Studio Visits: An Introduction to a Series

By Craig Stockwell

There are without doubt many committed artists who have chosen to live and work in New England. My intention with this regular feature is to visit many of them and to write about the ones that seem to exemplify some aspect of development in current practice that is notable. We have artists who trained in New England or were born here and have gone off to international reputations. We have artists who carry on tenacious and original practices with perhaps only local notice, and we have artists who work in New England and have major careers in New York and Europe but are rarely seen or heard of here.

I am making studio visits, and writing about them. This effort sprang from a conversation I had with the new Editor of Art New England, Judith Tolnick Champa. I had just come from visiting the artist Sonia Almeida in Somerville. Sonia is a painter whose work I had recently encountered at Simone Subal gallery in New York. The art world is a constant and delicate dance wherein I am always feeling located anywhere from way outside to somewhat in. It’s the nature of this particular community, more so than most.

Now, my perception was that Sonia Almeida is deep inside. Consider a rave blurb in the New Yorker, an exciting new gallery, a European background (Portuguese) with time spent and work shown throughout Europe. My own life-long relationship to art is as much based on the desire to get in “there” and understand it, as much as not to be excluded as it is to make work, I confess. And Sonia, from a distance, struck me as being “in.”

The studio visit was wonderful. [See the Column appearing in Art New England magazine, September/October, Vol. 33, 5, Issue 2012.] There’s something deeply encouraging to find that your own thoughts, your own questions, are comprehensible to someone who appears to be working on a higher level. (There are levels. I am so often brought to action by the realization that I am hanging on a low rung…there are those who really have reached higher. It’s not all hype.)

I always thought that an artist should be isolated, ardent, single-minded and hard working. That’s one way to be and it has its moments but I don’t think it is a satisfactory response to our present world. What I’m encountering in my studio visits, even when the artists themselves may not recognize it, are expanded practices. These are practices that entail a dedicated studio presence but also include a myriad of other connected and connective activities that take their work to another level of both generosity and potential communication.

So I began to make purposeful studio visits, working towards writing a series of columns. Purpose begets purpose and this project quickly revealed to me how exciting and expansive this effort might become. I was headed to Provincetown/Truro for a week vacation with the family so I contacted a friend, Tim Donovan, whom I knew had contacts there. He introduced me to Mike Carroll of Schoolhouse Gallery in Provincetown and Susie Nielsen of Farm Projects Gallery in Wellfleet. I met with them in my first two days there and each gave me names of artists in that region to visit. Everyday I had a chance to talk with an artist, learn about their work and efforts, and also to come to know better the curious and distinct world of Provincetown art.

I met Larry Collins, an accomplished and passionate figurative painter whose work revealed fascinating layers of endeavor as he also took me to his gallery where his paintings were beautifully integrated with antique objects, old photographs and all done in masterfully composed shelves. Peter Scarbo Frawley who is a concrete poet, carries a wealth of love for artistic effort and told me of the pleasure he had in knowing Myron Stout, the great Provincetown minimalist painter, and watching him work. I met Bob Bailey who occupies the Provincetown Arts Workshop and is bravely wading into new work that examines his own role as a fool in the world of serious art. I have also paid visits to Sam Trioli in New Hampshire, and Altoon Sultan in Vermont.

My questions are developing, another chance to develop an artistic methodology. Changing roles in a closed community can offer open windows we never imagined. I had the same experience when I first curated a major drawing show; galleries suddenly became magnanimous and welcoming…we seek tasks that expand our world and make living more interesting. I have stumbled into a wonderful one.

Craig Stockwell is an artist/educator based in New England.