Boston Common - Niche Media - A side of Boston that's anything but common.
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JANET ECHELMAN Internationally exhibited Brookline- based artist Janet Echelman is having a homecoming this summer, with one of her billowing, gracile sculptures installed over the Rose Kennedy Greenway through October. As If It Were Already Here con- sists of 100 miles of rope connected by half a million knots and was designed using software written in a collaboration between her studio and Autodesk. echelman.com KELLY CARMODY Of the many gifted traditionalists in the Boston area, one standout is Kelly Carmody. One of her works was accepted into this year's highly competitive BP Portrait Award Exhibition at London's National Portrait Gallery, and the Arts & Business Council recently showed her portraits in its East Boston space. kellycarmody.com alienation with candor and courage. Morrisroe's example and the iconoclasm of Boston's punk scene gave the Starns permission to redefine the materials and methods through which their photographs took form. As boys taking an evening class at Stockton State College in New Jersey, they had been galvanized by a remark from their teacher: "Think about your paper." They now suspect he probably just meant "Give more thought to whether or not you want strips of white around your images," but they credit their early mentor with sending them on the journey that would lead eventu- ally to the construction of bamboo waves bursting from world-famous museums. As they started to gain recog- nition in the art world—beginning when they were still in Boston and taking part in the landmark 1985 group exhibition "Boston Now: Photography" at the Institute of Contemporary Art—this meant treating the page as an expressive material in its own right. The Starns were given a room at the Whitney Biennial in 1987, confirming their status as emerging artists to watch. (Soon after, they signed with Leo Castelli, the linchpin dealer at that time.) An installation photo of their Whitney display reveals a stunning range and inventiveness. Mark Morrisroe, 1985–86, a 100 -square- inch overexposed portrait of their friend, dominates one wall, hanging like a tapestry. It is made up of myr- iad unframed toned silver prints Scotch-taped together. Below it, in an antique ornamental frame, is one of their Christ series—reworkings of Philippe de Champaigne's 1654 painting Dead Christ, which they shot at the Louvre while visiting Paris on a travel grant from the Museum School—that expressively accentuates the elongation of the Christ figure. There are free-f loating scraps of photographic print, a framed piece leaning against a wall, an elegiac f lower portrait in luminous gold. Double Chairs, 1985–87 is a pair of grainy, folded, mirror- f lipped black-and-white photos of a 1960s chair, the pages joined at the bottom of one side and the top of the other in a step formation, the whole in a zigzagged frame. This wasn't their only pun on twinning: A self- portrait in a loosely torn collage plays on the convention of a standing figure ref lected in a pool. In their early days, Mike and Doug were happy to play along in their role as the art world's most famous twins. Their working relationship, however, took time to develop. Although they were accepted into the Museum School with a shared portfolio, they had experimented with separate paths. But as they soon discovered, "Our best work was what we did together," they say, with Mike beginning the sentence and Doug completing it. "Every artist has their own inner debate and dialogue, but we have an external one as well to help our art advance." DEB TODD WHEELER The art of Deb Todd Wheeler responds to scientifi c and environmental concerns with alternative-process photography and sculpture reminiscent of lab equipment. One of her recent works is an implied seascape of plastic bags, evoking both ocean life and ocean death in a chemical aqua hue. debtoddwheeler.com PHOTOGRAPHY BY STEWART CLEMENTS/COURTESY OF MILLER YEZERSKI GALLERY (WHEELER); JEFF MAGIDSON AT ARTSLIDES (CARMODY); MELISSA HENRY (ECHELMAN). OPPOSITE PAGE, FAR RIGHT: COURTESY OF BOSTON CYBERARTS (FAITH HOLLAND, STILL FROM VOLCANOES FROM THE VISUAL ORGASMS SERIES) Bbú Juju painting MV3 by Doug and Mike Starn, 2010-11. LEFT, FROM TOP: Floater Field 2 by Deb Todd Wheeler, 2014; Parakeet with Water 2 by Kelly Carmody, 2014; a view of As If It Were Already Here by Janet Echelman, 2015. RIGHT: The Starns' studio in Beacon, New York. 90 BOSTONCOMMON-MAGAZINE.COM