Cute Overload

No, it's not because I am newly engaged that I share the following...

Maybe it is because I am very excited to be going to the Topsfield Fair today and seeing all sorts of judging and shows of bunnies, chickens, calves, flowers, art, and vegetables. If you have never been and live in New England, this amazing agriculture fair (established in 1818) is a must. I will give you an update later -- especially on the flower arranging section. These folks are brutally honest in their comments on composition.

Cakewrecks pointed me to the blog Cute Overload and there are some pretty excellent and funny pics over there. Enjoy!

New England Survey exhibition now on display at Fruitlands Museum

Last week, I traveled out beautiful Route 2 to Harvard, MA and the Fruitlands Museum to lay out the PRC's warmly received landscape exhibition, New England Survey.

The exhibition will run August 23 – December 21, 2008 with an opening reception on Sunday, September 14, 4 – 6pm. I am proud as a peach, as it's the first show that I curated that has traveled.

As you can see above, it is right at home in their Picture Gallery. Take a sneak peek at the installation and their beautiful grounds in this flickr set!

I am thrilled at how it turned out, as are they. The work is in their Picture Gallery, right next to Hudson River School paintings and right outside are incredible views and nature trails. The juxtapositions created are stunning. Re-experience work by Barbara Bosworth, Tanja Alexia Hollander, Janet Pritchard, Thad Russell, Jonathan Sharlin, and Paul Taylor.

A little history - This past spring, we were approached by the Fruitlands Museum to show a version of the PRC exhibition New England Survey in fall 2008. Fruitlands, a former Transcendentalist, Utopian center founded by Bronson Alcott, is increasingly considering exhibitions that complement their interpretive themes (Inhabiting Nature, Encounters on a Changing Landscape, and Traditions that Bind) as well as intersect with their mission. New England Survey was a perfect fit and joins a special exhibition of Joe Wheelwright’s trees sculptures currently on their grounds.

I am thrilled that Fruitlands loved the exhibition so much and that it will live on and be shown at such a beautiful location during New England’s peak fall season. I invite you to see it again in this unique setting, or for the first time. Take a whole day, have lunch, walk the trails, and explore their collections, it's that amazing!

Visit www.fruitlands.org for more information and directions. See you at the opening!

ABOUT FRUITLANDS: Fruitlands Museum is one of the first outdoor museums in America and boasts over 200+ acres of pastoral landscape and several period buildings. This national landmark shares the unique ideas, stories, objects, and landscape of New England’s most original thinkers, movers, and reformers. Enjoy nature trails and four unique galleries of Native American, Shaker, and American art collections, including Hudson River School landscapes and nineteenth-century vernacular portraits.

Cicadas - ready for their photo op

The periodic cicadas are here. Brood XIV emerged recently on parts of the cape and in 12 other states after a 17 year hibernation. The nature camper in me is fascinated by this and wishes my plans took me to the cape. Read more in this Boston Globe article and check out this photo gallery, courtesy of Odd Essay, found on Universal Hub. You can see if Brood XIV is emerging anywhere near you via this very cool map. Be sure to zoom in, there are many more points at closer range. Enjoy!

New England Survey in the Globe! (written by their Pulitzer Prize winning reviewer)

Tuesday was an important newspaper day in Boston. Gracing the front page of the Boston Globe was the Red Sox's opening day at Fenway and the announcement that their own Mark Feeney won the 2008 Pulitzer Prize for Criticism, as noted in the last post.

Humbly for us, Mark Feeney's review of the current PRC landscape exhibition, New England Survey, also ran in the very same Globe. (And super luckily for us, he liked it!) I am thrilled at the confluence of events. I wrote to congratulate Mark, and he modestly replied that it's a win for the paper and different than organizing an exhibition. To his and their credit, we had several people visit today because of his review and lots of calls. Here's to the power of well-crafted words and the media!

You can read Mark Feeney's review of the PRC exhibition New England Survey here.

You can read the official Globe story on Mark Feeney's Pulitzer Prize in Criticism here.

You can read some of his nominated stories here.

A New England poem by a New England poet

Inspired by the current PRC exhibition, New England Survey, and a recent sharing of a Frank O'Hara poem (and perhaps my humble attempt to fill the vacuum left from the Poem of the Week), I share with you a poem by Amherst poet Robert Francis (1901-1987). This landscape photography show was inspired by Francis's poem "New England Mind" (you can read my essay and see images from the show here as well as check out the opening reception snaps here). In addition to his gentle approach to nature, Francis used rhyming, puns, and humor in his work, as demonstrated in the title of autobiography, The Trouble with Francis. Below, I present another Francis poem, the wonderful "The Two Lords of Amherst."

As Bruce is traveling often to Amherst for his memory panoramas and reading lots of Francis himself, I feel like I am getting to know this New England town and alternative to the other Amherst poet quite intimately. For those that aren't familiar with Amherst's town center, you might enjoy knowing that Francis is referring here to a tavern/inn and a church that are actually across a street from one another. Lord Jeffery Inn is named after the founder of the town, Jeffery Amherst; the "Jehovah" named below is Grace Episcopal Church. Both are still in operation today. Enjoy!

"The Two Lords of Amherst"

The two Lords, Jeffery and Jehovah, side by side
Proclaim that hospitality lives and Jesus died.

Jeffery in whitewashed brick, Jehovah in gray stone
Both testify man does not live by bread alone.

From sacred love to bed and board and love profane
One could dart back and forth and not get wet in rain.

How providentially inclusive the design:
Here are the cocktails, here the sacramental wine.

Here is the holy, here the not-so-holy host.
Here are the potted palms and here the Holy Ghost.

Tell, if you can and will, which is more richly blest:
The guest Jehovah entertains or Jeffery's guest.

- Robert Francis


"To make anything interesting," Flaubert says, "you simply have to look at it long enough."

For those interested, we're working with a local writing non-profit, Grub Street, to co-present a workshop in and about the current exhibition on May 3rd. Called Staring and Wonder, the workshop will discuss ideas of staring and looking in literature to kick start the day and then turn to the photographs in the shows for expository inspiration. I am terribly excited by the whole idea and intend to sit in on the first half of the day. More information here.

AICA awards update! Picture Show gets silver but feels like gold

Here is an update on the 2008 AICA USA awards from the New England region, which were held about 3 weeks ago at the end of Feburary. Yep, you can always count on me to post on the latest, most fast breaking news. HOWEVER, yesterday, an audio review of our awards was released on Chicago's super online arts podcast mag, Bad at Sports. (Well, actually, there is a reason - I was gone for 10 of those days...and promise to do a roundup soon on Fotofest & SPE.)

I am proud as a peach to report that the exhibition Picture Show that I curated at the PRC (and Boston Cyberarts) was mentioned very positively for 4 minutes! In the category of “Best Show in a University or College Gallery," Picture Show took second place at AICA NE, but as stated above, I feel like gold. Thanks again to AICA NE, George Fifield of Cyberarts, and all of the artists in Picture Show.

Art critic Greg Cook (of the Boston Globe, Boston Phoenix, and of course, the blog, New England Journal of Aesthetic Research) joined Matt Nash, James Nadeau, and Christian Holland of Big RED & Shiny for the Bad at Sports roundtable at MIT's Stata Center. You can listen to the roundtable of these fine folks discuss all of the shows and more here. If you want to hear the Picture Show part specifically, fast forward about 20 minutes in.

Supposedly, the AICA New England awards won't be held next year so they can concentrate on getting more members (they don't have any $ to do the awards, but each host museum, this year the Rose, helps out). I hope they continue it, as the evening was great for the whole community, allowing big and little guns like me and us to come together. It was truly great. Big RED and Greg Cook hope to maybe have the ceremony morph into something, read more about that here and here.

Here is a round up of AICA and Picture Show links:

• Greg Cook posts on the AICA awards the night they happened
• BRS's blog Our Daily Red gives the AICA rundown as well
• See pics of the Picture Show installation at the PRC here
• Boston Phoenix named Picture Show one of the best of 2007
• Matt Nash's review of Picture Show in Big, Red, and Shiny
• Mark Feeney's review of Picture Show in the Boston Globe
• Greg Cook on the Musee Patamechanique in the Boston Globe

From trees to wet plate to poets

Bruce and I took a little trip to Western, MA this past weekend. It was a last minute get-a-way before he started his second semester of graduate school at UConn (not to mention, I crave trees every now and then). One of the photographers in my next landscape show, Paul Taylor, had an opening at the Hallmark Museum of Photography (no relation to Hallmark cards or collection), along with the super Susan Kae Grant. Paul owns and operates a photogravure press in New Hampshire, called Renaissance Press, which I visited this past summer. The fantastic retrospective included photogravures, ambrotypes, and many large gelatin silver print prints from wet plate collodion negatives. The PRC will be showing selections of the later from a series along the Connecticut River in March (see example above).

Just expanded, Hallmark now has two substantial gallery spaces and both bodies of work were immaculately presented. Hallmark does it right: the artists were picked up and driven around in limos the entire time, red carpets flowed out of the doors, and the reception was replete with extra touches. We met and talked to the Executive Director, Paul Turnbull, a former teacher at the related Hallmark Institute of Photography just down the street (which by the way is a 10-month commercial school that is unbelievably, incredibly outfitted with the latest technology). Bruce took courses there for a spell when he was about 20 and it was great to catch up with Paul, who proceeded to inform Bruce he had been following his work. Later that evening, during the artist talks at the Institute, Paul announced to the entire audience that Bruce Myren will have a show at the museum in 2009!

We had a delicious dinner and stayed at a lovely bed and breakfast, appropriately called Poetry Ridge, near Poet's Seat Tower. Come to find out, Paul and his wife and Susan were all staying at the b&b too! We had drinks (including a plum port) and looked at old photos of the house in front of a roaring fire. Turner's Falls itself is a small village with a paper mill history and a picturesque setting. From the warmth and kindness of all of those at Hallmark, to the dinner, to the b&b house and hosts, and a brilliant breakfast and visit with all of the artists, it was truly a memorable weekend!

UPDATE: I just posted pics from the weekend on our flickr page.

ABOVE: Paul Taylor, Untitled Connecticut River Landscape #20, 2000, Toned/Stained Gelatin Silver Print from collodion negative, 30 x 40 inches. For more of Paul's work and his press, visit http://www.renaissancepress.com/