Powered by Google
Home
Listings
Editors' Picks
News
Music
Movies
Food
Life
Arts + Books
Rec Room
Moonsigns
- - - - - - - - - - - -
Personals
Adult Personals
Classifieds
Adult Classifieds
- - - - - - - - - - - -
stuff@night
FNX Radio
Band Guide
MassWeb Printing
- - - - - - - - - - - -
About Us
Contact Us
Advertise With Us
Work For Us
Newsletter
RSS Feeds
- - - - - - - - - - - -
Webmaster
Archives



sponsored links
- - - - - - - - - - - - -
PassionShop.com
Sex Toys - Adult  DVDs - Sexy  Lingerie


   
  E-Mail This Article to a Friend

Super crafty
‘Wonder Worlds’ at Mass MoCA; Wilcox and Shannon at Boston Sculptors
BY RANDI HOPKINS

Materials we know from our earliest stabs at art-making — pom-poms, colored tape, colored pipe cleaners — provide the tools that sculptor Linda Price-Sneddon needs to turn an ordinary gallery space into a full-surround, walk-right-into-it experience, complete with cascading woolly blobs, magical pools of fuzzy and glittery stuff, and, recently, animated video images. Her new installation, "Wonder Worlds: Observations in Pipe Cleaners and Pom-Poms," in the Kidspace Gallery at the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art (Mass MoCA), occupies a 2,000-square-foot space on the third floor of that amazing North Adams outpost for contemporary art of all stripes. It also doubles as a hands-on family activity.

"The whole exhibition is about looking, about observation," Price-Sneddon explains on the phone from her home in Salem. "Kidspace is a collaborative project of the Williams College Museum of Art and the Sterling & Francine Clark Art Institute with Mass MoCA, and the notion of the place is to act as a contemporary-art gallery for adults and children, with a mission of bringing contemporary art — behind-the-scenes contemporary art — to children. As part of this, the artists work in residency with three local school districts. Kidspace is a gallery with a workshop in the back; visitors are free to enjoy the gallery space, or to go into the back and create their own projects to take with them — we’ve gone through over 100,000 pipe cleaners so far!"

As part of her residency at Mass MoCA, Price-Sneddon has been doing a special project with area second- and third-graders. "I’m working with the kids to create a wall drawing based on their observations of a day’s events. I challenge the kids to turn up their senses for a day, to pay attention to special patterns that might occur, to see things they haven’t seen before. I tell them that we think of computers as amazing machines, but really, our own bodies are the most amazing machines around."

Working with Price-Sneddon, the students have translated their observations onto the gallery walls, using large sheets of colored paper, colored tape, color-coding dots, and of course, pipe cleaners — in hues that go far beyond elementary school. Price-Sneddon, who was originally trained as a landscape painter, was drawn to her unorthodox materials because of their flexibility and the fact that they can be undone. "I like being able to put them together and take them apart again, like elements in a weird periodic table," she laughs. More seriously, "they are capable of the immediacy of drawing — I see the twine and pipe cleaners as line, the pom-poms as color fields, and the putty also as a drawing element. The new element with this show is video, which adds movement and time. I think of my work as 3-D drawings, because of that immediacy. You don’t have to wait for a pom-pom to dry!"

Sculpture also does the unexpected — in this case, float and twist in the air, or lean like de-installed, wanna-be paintings on the floor — in "Weightless: Leslie Wilcox" and "Unbecoming: Pat Shannon," two shows opening January 4 at Boston Sculptors Gallery’s new digs in the South End. The airy space promises to be a fantastic venue for exhibitions, as these artists grapple with gravity and mass, form and function.

Linda Price-Sneddon’s "Wonder Worlds: Observations in Pipe Cleaners and Pom-Poms" is at Mass MoCA’s Kidspace Gallery, 87 Marshall Street in North Adams, through February 27. Kidspace is open from noon to 4 p.m. Saturdays and Sundays (closed on January 1); admission is free. Go to www.massmoca.org/kidspace or call (413) 662-2111 for directions and information. "Weightless: Leslie Wilcox" and "Unbecoming: Pat Shannon" are at Boston Sculptors Gallery, 486 Harrison Avenue in the South End, January 4 through February 5, with an opening reception January 7, from 5 to 8 p.m. Call (617) 482-7781.


Issue Date: December 31, 2004 - January 6, 2005
Back to the Editor's Picks table of contents
  E-Mail This Article to a Friend
 









about the phoenix |  advertising info |  Webmaster |  work for us
Copyright © 2005 Phoenix Media/Communications Group