April 2024 ALNB Solo Art Shows - An Appreciation

 The Art League of New Britain has three modest Galleries that are going to host individual Solo Shows.  This is something different and new from recent years.  And its a welcome curatorial innovation.

Photographer Bruce Ferraris, Material Designer and Printmaker Bruce Blackman and Photographer and Watercolorist Ursula Coccomo are the stars of these shows.

As a matter of disclosure, I'm a long time fan/member of the ALNB and both Bruce's are friends and artistic peers who I have a long term familiarity with.  For that reason, the following remarks are an appreciation of the work rather than a criticism.

Bruce Blackman has long been working with the lint fibers that are a byproduct of everyday laundry. Bruce's process is additive and transformative. He creates a visual design that he then overlays with select swatch of lint that he arranges and adheres there. The result is an assemblage whose look and feel will remind the viewer of a Milton Avery painting.

The work is ecclectic and compelling.  Bruce's show includes fine prints and drawings as well.

Ursula Coccomo's show features a variety of romanticized photography whose American lineage can be traced back to Hudson River School roots. These are idyllic scenes from nature that invite patrons and visitors an opportunity to explore and enjoy nature as refined by Ursula's vision.

Her show includes a collection of watercolors - many of the outdoors and some that are simply special interest topics.  All of them nicely crafted and presented.

Ursula's show mutually complements the Stable gallery which is perfect for small and medium sized works and the thematic arc of her work against the rustic wall and floorspace makes for a warm inviting experience.

  

Bruce Ferraris is an enigmatic fellow.  Yes, he's a photographer but his real interest is in a Warholian kind of serialization of "the" image. Instead of repeating an image with the same point of view and allowing for the imperfections of the reproductive process to reveal itself, Bruce floats around that point of view and mixes it up a bit. The result is a drive-by cubist image.  Bruce creates a collective set of these photographs and aesthetically blends a shaken, not stirred final image - kind of like a photographic Margarita.

All of these assemblages are 4 x 4 - some autonomously hung, some are immutably attached to a backing.

Bruce's subject matter in this show is largely to celebrate the taken-for-granted interior stuff of everyday life and make it fresh and interesting.  Pots and pans, junk drawer treasures, and god-knows-what that stuff is is the subject.  Good stuff.

What I love about this new format of one gallery/one artist shows is that, unlike scattershot group shows, an artist can show a range and depth of artistic growth that simply is never otherwise available. 

And shows like this are the finest example of "community" representation.  These are not identity politic advocacies.  Nobody is mirroring skin color, sexual preference, or any other such private triggering mechanism.  These are also artists who volunteer routinely to keep these places healthy, vibrant, and open to *EVERYBODY* both as participants and viewers.

There is no excuse to claim you don't have the opportunity to see, meet, and break bread with great artists if  you don't show up.

GO and enjoy.