It’s 1875, a year before Edward Mitchell Bannister becomes the first Black painter to win a nationally recognized award. He and his wife Christiana Carteaux Bannister are taking a slow stroll down Westminster St. towards the bridge crossing the Woonasquatucket River. They are coming from her salon, where she operates as a successful “hair-doctress” for […]
Last summer, a statue of a bronze man sitting alone on a bench appeared in PVD’s Market Square. Although he can’t introduce himself, his bench bears his name: Edward Mitchell Bannister (1828-1901). If you aren’t familiar with Bannister, you likely know the Providence Art Club, which he helped found. During his life, Bannister was considered […]
I enter the Pawtucket Art Collaborative‘s gallery in Lorraine Mills and look at the art filling the room. It’s still early in the evening and the show’s energy is beginning to buzz. It doesn’t take long for Islay Taylor, The Steel Yard‘s associate director, to introduce herself. Taylor is friendly, despite the air of danger […]
Anti-Robot Club (ARC) is a community that is constantly looking to expand and provide new opportunities for creatives to display their talents and reach a wider audience. Their tagline states they are “dedicated to the preservation of mankind through a series of social gatherings and creative campaigns.” The marketplaces they host throughout the year feature […]
Charlotte Collins had never painted a real cake before. Last November, the Providence-based artist baked a vanilla, gluten-free cake topped with the neon-pink pills prescribed for their chronic migraines. They staged a photoshoot for their creation, and painted the resulting images. “All the cakes I’ve painted before are fake cakes.” I was only nominally familiar […]
Assemblage is art made by assembling disparate elements, often everyday objects. Collage describes both the technique and the resulting work of art in which pieces of paper, photographs, and other ephemera are arranged and adhered to a surface. Automatism refers to creating art without conscious thought, accessing material from the unconscious mind as part of […]
The day begins its descent into night; city shadows stretch like taffy as the sun sinks below the horizon. Antoni walks the darkening roads underneath the show of apartment windows lighting up like notes on a keyboard. A black cat slinks by, disappearing into the shadowy room behind a dumpster. The sun is replaced by […]
Bert Crenca has been one of those larger-than-life personalities who has helped define the texture, flavor, and personality of the creative capital for as long as most Rhode Islanders can remember. The founder of internationally renowned art community AS220, Crenca “retired” from the organization shortly before COVID struck, to finally focus on the artwork that […]
Motif put out an open call for visual artists and poets to submit work for an experimental new event: Pics & Poets. Artists and poets were randomly paired. Each participant had two weeks to create a new piece inspired by their partner’s original submission. Creativity ensued. For one night only, the work was displayed at […]
Juan Ferrer runs a blossoming new woodshop called Spoon + Board, featuring tree-to-table goods. Himself a lifelong chef, his love of crafting wooden kitchen products comes from a love and passion for the kitchen. To create his unique kitchen wares, Ferrer forages the woods of Rhode Island for fallen trees and logs, then hand-carves a […]