Karen and Ted Koskores Gallery

Clay Vessels:
Common and Sacred
Roger Cramer

Roger Cramer is a studio potter and has been so, at least in spirit, since the spring of 1970 when Bud Wilkinson, the Potter of Dayspring, set his imagination on fire for work with clay. Since this first encounter with clay he has been drawn deeply into the work because of its creative energy and the tactile response  of such supple material.

Pottery as metaphor has also been a rich gate of spiritual inquiry for Cramer. Shortly after meeting Wilkinson, he had a crash course in pottery with Richard Lafean, studied with Nancy Joy at the Corcoran School in Washington D.C. and took a year of courses at the School of the Chicago Art Institute. After moving to Columbia, Maryland in 1972, he worked as a part-time studio potter and made clay throwing bodies for local potters. Since then Cramer has continued to study at workshops with inspirational artists such as Jim Kempes at Ghost Ranch in New Mexico, Wayne Higby and Stewart Kastenbaum at Haystack Mountain School of Crafts in Maine, Jim Romberg and Biz Littell at Laloba Ranch in Colorado and lately with Steven Hill. 

Cramer’s life as a potter has evolved on a part-time basis alongside his primary work for 38 years as an Episcopal priest. In 2005, after 28 years in parish ministry at St. Paul’s Church in Newburyport, Massachusetts, he retired from parish ministry to spend my time working with clay and making beautiful things.

Visit Roger's website for a closer look at his work

Flora + Fauna: Conversations with Nature
Sophy Tuttle

Sophy Tuttle’s work transforms sterile scientific facts into a rich visual landscape that can be easily accessed intellectually and emotionally by a wide range of people. In particular, she is drawn to mural work because of the inherently democratic viewership. To experience a public mural, the viewer does not need money, education, status, or access to spaces of privilege such as galleries or museums. When a mural is painted in a public space, through content, form, and sheer size, it has the enormous power to transform that space into a “place.” It can provide the seed for a more active, vibrant, collaborative, and discursive arena, and even set the intention of the actions that occur in that space through its collaborative creation and subject matter.

In addition, her work is focused on the natural world, our place in it, and the conflicts and collaborations we find ourselves in everyday with nature. Sophy’s bright, carefully researched murals often aim to disrupt deeply embedded beliefs about Aristotle’s hierarchy of nature. She renders birds, animals, and plants to evoke a sense of awe and reverence for these beings. Although extinction and loss loom in the man-made Anthropocene era, she hopes that her paintings call attention to the magnificent beauty that still exists in nature today.

Visit Sophy's website for a closer look at her work

Lasting Impressions:
The Monotype and Monoprint
A Monotype Guild of New England Juried Member's Exhibition

Dedicated to the art of the unique print, the Monotype Guild of New England is a national, nonprofit organization that fosters understanding and appreciation of monotypes and monoprints. It sponsors exhibitions, workshops, and other special programs for its members and the public.

The Guild has sponsored over 100 open, juried, and curated exhibitions in its 30 year history. These exhibitions showcase the work of the guild's members and monoprinters throughout the country, revealing the diverse range of traditional and innovative monoprinting techniques being used today.

Juror, Rachel Vogel has chosen a stunning array of prints for this latest exhibition and announced the award-winning artists’ prints in early October.

What is a monotype? Read more on the Museum of Modern Art's website. 

Emergence; Has the Last Three Years Changed Me?

The Narrative is Mine to Tell
Destiny Palmer

Palmer is trained as a painter, but her work explores the intersections of painting, history, and color, allowing it to blur the lines of painting, sculpture, and installation. Her work investigates colonial American history as it relates to her own identity as [a Black woman]. Her paintings respond gesturally and the fabric works rely on materials to navigate conceptual ideas. While Palmer’s studio work is generated from personal histories, her public art is a reclamation of space.

In the past few years, hands have shown up in her work. They are literal and symbolic references to labor. Hands have been at the center of decision-making, wealth, slavery, motherhood, etc. Hands nurture and hand harm. “When I started using hands, I wanted to talk about greed. When reading about America’s beginning, so much of it was around greed. Claiming land, people, goods, and not for a purpose but to have. That resonated with me because nothing has changed. All of the hands . . . are genderless, ageless, and not grabbing any particular thing.”

Founded in 1959, the Massachusetts Camera Naturalists (MCN) is an informal organization dedicated to the appreciation of nature and the natural environment. Through its members, it seeks to promote: A closer fellowship among serious nature photographers and naturalists; a greater appreciation of nature through the exchange of ideas and techniques for nature photography and observation; and the development and education of the general public in nature photography, the appreciation of nature, and the conservation ethic.

You can find more information about the MCN at camnats.org.

Donna MacLure:
I have been painting in watercolor for the past 19 years, with table top still life being among my favorite subject matters. I have no formal training but have studied with numerous local and nationally known teachers. I have exhibited both locally and internationally. My work can be found in galleries throughout New England and several private collections worldwide.

I am a Signature Member of the New England Watercolor Society, North East Watercolor Society, and Rhode Island Watercolor Society as well as an artist member of the North Shore Arts Association and Attleboro Arts Museum. I paint daily in my home studio in the beautiful Sheldonville section of Wrentham.

Karole Nicholson:
My art practice combines my life experiences with my need to connect to nature and to the influences of daily life. Capturing the intimate landscape of the local environment, I interpret these scenes using pastels, acrylics, and collage. The evolution of my landscape work demonstrates my concern for the rapidly disappearing open space in our communities. By defining these “forgotten” sanctuaries, it is my hope the viewer will adopt a renewed appreciation and perspective for the remaining undeveloped land in Southern New England.

My art experiences are directly related to my life experiences. Significant relationships are at the center of my art: the unwavering support of my husband, my family, and my friends. Depicting scenes that will stimulate memory and create mood serves as a tool of communication and a source of challenge. What I create is not only a reflection of who I am today; it is the sum of many parts tethered by the struggle and the joy.

Nature Reimagined: Two Artists - Two Interpretations

As artists, Emma and Carol draw great inspiration from all aspects of nature. In this exhibition, each artist will create works that show their individual perceptions.

Carol Abram: Carol approaches nature from the perspective of peacefulness and awe. Whether it is the majestic crashing of waves or the tiny ripples in a pond, water is the main fascination often portrayed in her works. The mediums change, but the passion for the outdoors, especially bodies of water, stays the same.

Emma Davidson: For Emma, it’s the act of being immersed in her surroundings, whether it’s on a trail high in the mountains or at sea on a sailboat. From these experiences, she is able to draw on memories of her journeys and dreams of future adventures that allow her to connect imagery in an interesting manner.

Creativity takes on many forms: from the view outside the window to your mind’s interpretation of that scene to realistic and abstracted lines on paper. As two artists with similar inspirations, it’s fun to share how they reimagine nature.

You can find more information about the artists at: carolabram.com and artandemma.com

Ellen Clancy: I am relatively late to the clay world as ceramics was not part of my studies at RISD or BU where I concentrated on graphic design and photography. Later, serendipity led me to study handbuilding at the Danforth Museum, where I fell totally in love with the claymaking that is now a necessary and important part of my life.

For many years I have been a studio member at The Potters Shop and School surrounded with wonderfully creative and supportive colleagues. And I am thankful also to be in year six as one of the claymakers represented at the Left Bank Gallery in Wellfleet.

I find it hard to describe my work because, for me, this clay journey is one of continual exploration, wanderings, experimentation, and, on occasion, epic failures. All of this brings me great joy.

If there are consistent creative threads in my work, they could include these: a nod to strong organic forms, never enough texture upon texture, a color palette based in nature, a love of dramatic contrasts, and a need for raw, patinated surfaces.

I have a tendency to use either a single glaze or a dozen on a piece. Or the surface of my work will be entirely dominated by texture or perfectly smooth so those dozen glazes can sing. Middle ground seems elusive. Because of these tendencies, most of my pieces are one of a kind.

Frequent travels also influence my work. Exposure to unusual landscapes, textiles, exotic forms, colorations, and new artists and their work feeds my creative process. My challenge is to be always forward-moving with trying new ideas and techniques. There is so much more to discover and learn and create.

Sarah Fuhro: When I step into the studio, I dance with excitement. A slab of wet clay is my canvas, my wall, where I will give form to a voice inside me. I try to say in line and contour and color what I cannot say in words.

Sometimes it is the feeling of the season, heat, cold, new life, or the death of the old forms. My inspiration comes from the natural world around me, the way leaves grow on a tree or a how a rabbit runs across the snow. Old stories come bubbling up from the Bible, from the myths of the Greeks and from the people who came before them.

Clay has a voice and sings to me in a thousand languages.

The Braintree Art Association has been participating in group exhibitions for more than 40 years, with a membership of over 200 amateur and professional South Shore artists. This exhibition - an annual Thayer event for more than 30 years - represents a broad scope of subject matters and various media and techniques.

An annual representative showing of artwork completed by students (grades 5-12) during the school year. Media and processes represented include painting, drawing, printmaking, pottery, photography, and graphic design.

Cousins
Kristen Joy Emack

Kristen Emack is a 2022 Guggenheim Fellow, a MacDowell Fellow, a Mass Cultural Council Fellow, and a Saint Botolph Fellow. Her work was recently at the Helsinki Photofest, and in the ACP Photo Festival in Atlanta in the Ones To Watch Exhibition. She is a CRITICAL MASS Top 50 Winner, a Michael Reichmann Project Grant recipient, and a PDN Emerging 30 nominee. Her interview in Vogue Italia was published in February 2020, and she is a series winner in Lensculture Portraits. Kristen won first place in Social Documentary Network’s ZEKE Award, and is published in OATH Magazine in South Africa, Click-Rivista in Italy, CLAN Photo Magazine, The Curious Society Volume One, Whalebone Magazine and The Sun Magazine, among others. This fall she had work in Miami in Past And Present Of The Body, curated by Pietro Daprano, and currently has images in the Maryland Academy Art Museum. She is represented by Gallery Kayafas, Boston.