The Berkshire Eagle, "MCLA'S Senior Art Exhibition Opens May 1 - Virtually"
Welcome to MCLA Gallery 51’s curated 2020 Alumni Art Show. The event is co-hosted by the MCLA Alumni Office. The curated works included in the 2020 Alumni Art Show span the practices of fourteen artists who graduated from MCLA between 1971 - 2019. Each artist was invited to submit work for the exhibition, from which Gallery 51 made a final selection of the works included in the show.
This exhibit is free and open to the public. Attendees may make a suggested donation of $5 to support The Fund for MCLA by texting FUND4MCLA to 41444 or visiting http://give2.mcla.edu/. Donations support student emergency need, scholarship, and equitable internship access and all gifts are fully tax-deductible. Thank you for joining Gallery 51 and the MCLA Alumni Office in celebrating this talented group of alumni.
Selected artists include: Cara Finch ‘11 • Melyssa Fortini ‘19 • Jennifer (Smith) Huberdeau ‘00 • Alexander Jamal ‘15 • Christina Kelly ‘98 • Makayla-Courtney McGeeney ‘16 • Amy Modesti ‘14 • Bill Righter ‘80 • Theresa M. Terry ‘71 • Stephanie VanBramer ‘14 • Ben Warren ‘11 • Isaac H. Wood ‘17
To learn more about each artist, click HERE. For the availability of each work, click HERE.
MCLA Berkshire Cultural Center’s Gallery 51 is pleased to present a new body of work by artist-in-residence Genevieve Gaignard. Her exhibition “ A Long Way From Home” draws upon the many artistic forms we have come to know from her such as collage and assemblage of found objects into an environment that plays with the senses. Known for her works that explore class, race, and gender, Gaignard renders her interior world radically exterior. She accomplishes this exteriorization by reproducing a home space to question the repetitions of the past in the present.
Home again in rural mill town Massachusetts, Gaignard is confronted with all the ways her artistic migration has changed her and how the events of the world put into perspective the contradictions of her hometown. She seeks the sights and sounds of home. She longs for another feel, another place, a different space. Gaignard longs for a different place to rest during the historical and political turbulence of COVID-19 and the reemergence of Black Lives Matter protests in response to the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis, Minnesota.
“A Long Way From Home” drops the viewer into Gaignard’s inner turbulence through an imagined parlor–an externalization of an interior place–for all to see. There are moments where the walls are decorated with found photos of black and white faces that appear to be weeping and at times marked by black jeweled tears. Each technique Gaignard deploys interrogates a complex field of emotion depicting the disorientation stemming from feelings of grief, anger, and exhaustion for black lives cut short. Gaignard’s discontent is seen in “Salty Karens,” a collage of a gaggle of white women noticeably enjoying themselves with a floral wallpaper backdrop. Gaignard places an oversized cutout of a Morton’s salt box trickling salt over one of the women’s heads producing a masked hood.
Taking a more serious tone, Gaignard does not shy away from the long history that precedes our present. Another collage in the exhibition has an off white wallpaper marked by blue watercolor roses. The wallpaper is the background to a large stencil cut out of the words “White Lies.” Directly beneath the words is an image of a white woman in a white formal evening gown standing on a bed of flowers. Her arms are intertwined in a white shawl in such a way to signal her enjoyment. To the left and to the right of the white women’s image are two large white feminine looking hands with lace lined handkerchiefs. In contrast to these pictures is an image of Martin Luther King Jr. (MLK). In one of his hands are notes for a speech while the other hand waves back at the field of whiteness he spent his lifetime addressing.
Gaignard’s placement of MLK and former President John Fitzgerald Kennedy in her home is a nod to a history she is tired of repeating. Gaignard is much like a child on a road trip seeking reprieve from monotonous terrain. She is frustrated about the repetition of white lies that promise freedom, justice, and democracy for all. American history tells a different story. Rather, it repeats the same historical exclusions with a different technique. Gaignard’s impatience is clear, her question “are we there yet?” is an invitation to join in her frustration at the white lies we are taught to believe.
“A Long Way From Home” is a practice of an artist who understands her form and knows how to use it. In these trying times her persistent question “are we there yet?” tied to a desire for home that is welcome to all speaks to a historical frustration that continues to linger in the present. Her work is an invitation to break the violent repetitions that anti-blackness, poverty, patriarchy, and homophobia beget and rebuild home anew. The exhibition will be on view from August 27 - December 7, 2020 at MCLA Gallery 51 and is curated by Erica Wall.
-Written by Dr. Taryn D. Jordan
We Are More Than A Moment is a call to be heard.
This virtual exhibition is organized by MCLA’s Gallery 51 and curated by Inaugural Artist in Residence, Genevieve Gaignard. Gaignard is a Los Angeles based artist whose work focuses on photographic self-portraiture, sculpture, and installation to explore race, femininity, class, and their various intersections. It is this exploration coupled with our nation’s most recent events that inspires the focus of this exhibition. The selected work echoes these themes and exemplifies the long-term prosperity of Black life.
Artists in Exhibition Section One:
Ambrose, Cheryl Bartley, Troy Chew, Jennifer Datchuk, Alexandria Deters, Kirsten Furlong, Merik Goma, Patrick Earl Hammie, Ashley Jan, Lavaughan Jenkins, Helina Metaferia, Abe Odedina, Christina Quarles, Christian Ramirez, Juliana Rico, Michon Sanders, Holly Tempo, Jillian Thompson, Nathan Wong, Kennedy Yanko
Artists in Exhibition Section Two:
Yasmine Diaz, Topher Gerzeli, Rachel Cassandra Gibbons, Cyd Gorman, Daesha Harris, D. Hill, Daphne Jenkins, Gladys Kalichini, Aya Kawabata, Jupiter Lockett, Nate Massari, Michi Meko, Chalice Mitchell, Kelly Taylor Mitchell, Chinaedu E. Nwadibia , Veronica Preciado, Richard Rawlins, Joshua Ross, Luis Vasquez La Roche, Christopher Williams
For availability of the work, click HERE.
A recording of the virtual opening is on the BCRC YouTube playlist.
Artist and recent graduate, Spring Hajjar, is featured as The Art of It artist in the June Digital Issue of Berkshire Magazine!
Untitled sculpture by Megan Reed, photo by Megan Reed
A Practice in Process is an exhibition intended to provide a window into the process that drives artists to make work and sustain a practice. The ability to sustain a practice, challenges artists with an unending search for very basic needs; a space to create, time to create, enough inspiration to motivate actual production and the ability to physically produce a final product. A Practice in Process shines a light on one way in which many artists attempt to address the arduous path of process in their practice. To continue to make and advance their work, many artists search for and attend artist residencies at least once, if not, many times throughout their careers. An artist residency can create a space to either change their work drastically, by moving it into an entirely different direction, or by pushing it much further in the same direction.
North Adams continues to draw artists from all over the world. Its rich burgeoning arts community continues to grow and thrive in the region, amidst spaces like Gallery 51, MASS MoCA and many other spaces like it in Berkshire County. This exhibition brings together the work of eight artists who traveled to the region to participate in the Studios at MASS MoCA artist-in-residence program, between December of 2019 and during January of 2020. A Practice in Process, with work by Megan Reed, Tara Sabharwal, Celeste Wilson, Phil Rabovsky, M Slater, Barbezat-Villetard, Jonathan Michael Korotko and Charlene Tan, will be on view from Wednesday, January 22, 2020 - Saturday, March 14, 2020 at MCLA Gallery 51. This exhibition was co-curated by Erica Wall and Charlene Tan and presented in partnership with MASS MoCA’s Assets for Artists.
