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WGBH Feature, past five years in Lynn, gentrification
Support TLGUTS: Take home a photograph from CUBA
Through February 26th, the end of Gretjen Helen's CUBA: In Form exhibition, the gallery is offering a chance for visitors to take home one of Gretjen Helene's photographs for ten dollars.
Belle Absente: weekly writing salons
Introducing the first event collaboration between The Little Gallery Under the Stairs and Subterranean: Belle Absente.
On Wednesday evenings we will be hosting miniature writing retreats. In the spirit of Oulipo's laboratory of potential literature and the Romanticist, Surrealist and Tel Quel salons that preceded it, we invite you to vigorous conversation and writing sessions, collaborations and experiments...
I'm sitting in the gallery with Chris Barber, my new roommate. He's launching his used bookshop here at TLGUTS this Saturday, September 25th, at noon. I can't speak highly enough about him. He's brought a jolt of energy into the space and brought me back to my original vision of the gallery not just being a space where people come to show, see, and buy art work, but a place where people come to recharge, get inspired, and act...
Wired to Never, Ever Come Down
"It is the function of art to renew our perception." -Anais Nin
Ah. I sit down so often and start new blogs, then just get frustrated and wonder if they will amount to anything. So I'm deciding not to do that this time. Blogging is tough for me. There are so many parts of my life that are intricately entwined, that I often think I have to edit certain things out that are irrelevant to the gallery for your sake, but I'm just not going to worry this time. Forgive me this once.
If you know me, you know that I'm not really one for small talk. I may stray off topic, but I like my topics to have some meat to them, and I tend to say what's on my mind. I don't make this claim as a braggart, or to give the impression that I'm a loose canon, I just believe our hours are numbered, so why waste them? But for some reason, I've been biting my tongue for some time now, and I've decided to stop...
Arts After Hours: What is this and why are you doing it?
On August 12th, I'm throwing a backyard bash with Corey Jackson and Seth Albaum right behind the gallery in the Lynn Museum park. That's this Thursday, so mark it down.
For the past few years, LynnArts, the Chamber of Commerce, the Lynn Item and others put together programming called "Third Thursdays" in downtown Lynn. I loved Third Thursdays, but they weren't really about art. There were pizza tasting events, dog parades, road races, haunted houses, etc. Don't get me wrong, my family attended almost all of them, and we loved going, but they weren't about art...
Building the Arts: No Red Pens!
Over the past fifteen years, I have been actively studying and participating in the arts administration field as an independent artist, curator, gallery owner and activist. I do this work and research first and foremost because it is something that I am passionate about. To me, the arts portray those elements of our nature that make us human.
On June 10th, The Little Gallery under the Stairs will be hosting it's third Lynn LAVA meeting at 7pm. LAVA, or Lynn Artists' Voices Alliance, is a group meant to bring together the artists of Lynn on a regular basis to network, learn about upcoming opportunities in the community, and cohesively give voice to the artists and creative thinkers who reside or work in Lynn. This blog post is the original announcement for the open public meeting...
Downtown Lynn has been the gallery's home for the past four years. In those four years, I have been asked a million times, "Why Lynn? Why not Rockport, or Boston, or any other place?" My answer is that every community not only deserves, but needs, a thriving arts community. When I got here, LynnArts and RAW had already opened the floodgates for the rest of us. They moved in when others wouldn't. The foundation for such a community was built, and (sadly) I believed that Lynn had no place to go but up. I wanted in. Who doesn't want to be in on the ground floor of something amazing? ...
TLGUTS Receives LCC Grant for VOICES: Mothers Who Create
I would like to publicly thank the Massachusetts Local Cultural Council for awarding The Little Gallery under the Stairs a grant in support of the VOICES: Mothers Who Create exhibition.
The receipt of this grant means a lot to us not only financially, but also for the public recognition of the hard work we do here at TLGUTS and the importance of acknowledging women and mothers who are artists...
The Little Gallery... is getting bigger!
Over the past few years, I have been working with Arts Extensions Services through the University of Massachusetts Amherst toward a certificate in Arts Management. I am very happy to say that I have finished the core certification program in Arts Management this month. Over the past few years, I have studied Strategic Planning with Craig Dreeszen, Marketing and Arts Programming with Maren Brown, and Fundraising with Marete Wester....
VOICES - Mothers Who Create.
...I curated the Balance: Mother's Who Create exhibition last year because I was fed up with reading statistics. I know that hardly any mother-artist's work is shown in the major galleries and museums. I know that women's work is sold for less at auction. I know that women are marginalized in the text books. There are only so many statistics I am willing to read without doing something about it. We can talk until we're blue in the face about the disparity in numbers, but unless we take action to change those statistics, they are useless...
Donna Dodson's Newest Exhibit...and announcing The Elephant Tribe jewelry collection!
FLOOR PLAY: Works by Ellen Shattuck Pierce
The public is cordially invited to an opening reception for FLOOR PLAY, a solo exhibition of Ellen Shattuck Pierce's new works, scheduled for Saturday, September 12, 2009, from 2-5 pm.
In her FLOOR PLAY exhibit, print media artist Ellen Shattuck Pierce recycles linoleum carvings into a tiled floor. While inking linoleum blocks, Shattuck Pierce preferred looking down upon their shiny surfaces more then printing them on paper and placing them on the wall. Her linoleum floor consists of thirty 12 x 12" tiles, each individually pieced together from a fifteen year collection of the artist's used linoleum. "Floor Play" both embraces and subverts traditional ideas of polished kitchen linoleum by providing a glossy and menacingly carved floor. In addition, a suite of six related relief prints are on view...
Over the past week, I have been taking some time for myself, time to decompress from the past year's serge of activity at the gallery and in life in general. Some of the things I have been reflecting on is how to keep growing the gallery while maintaining a balance in my life...
For past posts, visit www.tlguts.blogspot.com