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Debra Olin’s Rappaport Prize, Jane Ingram Allen’s maps, and Amy Schlegel at Tufts
BY RANDI HOPKINS
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The DeCordova Museum has announced the recipient of this year’s coveted Rappaport Prize — at $20,000, the largest public annual award to an individual artist in New England — and the deserving winner is a Somerville-based printmaker. Debra Olin has been a visible presence on the area’s art scene for years, developing a rich body of work while exploring her own Eastern European Jewish heritage through two-dimensional prints and three-dimensional garment-like constructions often adorned with text, found objects, and images. She uses these poetic body doubles to make connections with other generations and other traditions. Her personal history is a jumping-off point for poignant explorations of life and loss — this is heavy stuff — but she’s so hopeful in her attitude and inventive in her style that the work takes on a transcendent quality while remaining resolutely earthy, and mortal. The artist is articulate and good-humored about her work, explaining, "When I first started printmaking, the work that was most successful was about my background, my family, about loss of a culture, but it has definitely branched out. I like the idea of connecting disparate cultures. For example, there’s a Russian and Polish healing technique called ‘cupping’ — and then I found out that my Chinese acupuncturist uses it! It seems like these cultures would be so at odds, but finding these connections gives me hope. My work has gone on more of a path of healing lately — inner healing, healing the world." She laughs. "I probably listen to too much radio while I work!" Olin’s work is currently on view in the exhibition "Time Remembered/Time Past: Boston Printmakers at the ACM" at the Art Complex Museum in Duxbury. It’ll be up though September 12 and is well worth the trip. Cultural connections are also the focus of "Made in Taiwan: Jane Ingram Allen," which is opening at the Essex Art Center on September 10. Ingram Allen, a sculptor and an installation artist as well as a papermaker, spent six months on a Fulbright grant in Taiwan, where her interest in environmental issues and our cultural, geographic, and psychological experience of the world led her to create a series of handmade paper maps using recycled paper pulp and renewable, native Taiwanese resources in combination with mass-produced local items. One of her more poetic techniques involves laying paper pulp over manhole covers to make patterned and textured sheets that she incorporates into her larger, organically shaped maps. This is street art at its most literal, adding a direct physical connection between maps and the places they represent. Three shows opening at Tufts University’s Aidekman Arts Center on September 9 herald what looks like an adventurous exhibition program brewing in Medford under the fresh eye of new director Amy Schlegel. "The Amazing and The Immutable: Photography from the Collections of Robert Drapkin and Martin Margulies" pairs late-19th-century vintage photographs with late-20th-century photo-based contemporary art. "Evidence: The Case Against Milosevic; Photographs by Gary Knight" documents war crimes in Yugoslavia. And "Overt/Covert" is a group show about war including heroic paintings by the very recently departed Leon Golub. It’s an auspicious start to Schlegel’s stewardship at Tufts. "Time Remembered/Time Past" is at the Art Complex Museum, 189 Alden Street in Duxbury, through September 12; call (781) 934-2731. "Made in Taiwan: Jane Ingram Allen" is at the Essex Art Center, 56 Island Street in Lawrence, September 10 through October 22; call (978) 685-2343. "The Amazing and the Immutable: Photography from the Collections of Robert Drapkin and Martin Margulies" is at Tufts University’s Aidekman Arts Center, 40 Talbot Avenue in Medford, September 9 through November 21. "Evidence: The Case Against Milosevic, Photographs by Gary Knight" is up there September 9 through October 31, and "Overt/Covert" is on view September 9 through December 20. Call (617) 627-3518.
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