Now in its 7th year, the SoWa Winter Festival is an anticipated community event in Boston’s South End. Local small businesses and vendors have set up for the season in the SoWa Power Station, while down the street on Harrison Avenue, artist studios and galleries are holding hours and introducing the last exhibitions of 2022. We spent the week visiting our neighbors and fellow members of the Boston Art Dealers Association and pulled together highlights for your trip to the South End.
Stephan Hamilton, At the Water Line, 2022. Acrylic and natural dyes and pigments on muslin and handwoven cotton cloth. 42 x 55 in
Stephen Hamilton's first solo exhibition with Laisun Keane entitled Passages blends traditional African techniques of resist dying, weaving, and woodcarving with a Western figure painting style. The result is a stunning solo exhibition of distinctive textures and a layered depth of colors. Stephen Hamilton is a Boston-based artist whose work was featured in 2021 in a solo exhibition at the ICA Watershed Harbor Room. His multimedia installation, Founders Project, was recently installed in a Boston public high school to address the lack of Pre-Colonial African Narratives in education. His work connects contemporary and pre-colonial times as well as expresses African culture as equal to its Western counterpart. The artistry and message behind Hamilton’s work is a must see.
Left: Sam Cady, Construction Trailer, Manhattan Bridge, 1971. Oil on shaped canvas. 42 x 144 inches
Right: Sam Cady, Breakwater, Plymouth, 2021. Oil on shaped canvas. 67.5 x 83.5 inches
Left: Sam Cady, Last Branch, Plymouth, 2022. Oil on shaped canvas. 66 x 43 inches
Right: Sam Cady, Windswept Cypress, SF, 2022. Oil on shaped canvas. 64.5 x 78.25 inches
Howard Yezerski Gallery is also exhibiting an impressive solo exhibition, Anything: More Parts of the Whole, Old and New, featuring artist Sam Cady. Cady’s work on view spans over 50 years of the artist’s 70-year career. The paintings explore the juxtaposition between “the beauty of nature” and “the subtle beauty of ordinary man-made objects.” The unconventionally shaped canvases immediately grab viewers through the outside window of the gallery, perfectly matching the outline of the object depicted in each painting. Cady’s work is a part of numerous collections and solo exhibitions worldwide. To hear more about the artistic process, stop by the artist talk on December 10th at 1pm.
Karen Moss, SUPPORT SYSTEM, 2021. Marine plywood, gesso, and acrylic paint. 69 x 32.5 in
The non-uniform edges of Karen Moss’s drawings in her solo show, Which Way Out, are undeniably compelling. Her inspiration was not drawn from the outside world, but instead from her prolonged experience inside during the COVID-19 pandemic. The figures represent her primary source material: a collection of stuffed animals and toys that nod to common pop culture references. The second solo exhibition in the gallery can be seen hovering in the window, a large, black collection of flowers and branches. Judy Harberl’s exhibition, Black & Blue, explores her fascination with the color black, and more recently, blue.
Kingston Gallery
Kingston Members: Celebrate Renewal
Next door at Kingston Gallery, member artists are coming together in a group exhibition titled Celebrate Renewal to renew their connection to art and the community. As part of that mission, the holiday show will benefit the Boston Medical Center’s Immigrant and Refugee Health Center.
Holiday Group Exhibition Roundup
Bromfield Gallery
”Winter Works” Holiday Sale
Bromfield Gallery, Chase Young Gallery, Fountain Street, and Soprafina Gallery are also exhibiting group shows of small works during the SoWa Winter Festival. As always, we are firm believers in supporting small businesses and individuals not only during the Holiday season, but year round.
