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Seasons in the sun
Juried exhibition at Tufts, Thoreau’s Walden at Harvard
BY RANDI HOPKINS
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School may be out for summer at universities around town, but fine art never sleeps, and on June 10, the Tufts University Art Gallery in Medford shifts its attention from its student population to its creative neighborhood in the "Tufts Second Annual Juried Summer Exhibition," which features work by 25 artists who live or are employed in the Somerville and Medford area. The event was initiated last summer by the gallery’s then brand new director, Amy Ingrid Schlegel, and the first installment boasted a satisfying selection from artists with both longer and shorter CVs, in many media and of consistently high quality. This year, Schlegel has juried the show with talented art spotter Pascal Spengemann, who used to be curator at the funky Fire House Gallery in Burlington, Vermont, and now is co-owner/director of the adventurous Taxter & Spengemann Gallery in New York’s Chelsea neighborhood. And given that the Somerville/Medford area teems with good artists, from the Brickbottom Artist Building to the Vernon Street Studios, you can expect the result to be top-notch. Painter Matt Brackett contributes new work from his "We All Have Something To Do" series. These appear to be straight-ahead representational paintings, but in fact his subject is the death two years ago of his grandmother, which threatened his family with loss of their ancestral home. Brackett uses the language of carpentry (his trade by day) and a fine eye for the body language of the built world to create unusual scenes. Sculptor Brenda Star creates sleek cast fiberglass forms that conjure animals but no particular member of the natural world. Coated in black rubberized spray paint, with a haunch here, a part of skeletal structure there, her works are beautiful and mysterious, abstract and representational, formal and primal. A different perspective on nature comes into view in "Thoreau’s Walden: A Journey in Photographs by Scot Miller," which opens at the Harvard Museum of Natural History on June 11. Miller is a native Texan whose camera has led him around the world, from Yosemite National Park to Vernazza, Italy. He has spent more than five years retracing the footsteps of Henry David Thoreau, who himself famously spent 26 months on the shore of Walden Pond in the 1840s, capturing the experience down to the most minute detail in Walden: Or, Life in the Woods (’case you didn’t know). More than 30 of Miller’s intensely colored, atmospheric photographs, taken in each season, will be on view together with rare specimens and artifacts connected with Thoreau. In conjunction with the exhibition, Harvard professor Lawrence Buell will give a free public lecture at the HMNH on June 7 at 6 p.m.: "Spreading the Gospel of Henry Thoreau" will look at Thoreau’s impact on generations of writers, artists, and activists. "Tufts Second Annual Juried Summer Exhibition" is at the Tufts University Art Gallery in the Aidekman Arts Center, 40R Talbot Avenue in Medford, June 10 through July 31, with a free opening reception June 9 from 5:30 to 8:30 p.m.; call (617) 627-3518. "Thoreau’s Walden: A Journey in Photographs by Scot Miller" is at the Harvard Museum of Natural History, 26 Oxford Street in Harvard Square, June 11 through October 2, with a free opening lecture by Professor Lawrence Buell June 7 at 6 p.m.; call (617) 495-3045.
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