Boston Flora

Tag: art installation

  • Wednesday, June 21, 2023 – Monday, April 1, 2024 – Rachel Hayes, The Edge of Becoming

    Landscape recalls you into a mindful mode of stillness, solitude, and silence, where you can truly receive time. – John O’Donohue

    Rachel Hayes creates vibrant large-scale textile installations that respond to their natural and built environments. She often repurposes pieces of nylon and cotton from previous works and arranges them into grid-like compositions reminiscent of Modern abstract styles and American quilt-making traditions. By blurring craft, sculpture, architecture and land art, Hayes’s works complicate notions of fragility and power, and invite new ways to engage with our surroundings.

    The Edge of Becoming is a new outdoor commission by Hayes installed along the hillside of Fruitlands Museum’s property in Harvard, Massachusetts, and expands upon her indoor exhibition Transcending Space. Hayes chose fabrics with bright colors that both relate to Shaker textiles found in the museum’s collection and evoke a sense of optimism sought after by the site’s Transcendentalist founders. Its title draws from theories by Irish philosopher John O’Donohue, who voiced connections between beauty and the edges of life. A threshold between the viewer and the space beyond Nashua River valley, The Edge of Becoming encourages meditative moments for reflection on oneself in connection to the world.

    Rachel Hayes was born in Kansas City, Missouri and lives and works in Tulsa, Oklahoma. She received her Bachelors of Fine Arts in Fiber from the Kansas City Art Institute, and her Masters of Fine Arts in Painting from Virginia Commonwealth University. In 2018, Hayes collaborated with the Italian fashion house Missoni, which culminated in a solo exhibition for Milan Design Week, as well as a site-specific installation at the flagship Missoni boutique on Madison Avenue in New York. She has exhibited her work at institutions including the SculptureCenter in New York City, and recently completed a site-specific installation for the 16th edition of Contemporary Istanbul, an international art fair in Turkey.

    Support provided by the Coby Foundation, Ltd. For more information visit https://thetrustees.org/exhibit/rachel-hayes-the-edge-of-becoming/

  • Through March, 2023 – Thank You For Being Here, 2022

    The Rose Kennedy Greenway is currently home to an exhibition by Mithsuca Berry, a series of four digital illustrations printed on fabric flags, with four vinyl text installations. Artist Mithsuca Berry says “This space is meant to serve as somewhere people can release their burdens: here lies a resting point after so much mourning. Here you can come together and experience the unapologetic love of the trees, grass, sky, and one another. Thank you for existing. My work is meant to affirm those in this space, and thank them for waking up to live another day, and encourage them to share this experience with their community.

  • Through May, 2021 – Wind Sculptures (SG) V, 2019

    The Rose Kennedy Greenway Conservancy’s public art program has paved the way for The Greenway to become a premier destination to see contemporary works of art in downtown Boston. The public art vision is to bring innovative and contemporary art to Boston through free, temporary exhibitions, engaging people in meaningful experiences, interactions and dialogue with art and each other. The Conservancy gives artists unique opportunities to exhibit bold, new work that considers the possibilities of 21st century Boston.

    Now through May, 2021, see Yinka Shonibare’s Wind Sculptures (SG) V, 2019.

    Wind Sculptures (SG) V explores the notion of harnessing the wind, and freezing it in a moment of time. Painted in a Dutch wax textile pattern, the work manifests as a large three-dimensional piece of fabric that appears to be blowing in reaction to the natural elements of the surrounding environment. 

    The fabric itself is a metaphor for the movement of people, trade routes and global relationships. Batik fabric originated in Indonesia, and Dutch colonizers used the technique to mass-produce fabrics that were sold to Britain’s West African colonies, where they were embraced and are now considered in the world’s eyes as authentic African products.

    The piece reminds us that our contemporary cultures, like the batik fabric, are the result of centuries of cross-cultural exchange. By referencing both this hybrid fabric and the powerful yet invisible nature of wind, the work suggests that identity is always a richly layered and dynamic set of relationships, while evoking a sense of freedom and possibility.

    Yinka Shonibare CBE’s interdisciplinary practice explores colonialism and post-colonialism within the context of globalization. Through examining race, class and the construction of cultural identity, Shonibare’s works comment on the tangled interrelationship between Africa and Europe, and their respective economic and political histories.

  • Sunday, September 18, 12:00 noon – 3:00 pm – Opening Reception with Jeppe Hein: A New End

    Jeppe Hein, a Berlin and Copenhagen-based artist, often combines elements of humor with the traditions of minimalism and conceptual art in his work. At Trustees of Reservations Hingham property World’s End, Hein will install a reflective labyrinth structure, made of mirrored posts of differing heights, whose form mimics the shape of the surrounding drumlin formations. Hein draws inspiration from the stunning natural beauty and landscape at World’s End, which features a combination of Frederick Law Olmsted-designed and natural landscapes with spectacular views of the Boston harbor and skyline.

    Visitors can walk through the labyrinth, touch the mirrored panels, and create their own photographic interpretations of “art and the landscape.” The sculpture will be installed in August and will be on view for a full year. Each season will bring a new and interesting dimension to this unique work. The Trustees will host a free (with admission) opening reception with the artist from noon to three on Sunday, September 18, 2016. For more information visit www.thetrustees.org.

  • Saturday, February 21, 1:00 pm – 3:00 pm – The Invented Landscape Opening Reception

    Just as the Arnold Arboretum is an invented landscape, so are the paintings in this exhibition of paintings by Nancy Sableski, which will be on view in the Hunnewell Building lecture Hall, 125 Arborway, from February 21 – May 29. While every work of art is an invention, Ms. Sableski takes this concept a step further by painting imagined landscapes that are constructed by blending multiple images taken with her cellphone. In this way she invents places that don’t exist but which clearly refer to the Arboretum. This technique allows her to examine aspects of landscape that continually capture her imagination: the interplay of powerful verticals, unpredictable diagonals, and receding horizontals. The opening reception will take place February 21 from 1 – 3. Call 617-384-5209 for more information.

  • Through September 4, 12:00 noon – 8:00 pm – The Big Hammock

    An 8′ by 38′ hand-woven piece of interactive art, designed by architect Hansy Better Barazza, will be hanging around the Rose Kennedy Greenway now through September 4.  The exact location is Fort Point Channel Parks, North (between Seaport Boulevard and Pearl Street).  Viewing is free.  You may see and read more about the project on the Big Hammock website, www.thebighammock.org.

  • Through March 31 – Susan Hiller: What Every Gardener Knows

    Smith College presents an audio installation in the Palm House in the Lyman Conservatory, presented in collaboration with the Smith College Museum of Art.  This electronically timed carillon plays music composed by internationally renowned artist Susan Hiller.  Originally commissioned for the exhibition Genius Locii in Stadtpark Lahr, Schwarzwald, Germany in 2003, the piece is based on Mendel’s theory of inherited traits in plants.  Hiller’s musical version of Mendel’s code reiterates and celebrates the variety and richness of genetics and inheritance patterns that characterize all living things.  You may listen at www.smith.edu/gardens/Home/events.html.

    http://image.absoluteastronomy.com/images/encyclopediaimages/s/sm/smith_botanic_garden_greenhouse_outside.jpg