Cambridge Open Studios is this weekend, and the roster is packed and sprawling. These kind of events are the most egalitarian way to see art, and while that’s part of what makes it so fun, it can also make it feel like a marathon or a scavenger hunt.
Here are a few artist picks to get you started:
Melissa Glick
See her at The Atrium, 100-200 Technology Sq. – hackercreations.com
Melissa Glick makes assemblage and functional art from computer guts and other recently dead technology. Her studio looks like a repair shop from some the vague moment between computers as big as our bedrooms to computers smaller than our hands. But these are personal too. Glick began this work after rescuing her father’s tech collection from a trip to the dump, and it’s spiraled out from there. “People get really attached to their computers,” she says “so they like when they can bring them to me.”
Glick is interested in the shapes, the patterns—how these hidden parts have their own intricacy and grace. She reassembles them on scrap plywood and collages images among the motherboards and cellphone screen bits.
“Some small colorful pieces and a large one called, “It’s Just Old” made from a Kenwood receiver from the ’70’s which has some real archaic technology inside…. not unlike what I saw on a recent trip to Cuba!” – Melissa
Bike Gear & Snake Clock and Cell phone screen break down, held by The Artist
Hillary Tait Norod
See her at Lesley University, 1801 Massachusetts Ave, Cambridge, Lunder Arts Center, Lower Level – www.hilarytaitnorod.com/
Hillary Tait Norod paints wild psychological dramas, dancing in and out of abstraction. You’ll find familiar private places: a bed, curtains, a floating chest of drawers, and among these cozy attachments: vast lurching places, unrecognizable, but emotionally precise dwellings of the mind. They’re the silent conversations you have with yourself before falling asleep. Looking at her paintings feels like putting on goggles and seeing the architecture of the psyche fill the empty space around us.
One thing I dig about Hillary’s process that you might not find in her finished gallery work is the way she brutalizes the canvas—cutting holes and sewing back on layers, applying spray foam and building up structure. These “ugly” paintings help her get a lot of her ideas out and discover new methods to apply to the rest of her work.
Hilary Tait Norod, work in progress with details
Cambridge Modern Quilt Guild
See them at Gather Here 1343 Cambridge Street, Cambridge, MA – http://cambridgemodernquiltguild.blogspot.com
If you haven’t been seeing quilt making as art, now is a good time to start. Below are quilts from Left to Right by: Collaborative, Lisa Pignatelli, Rebecca Scheidt Shawgo, Bottom Row: T Lawrence-Simon, and Wendy Shapiro. The Guild’s show will be up at Gather Here.
Quilts by Cambridge Modern Quilt Guild
