCVB’s Chronicle interviewed Hauben here.

Art: Peach Farm by Ari Hauben

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If I come to work early, I often take a walk at lunch. I love the Greenway, which is especially nice in spring and summer. And the Fort Channel district (the Mayor likes to call it the Innovation District) seems to have something new to see almost every week — repurposed warehouses, galleries, restaurants, pocket parks.

Fort Point Arts got bumped from its space next to Flour (a yummy restaurant) on Farnsworth, so one lunchtime I made a point of checking out its new space off A Street.

I especially like that they show art depicting the Fort Point neighborhood — partly because walking there makes me attached to that part of Boston, and partly because Fort Point is changing fast. (About 18 years ago, when I went to an arts open house there, many artists had studios with beds on ledges and  tiny kitchens. Some artists were squatting in dangerous buildings with wires hanging down, no heat, no doors, no lighting. That world is gone.)

Laura Davidson was one of the featured artists when I was last in the Fort Point Arts shop. She had some block prints of her neighborhood that I admired.

Be sure to check her home page. Everyone should have a home page that looks like a treasure map.

Art:Endangered Neighborhood” reprint of 1995 view of Fort Point), 2012, Laura Davidson

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Today I walked down to 300 Summer St. for one of the Channel Café’s great lunches and to see the latest in the Fort Point Arts Community Gallery.

The exhibit, a touring show organized by Terra “Touria” Fuller, features unusual carpets woven by Zahra, a cave-dwelling nomad in Morocco, and Mouhou, a subsistence farmer.

Touria also created a documentary. In “Living with Barbarians and Cave Dwellers … Fuller moves to the pre-Saharan desert plains of Morocco from 2008-2010 and integrates into an Amazigh village and learns the survival skills necessary to live with a family of cave-dwelling nomads on the edge of the village. Over two years, she follows along and documents their lives. This is a rare look into a private and fiercely independent nomadic people made possible by the patient friendship Fuller built with the villagers and cave dwelling society.”

More about the Boston show here.

Touria also is bringing two master weavers on tour this year, and you can learn about that at Kickstarter.

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John and two college friends rented a motor boat in Fort Point Channel Friday to see the sights of Boston Harbor. But first they motored near my building so I could wave as they passed under this piece of public art.

The Mystic Scenic Studios site explains the art:

“A designer named Peter Agoos approached Mystic Scenic Studios with the idea of creating two life-sized human figures made of aluminum to hang above the Fort Point Channel in Boston.

“Mystic Metal’s, Mike Onischewski, fabricated the figures from an aluminum sheet; [they] were then covered with refractive dichroic film with the help of David Forshee, also of Mystic Scenic Studios.

“The piece was installed on July 2, 2012, with a team of 12 volunteers who worked from a small boat on the water and a scissor lift on land. The piece was strung from a 300-foot yellow tightrope between the Samson Post structure on Summer Street and the counterweight tower on Congress Street. The life-sized figures were counterbalanced on the rope and inspired by a classic articulated wooden artist’s manikin.”

Photograph: Mystic Scenic Studios

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I learned about an unusual artist today because I was following @FortPointArts on twitter. Her name is Heidi Kayser, and just when I no longer have an office with a view of Fort Point Channel, she has launched an art project on the water. Sigh.

Anyway, I went to her website and poked around. This blog entry from 2011 is a typically amusing one, and I think one of my readers may want to try the experiment:

“Sarah Rushford arrived today and we got right to work … The mission, as we chose to accept it, was to construct some sort of wearable platforms to hold the cameras on the back of my legs. Wonderful engineers that we are, Sarah and I  ingeniously came up with [contraptions] made of CD cases, zip ties, rubber bands, twine and alligator clips. …

“Sarah filmed me tramping across the beach. I filmed my ankles tramping across the beach. It was very surprisingly difficult to walk wearing the cameras — I couldn’t extend my knees very much, so finding balance in soft sand proved challenging but oddly meditative. My attention had to be focused on every step, otherwise I’d fall and damage the cameras.

“When we were nearly finished, the curious beach-goers who had been pretending to ignore me as I walked steadily and weirdly by them, came up to us and asked what we were doing.” Read more.

Photograph: Sarah Rushford

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