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GREG COOK

Latest Articles

Making life more magical

On ideas and community
Just do it.

By: GREG COOK | October 15, 2014

Primary structures

Charlie Smith's "Making/Unmaking" at GRIN; "Audible Spaces" at Brown
What happens if one plays with plywood as if it were paper?

By: GREG COOK | October 08, 2014

Between realism and abstraction

Andrew Paul Woolbright's "ShrineBeast" at Yellow Peril
Can sentiment be “an act of political resistance”?

By: GREG COOK | October 01, 2014

Inside, out

A 'Safe Space' at AS220 Project Space; 'The Queer Communities in Print Portfolio' at 186 Carpenter
“Be careful in the dang tent!”

By: GREG COOK | September 24, 2014

Outside the lines

"What Nerve!": RISD's stimulating revisionist history of underground American art
It’s hot, sweaty, satirical, messy, manic, Technicolor, cartoony, psychedelic stuff.

By: GREG COOK | September 17, 2014

Fall Arts Preview | Art: Bodies of work

Human forms and alternative figures
Plus candy that you can actually eat!

By: GREG COOK | September 10, 2014

Digging in the dust

Exploring John Jenks's "Lost" Museum at Brown
What do we preserve? And why?

By: GREG COOK | September 03, 2014

Life is a carnival

The RISD Museum's "Circus" goes behind the big top
To run away with the circus — it’s a glamorous metaphor for “leaving a dull life for a colorful one.”

By: GREG COOK | August 27, 2014

A world gone wrong

Lesser at AS220 project Space; and new Providence Art Windows
The skies always seem threatening in Jennifer Hrabota Lesser’s paintings.

By: GREG COOK | August 20, 2014

Outward and inward

Samuel Denoncour's "This Is Land" at GRIN; Toby Barnes's "Altared States" at Yellow Peril
A couple years or so back, Samuel Denoncour spent a year traveling alone across these United States.

By: GREG COOK | August 06, 2014

Beauty and ruin

Agustín Patiño’s astonishing "Metropolis" at Studio Z
You’ve surely seen Providence painter Agustín Patiño’s work.

By: GREG COOK | July 30, 2014

Evolving perspectives

Florence Leif at Bert Gallery; plus, works by Folz and Krumm
Somewhere around the 1950s, Florence Leif drastically changed her style.

By: GREG COOK | July 23, 2014

Doodles, lights, and dreams

Prouty, Sanchez, and Perry at AS220
Gibson Prouty has found a muse — classic yellow pencils with pink erasers on the end.

By: GREG COOK | July 16, 2014

Experiencing the RISD Museum's renovated galleries
The aim of the RISD Museum’s eight newly renovated galleries for its permanent collection of fashion and Egyptian and Asian art seems to be “quiet contemplation.”

By: GREG COOK | July 09, 2014

Brightness and darkness

Leah Piepgras’s intriguing “¡SuperVision!” at GRIN
Constellations of mirror ball clouds dangle from the ceiling on pink cords at the center of the room and slowly rotate and sparkle. You’re invited to peer though weird, lumpy crystal-telescope-things.

By: GREG COOK | June 25, 2014

Fighting the power

James Montford's confrontational art
It was around 1983 when Providence artist James Montford and a friend posed as photographers to check out the Ku Klux Klan rally in Norwalk, Connecticut.

By: GREG COOK | June 18, 2014

'Very Providencey'

"Going Nowhere" showcases Brown alumni who stuck around
“World building” is an idea that percolates — perhaps unconsciously — through the visionary end of the Providence art scene.

By: GREG COOK | June 11, 2014

History lesson

Works by Nancy Elizabeth Prophet; "Nonspace" at GRIN
The portrait of the sculptor Nancy Elizabeth Prophet (1890-1960) that emerges from the small exhibit “Delicious Sensation of Rightness,” at the John Brown House, is fuzzy.

By: GREG COOK | June 04, 2014

Revealing transformations

New works by Dan Butler and Judith Klausner
Seeing Dan Butler’s drawings and prints, you can imagine him talking long rambling strolls around cities and whipping out his sketchbook here and there to jot down impressions of old street lamps and bridges and other brawny urban constructions of America from the Gilded Age to World War II.

By: GREG COOK | May 28, 2014

A diverse display

Eight standouts at the "RISD Graduate Thesis Exhibition 2014"
It’s impressive and a bit daunting when the national art education powerhouse opens its doors to reveal what it’s been up to.

By: GREG COOK | May 21, 2014