Upcoming Show • February 6-29, 2020

Opening / Amherst Arts Night Plus: Thursday, February 6, 5-8 pm
Forum / Artists In Community: Thursday, January 20, 7:30-8:30 pm

Artists In Community, is supported in part by a grant from the Amherst Cultural Council, 
a local agency, supported by the Massachusetts Cultural Council, a state agency.   

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Partners, a group show of collaborative work by gallery members, is on display at Gallery A3, in Amherst, from February 6 to February 29. The Opening Reception on Thursday, February 6, from 5-8 pm, coincides with Amherst Arts Night Plus.
 
At an Artists in Community Forum on Thursday, February 20, at 7:30 pm, gallery members will talk about how they engage with partnership and co-creation in their work and invite questions and comments from the audience. This program is supported in part by a grant from the Amherst Cultural Council, a local agency, which is supported by the Massachusetts Cultural Council, a state agency.

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 ​Set aside the stereotype of the artist as a solitary genius, struggling alone in the studio. For a group show in February, members of Amherst’s Gallery A3 turned to each other, to family members, and to other artists in the community to work on collaborative art projects. Partners, on display February 6-29, shows the results of their various modes of co-creation, as they made art by moving beyond individual studio practice into cooperative partnerships.

Some gallery members combined forces and worked together. For example, Nancy Meagher partnered with fellow painter and printmaker Margaret Jean Taylor to share their joy in paint and poetry—particularly the poetry of Emily Dickinson. Two of Taylor’s etchings, inspired by Dickinson’s poems, hang alongside Meagher’s large-scale oil painting, Emily in Amherst.
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Several others collaborated with family members. In one of these projects, gallery member Eric Broudy, a photographer, partnered with his spouse, Daisy, a comix artist. While Daisy's art often portrays the difficulties, foibles, pain, and absurdities involved with aging, often accomplished with humor and poignancy, Eric’s tends to be more eclectic and wide ranging. In collaboration, they present works referencing the marginalizing of the elderly and the dispossessed. 

Still others reached out to artists working in western Massachusetts. Gallery member Larry Rankin collaborated with Bob Solosko, a retired mechanical engineer, banjo player, and fine art photographer from Easthampton. The two share a delight in focusing on details in the natural world and explored the theme of “Plants in the abstract — images that capture the close-up textures and patterns of flowers and leaves.” 

And yet others collaborated across disciplines, stretching beyond visual art into other media. Painter Rochelle Shicoff displays a page from the score of the opera La Juive, where her brother, lyric tenor Neil Shicoff, made a variety of notations. Rochelle also includes an old family photograph of herself and her brother as young children, along with a piece she wrote, referencing the photograph.
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These are just a few examples of the range of art pieces and processes emerging in Partners, as gallery artists explore a variety of collaborative practices.   For many, these are new ventures into co-creation. “We are all excited to see what will happen when we join creative voices in our various ways,” says exhibit coordinator Valerie Gilman.

​Additional image on Flickr

Nancy Meagher, Emily in Amethyst, oil on canvas

Eric Broudy, Benched, photograph