The MassArt Art Museum (MAAM)’s newest exhibition Displacement opens later this month! Displacement, an exhibition of works by contemporary artists, explores the relationship between humans and their environments.

Through textiles, sculptures, film, and scents, this exhibition examines human-driven alterations to the sea, land, and air, and the ways in which those systems are responding.

By investigating the historic and current relationship between industrial civilization and the natural world, a range of issues are called into the frame, including migration, adaptation, and extinction. The visual languages of the artists in Displacement offer a lens through which the arc of human-environmental dynamics can be assessed and reconsidered.

In case you missed the May opening reception, you can join CACP's Ceci Méndez-Ortiz and Chandra Méndez-Ortiz for the SoWa First Fridays reception of their exhibition You Belong Here at Gallery Kayafas.

For more info, scroll down to our May newsletter or / and follow Chandra’s Instagram @chandramendezortiz!

Join us in celebrating CACP’s graduating cohort members!

Design Studio for Social Intervention (DS4SI) is excited to welcome you into their new space on Ramsey Street to kick off the Design Gym Spring 2024 Semester! Sign up for courses like Civic Design, Systems Design and Social Justice Reading Group, or Somatic Movement.

DS4SI’s mission is to partner with communities, artists, and social justice practitioners–you!–to imagine, demonstrate, and collectively rebuild places to be more just and vibrant. When we say “more just and vibrant”, we mean aesthetic justice for all.

This semester, we are deepening our collective study of aesthetic justice. We believe that communities of color have long been asked to live in other people’s spatial imaginaries. Now is the time to engage BIPOC communities as co-designers of new community infrastructures. We’ll be sharing ds4si’s new aesthetic justice manifesto at the opening.

It will be an evening of delicious food, engaging activities, the rejoining of friends, and signing up for our spring semester courses!

Please join CACP’s Ceci Méndez-Ortiz and Chandra Méndez-Ortiz for the opening reception of their exhibition You Belong Here at Gallery Kayafas.

Please follow Chandra’s IG for more info! @chandramendezortiz

You Belong Here

This exhibition brings together the work of two distinct yet connected artists who explore labor, language, culture, and identity through their work. 

Ceci Méndez-Ortiz’s work is a labor of love, and a practice of patience. She has collected and recycled mailed business (aka ‘security’) envelopes since 1995, and to date has found hundreds of unique intricate prints in myriad colors and patterns. Fascinated by these objects designed to ostensibly obscure the private information lurking within, their use is imbued with tremendous social meaning related to issues of identity, privacy, ownership, worth, consumption, possession, and control. She slices, arranges, overlays, and weaves the patterns into pieces to create visual worlds evocative of textiles and textures, as well as personal journeys, maps, and landscapes. Website: www.palabraproductions.com

Chandra Dieppa Méndez-Ortiz engages with historical and personal narratives, discarded materials, color, and mark making through a series of inter-related works on paper and canvas, to illustrate and connect nonlinear histories, memories, and places. Méndez-Ortiz is in conversation with a history of mark making, drawing, painting and collage while combining the personal, historical and the contemporary in order to honor, learn from and reimagine the ways in which people of color, particularly Black and Latino people have navigated and contributed to American life. Website: www.chandramendezortiz.com 

Mix up your evening at the MassArt Museum (MAAM) with creative conversation, seasonal mocktails, and hands-on fun. 

Celebrate the arrival of sunshine and warmer weather as we welcome the spring season. Embrace your green thumb and embellish a decorative planter in the Studio. Learn more about artist Freedom Baird’s installation Floreal featuring and escapist miniature landscape and plastic plants intermingled with real foliage. And enjoy a refreshing floral mocktail in the company of friends and community. 

Embark on a creative journey with sparc!’s five dynamic sessions designed to ignite your artistic spirit. In the final session, we host a community exhibition and celebration where your artwork is shared with your fellow artists, neighbors, and friends. Youth & Adult - Ages 12+

Join Pao Arts Center to celebrate the Lunar New Year!

Pao will host an afternoon of art, interactive workshops, and performances.  All ages are invited to join in for cultural activities as we usher in the year of the dragon! This year will include interactive cultural and creative activities including:

• Dragon Puppet-Making, Paper-Cutting, and Shadow Puppet Demonstrations with Yolanda Yuanlu Peng

• Lion-Dance Performance by Nüwa Athletic Club  

• Festive Food Illustrations: Live-Drawing with Bren Bataclan   

• Korean Dasik Cookie Stamping on Clay and Korean Cultural Dances with The Korean Cultural Society of Boston 

• Two Dances by Tibetan Association of Boston

• Lunchbox Moments Exhibit Interactive Activity
  
  

Suggested Donation $10. To RSVP click HERE.

In Memoriam, Irvienne Goldson & Fern Cunningham-Terry

This fall Greater Grove Hall Main Streets (GGHMS), installed the Black Women Lead Project which features portraits of 212 exceptional Black women from all walks of life and from the 1700s to the present displayed on banners along Blue Hill Avenue. The portrait display runs for over 2 miles! Executive Director, Ed Gaskin says, “the project extends beyond honoring just the most powerful, the most influential, most well-known. A major part of the mission is to show the younger generation that “no matter what career path you pick, there has already been a Black woman who has succeeded and done that.”

Eighty of the 200+ honorees are still living and attended a celebration at the MA State House's Hall of Flags, which marked the largest gathering of Black female leaders ever to be honored at the State House at one time. Many of these women promote the arts as a catalyst for community building, self expression, entrepreneurship and healing. Artists, L’Merchie Frazier, Ekua Holmes and Fern Cunningham-Terry use their gifts as image makers to inspire and uplift, Mimi Jones, now deceased was a long time activist and supporter of CACP, and well-known Icons such as Elma Lewis, Ruth Batson, and Melnea Cass, who while no longer with us continue to serve as an example of “doing for self,” innovating and accomplishing small things in a great way.”

Over Labor Day weekend, incoming MassArt first-year students participated in the Neighborhood Art Tours. Introducing our beloved Roxbury, its culture, history, and people to the newest members of the MassArt community is always a joy. These tours invite students to experience and learn about extraordinary public artworks, hear from some of Boston’s talented public artists, and deepen their awareness and appreciation for all our communities have to offer.

Many thanks to our guest artists: Genaro “Go Five” Ortega, Napoleon Jones-Henderson, and Cedric "Vise1" Douglas.

The Neighborhood Art Tour was co-created by MassArt’s Justice Equity and Transformation office and the Center for Art and Community Partnerships and supported by Student Development. Click below for a digital copy!

Above: Napoleon Jones-Henderson sharing about mural "Faces of Dudley" (Mike Womble & Mayor's Mural Crew, 2015)

The MassArt Museum (MAAM) is currently installing a new exhibition so stay tuned for the opening early next month!

The Myth of Normal: A Celebration of Authentic Expression looks at social and emotional norms that have been codified over our collective past. Focusing on the achievements and creative abundance of MassArt’s alumni, this exhibition is guest-curated by Mari Spirito ‘92 in celebration of the 150th anniversary of the college. 

This exhibition takes inspiration from Dr. Gabor Maté and Daniel Matés's 2022 book of the same title, which looks at the importance of authentic expression as a means to heal. Spirito argues through this exhibition that art plays a pivotal role in overall wellness, as an avenue and language for self-expression.

MAAM is always free and open to all!

Above: "Una Favola Vera" (A True Fairytale) (Ezra Wube, 2020)

sparc! the ArtMobile’s Chain Link Gallery recently moved artist Stephen Hamilton’s exhibition to Roxbury Community College. We are excited to share these wonderful pieces with a new part of the city! Check them out next time you’re passing by - on Columbus Avenue at the corner of Cedar Street.