20 Artists of Worcester and thier Workspaces

Artists of Worcester and their Work Spaces

Photography by Scott Erb Written by Julie Grady

20 Artists of Worcester and their Work Spaces © 2008 Scott W. Erb All Rights Reserved Reproduction either in whole or in part without the consent of the owner is strictly prohibited.

ISNB# 978-0-9820905-1-0 0-9820905-1-X Erb Photography Worcester, MA 01604 508-421-3912 email: scott@erbphoto.com www.erbphoto.com Front Cover Image: dissolvez dans l’esprit

By Brian Burris 36”x36” $650.00 www.burrisworks.com Back Cover Image: Sunset

By Cynthia Woehrle 24” x 24” $800.00 www.cynthiawoehrle.com Magazine Design: Richard Bridges Design www.richardbridgesdesign.com

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Artists of Worcester and their Work Spaces

Photography by Scott Erb Written by Julie Grady

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Acknowledgements This book couldn’t have been done without the help of my incredibly talented wife, Donna Dufault, who kept me on track and helped me with each shoot. She’s been a guiding light for me and inspires me to push my ideas and concepts to the next level. She’s my best friend and life partner.

We’d also like to thank Julie Grady for using her artistic writing talents to create a verbal representation of the artists to go along with the images. She’s been a pleasure to work with and I believe the book is a joy to read because of her.

A special thank you to Jeff Haynes for helping with the editing process. Your time and talents were and will always be - greatly appreciated.

We would like to thank each and every artist who participated in this project. Without their patience, willingness to allow us into their spaces, and share tolerance of our idiosyncrasies - this project would never have gotten done. Thank you to Brian Burris and Cindy Woehrle for allowing us to use their paintings on the covers of the book. Special thanks to Derek Ring for creating the “numbers” and style for the book, and to Rick Bridges for the re-design of the book as a magazine.

Acknowledging everyone who has ever inspired me in my past artistic endeavors would take far too long, but I’d like to thank my good friends Scott Boilard, Scott Holloway, and Cindy Woehrle for inspiring me to create this project to begin with. It was their amazing artistic talents and interest in “getting out there” that inspired me to do the same and help other artists if I could.

This book project was greatly helped out when I had a conversation with Jan Seymour from Arts Worcester.

I told her about my idea and she thought it was a good way to promote the artists in Worcester and introduced me to Patti Clarkson of the Worcester Cultural Commission. That was a very fortunate meeting for me. We applied for a grant and not long after received it. I’d like to thank those who were on the board of the commission for believing in this project and supporting it.

Another wonderful connection was with Erica Wade Davis of Davis Publications, whose gallery we will be having the show in. Erica, her wonderful husband, Wyatt Wade, and of course the “never stops working” colleague - Karl Cole helped us with the hanging and marketing of the show. A big thank you to all the folks at Davis Publications who helped us along the way.

We also have to mention our wonderful parents, Lou and Skip Erb for putting up with their “artistic” son.

I’m sure they said many times to others, “He’s in his moody artist phase.” Well, I’d like to think I’m still an artist, but not as moody. Donna’s parents, Roger and Faith Dufault, have also been amazingly supportive of our photographic endeavors and artistic nuances. They have been, and Faith still is, very supportive of us and like any great parent, is our best sales force.

We’d also like to thank all of our friends, family and colleagues for not holding it against us for not being there for all the shows, birthday parties and events we missed while creating this book. Their understanding and support have made the feelings of guilt a little less sharp. You know we love you from the bottom of our hearts.

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Artist Statement Worcester has talent.

Having lived in at least eight states (some several times) in my 38 years has allowed me an interesting viewpoint on people and the places they live.

When it came time to move to Massachusetts to be with my girlfriend (now wife) I was excited and enticed by its history and location. I was ready to explore and be inspired. Now having lived here for a little over 10 years, It seems I haven’t been let down. I’ve even been won over by the Red Sox phenomenon (yes, before they were champions).

However, when we decided to move to Worcester, I have to admit that I didn’t hear great things about it.

Many people asked us why we’d move there and that “Worcester Sucks.” We moved here anyway.

Having met many friends in the area who happen to be both (commercial) artists or photographers, I’ve found that many, if not most, are incredibly talented and also internationally collected. Some of these artists have work currently in shows all over the world, places like New York, Los Angeles, London, and Germany.

Pretty impressive I must say, and yes, they are Worcester residents.

This book is a reaction to those people who say negative things about Worcester and the people who live in it. I don’t subscribe to that point of view and it’s my hope that this book will change those points of views and open the eyes of those who live in this area (and any others outside) to see the beauty and talent that lies within Worcester and surrounding communities.

The only thing wrong with Worcester is people saying there is something wrong with Worcester. Instead of complaining, find the things that you like about the people and the area and promote it. Whether it’s an artist, band, park, shop, restaurant, or venue. Tell everyone you know about it and sing its’ praises. Get people from out of town to come to those places or to see these people. Make it your business to promote the good things about the area you live in.

Worcester does have talent. I’ve found it and I’m promoting it.

Now, having said all that. I would like to share with everyone how great an experience creating this book has been for me. It was certainly a labor of love, probably because I love art and artists. Getting the chance to meet so many talented individuals was a dream come true. The artist’s personalities and nuances made every meeting a wonderful and eye opening experience. Each artist was incredibly welcoming, warm, and gracious. We heard wonderful stories, drank tea, and even had wonderful homemade cookies (thanks Agnes). We also lost a couple of artist we would have liked to have included in the book. Leon Nigrosh and Tom Lewis both passed away before we got the chance to include them. We remember them and their talents and both are memorialized in the book.

There are so many talented people in the area that we weren’t able to include and I feel that I could have made this a 50 Artists (or more) of Worcester book. In fact- I found that there are so many interesting people in the area (you know who you are), that I could do several books if I had the time and money to do so.

It is my sincere hope and wish that those who choose to enjoy this book, take a look at all the artists here and check out their websites, online galleries, and go to their openings. Support them and their talents.

If you are truly moved by their work, buy it without hesitation.

Cheers, Scott Erb

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Scott Boilard A fellow Francophile after my own heart, Scott Boilard is not only an artist, but a semiologist. Thanks to the groundwork from scholars like Ferdinand de Saussure and, my personal favorite, Roland Barthes, Scott Boilard has been deconstructing and reconstructing meaning with his work.

I work purely from my imagination, but I try not to use established symbolism, he explained of his work. I just see it in my head and I try not to make it into a meaningful statement. I definitely don’t want to compromise any imagination by relying on established language.

After working as a freelance illustrator – There was no freedom. You always worked under the Art Director’s vision. Plus, you were always using cliché images – Boilard has decided to take a different route. My work is starting to run away from illustration influences, he said. I’m focusing on figures, but with a more modern, abstract feel. That’s the one thing I never get bored of drawing, the human figure.

Scott’s studio is hidden in a trove of factory buildings that Worcester is so famous for. On that clear, crisp February day, the view from his third-floor studio seemed endless. As I looked out the window, he looked into his past. I had really supportive parents, recounted the Art Institute of Boston graduate.

But, they just didn’t know what to do with it.

Living in Worcester for the better part of his life, Boilard considers himself a hodgepodge of different neighborhoods in the city as well as different cultures.

I’m really into movies. I love Jean-Luc Godard – “Breathless” was like a revolution because of the technology used – and Fellini films are great, too.

Of course, Scott said this after dropping names like Coppola, Kubrick, and Cohen. Oh, and of course “The Wall.” It’s like a rite of passage when your 15 and causing trouble.

Even if Boilard did cause trouble here and there, he certainly has developed a calm, easy-going demeanor.

Perhaps he put that energy into his craft. I like to work fast; I get very bored, very quickly – would you like something to drink? All I have is yellow Gatorade. It replenishes electrolytes. Jumping around seemed to be a theme for the artist. I used to be a one-paintingat-a-time guy, but if there’s a deadline coming up, I can really concentrate. I’m not a procrastinator, but when you’re stressed for time, it just brings a lot more focus.

When we met, Scott was in the midst of preparing for an upcoming private show, but he didn’t neglect other goals during is working-stiff stint. Boilard’s wish list included working on a larger scale, exploring the human figure, and not censoring himself by way of testing out some new ideas. You just have to get the paintings out there, he said earnestly. I don’t really like doing that through prints or other mass media. Spoken like much historian and one of the part-time father’s of postmodern thought, Daniel Boorstin himself.

Being comfortable, a key in anyone’s life, is a tricky thing for Scott. While he does enjoy the comfortable attributes found in Midwestern geography – open space and lots of it – Boilard he finds Worcester to be home; the comforts of instrumental jazz and early Pink Floyd get his mind set for working, but hard rock takes over for most of life’s other situations; his quick pace suits the nature of his instant-imagination creations, although he’s still working on piece he began in 2003, a piece with one of the most deliberate signs of all: a stop sign.

Deconstructing and reconstructing can take its toll, so in 2007, Scott took some time to recalibrate. This winter, I didn’t paint much. It was a reflective time for me, Boilard said casually. I just felt like I was going through the motions. I needed some time to refresh everything.

A stationery designer in West Boylston by day and a great visual communicator by night, Boilard’s passion for language never seems to fade. People always really remember something they can connect to; there’s communication through painting in that sense.

With my work, there is a narrative, but it’s for the viewer to figure out.

Scott’s continuous dialogue with his viewers is based on his own dialogue with the works of Gustav Klimt, Kathe Kollwitz, and Egon Scheile. No matter how heavy Boilard’s art historian-esque interests may be, the true weight he carries is in meaning.

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Brian Burris The Green Fairy, some say she hasn’t flown since the European writers of the 19th century lost it. I say she’s alive and well, and not restricted to Eastern Europe.

I say she could be living in Worcester. I say she’s friends with Brian Burris.

Walking into his studio, I was surprised to see a bottle of Swiss absinthe, Kübler. I was even more surprised when he offered me a sip. That seemed to be the motif of the evening because Burris himself would appear to be the one of the most unsuspecting artists I’ve come across.

I’m not looking for catharsis, said the Worcester firefighter, a Lieutenant. He’s also an EMT. I really just paint and assign values in retrospect. Jumping to ponder a painting, his hindsight is 20/20. Most of my work is psychologically bifurcated. It’s a metaphor for the human psyche. There’s always some sort of compartmentalization going on. The fact that it’s distressed correlates with the disillusion of the psyche.

What Brian specializes in, besides saving lives during is day job, is reverse printmaking. Essentially, he’ll layer on acrylic and chemically pull it back up. In addition to his prints, Burris also specializes in the artist’s statement. That is a whole separate work of fiction, he said as he stretched back in his chair, arms behind his head, one leg crossed over the other. If Burris seems proud here, he could be. Or, it could just be his sarcasm.

Or he could just be the most laid back guy I’ve ever met. However, he does put an interesting spin on his verbal artwork. I go to Babble Fish, he admitted, and translate back and forth from English to French and back to English again. It always has a way of coming out more refined.

Worcester has been good to Brian, so he says. In the last six years he’s sold 40 pieces. I’ve gotten really good feedback. I’ve been really lucky. Luck may have something to do with it, but if you ever are as lucky to encounter Burris in the flesh, you’ll see that Burris has that certain je ne sais crois. Did I note that he loves Baudelaire?

Brian’s studio was chuck full of color and life, despite his -- what is typically considered dark – obsession with the human psyche. Everything down to his music collection was cool. On the shelves he had The Cure, Chris Connely, WILCO, and the Eels, which was playing in the background. Really, Brian embodied the cult culture I encountered at Bowling Green. The Indy kids, the grad students who wrote papers on Repo Man and Eraserhead. It turns out Burris was actually a film student.

People want to buy into the scene, the persona, he said of the art show event. It’s a whole rhetorical selling point. I’m normal here. I can play with that side of things on the website. Brian does have what it takes to be normal. He’s a standup guy; an EMT; a firefighter; he has a family. Still, there’s that something lurking behind his normal-guy façade.

I moved out when I was 16 and into a place with my girlfriend at the time. Normal = he hated living at home as a teen. Twist = living in Bohemia with your high school sweetheart. Eventually I had to knuckle down though, but I don’t believe in painting as a career.

You can’t support a family that way and I don’t.

Burris joined the Army Reserves and got a mortgage to secure his family’s future. And the proud father of four has some pretty proud kids. They always say “Daddy, you paint good.” They were really excited about this interview. So with a supportive family, a great portfolio, and a spot on the ARTS Worcester Board, what does Brian have to say for his success? It’s a matter of opinion I suppose.

From his highly abstract expressionist pieces to his more recent works that play with color fields to his ubiquitous nudes [like “Torso in Freckle Red,” which I loved so much I had to purchase], Burris has been on quite the journey. The motorcycle lover – That’s the Guizzi. It goes fast – who enjoys to workout along with his NYC Ballet exercise tape, who’s past his artist type phase – I’m a regular guy, post-hippie, no longer selfinvolved. Being an artist isn’t a license to be a clown – who makes his own wine – One year, we made dandelion wine, another year it was apple, then elderberry – has certainly learned to let it roll.

Fuck ‘em if you can’t take a joke, he said about something pertinent, something precise. But that doesn’t even matter because really, Burris was talking about life. Not art. Not critics. Not pretentious academics.

I’m not a tortured soul or anything. I just feel the need to paint. I can be the poet I always wanted.

His double life as a standup, regular guy who saves lives, fights fires, and takes care of his family versus his artistic side, I realized, isn’t a double life at all. It’s one life, Brian’s life. Reality is projection, he said.

Your conscious is just fighting it.

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Stephen DiRado

Is bluegrass one word or two? questioned Steve DiRado, photographer extraordinaire, as he was recounting a dinner-time tale where he had broken bread with folk singer Alison Krauss. …the Dali Lama’s personal body guard… I must have missed something.

Then, God calls him, a.k.a. the MOMA…

nudes taken in Gay Head (or Aquinniah) on Martha’s Vineyard. You have to say, ‘Just go with it, just deal with it.’ For some of these people, it’s a thing for them.

Although, not every bare ass gets to be photographed: I’ve been doing this for 20 years and I always ask myself, ‘Is there a photo here?’

It took me the better part of an hour to realize that keeping up with Steve was hard to do, notwithstanding my years of practice in academia or in the field. DiRado was such a captivating storyteller, even though his day job focused on visual communication, I got lost in his tales, although, I never did surrender my pen.

Such jurisdiction has made Steve more than a photographer. He’s the Mayor of the Beach, so I’m told, by DiRado himself. They’re all about me, he joked.

However, he did say he remains clothed at this nude beach. It’s like I’m like your doctor. So, Dr. DiRado, perfectly clad in his best beachwear, combs the shoreline examining exposed patients through the lens of his 8 x 10 view camera.

People are still intimidated by nudity, DiRado explained.

A healthy portion of his renowned portfolio consists of

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He was quite the joker. As I furiously jotted down illegible notes, I couldn’t help but notice my surroundings: shelves of cheese graters and old cameras, old empty bottles of wine and champagne – including a delicious vintage of Veuve Cliquot Ponsardin Brut – organized trinkets, Martha’s Vineyard Black Dog mugs, bulletin boards filled with Polaroid’s of pooches and tacked on feathers. There was even a skull which I presume came from a gerbil, or a tiny beloved feline. I’m not a scientist. Like his tastefully decorated eclectic triple-decker, he too was full of memories.

It’s like wine, he said of his work, there are bad years and good years. Ninety-seven was a good year.

Through the good, the bad, and the horrific, Steve has clocked four levels of archives in one small 62° room. Walls in there were splashed with blue, white, and black along with the yellows and reds of framed pieces. It was his third floor cave, filled to the brim authentic, rich, fruity, nutty, flavorful vintages from years past.

Not each vintage can be as sweet as the next, but it certainly never takes away from the experience, much like DiRado’s time with his father who suffers from Alzheimer’s. Some days are very frightening, April 10th 2005 was the last time he recognized me. I was accepting it, consuming it, and dealing with it through the camera, he explained expertly. I would walk in to his room and my mantra would be “Dad, what kind of photos are we going to make today?” It was exploratory; it was awkward; it was ugly; it was me letting go of my dad. It was the perversion of photography, the worse he gets the better the photos are.

As Steve was adapting and learning, he also taught.

You can contribute he said in his classroom. You can take something from a class, bring it back and offer it to the world. He teach of his home. Coincidentally in this lecture hall of sorts, a small cherub statue floated atop a window, which looked out over the hills of Worcester and Elsewhere. Guidance, patience, truth, wisdom, experience: On that day, Steve DiRado appeared to encapsulate his own very school of art-thought, and he practices just as he preaches.

My art is storytelling, said the former photojournalist.

He started, camera in hand, at the Telegram & Gazette in Marlboro. He was fourteen – I lied about my age to shoot for them. Despite his now salt and pepper beard, his wide fourteen-year-old eyes still peer out onto the world around him. Giving some metaphorical texture to his craft, these young, innovative eyes, backed by years of experience, and in conjunction with a prehistoric camera only lend layers of human quality to poignant pictures.

The camera itself is a tripod-mounted box camera. A camera that’s best described as your great, great grandmother’s, or a prop from the Three Stooges, or perhaps the most explicable, not digital. Essentially, the entire machine works like an eye.

The lens is the pupil; the zoom is the muscle; the film is the retina. And at $3 a shot, this massive relic doesn’t come cheap, nor easy for that matter. DiRado employs a black cloth to cover his head as he gazes through the lens, but this cloth also doubles as protective gear. The bulbs used for this camera have a tendency to explode. With that much heat, imprints are left behind and burns like that can be quite the occupational hazard. Who knew photography could be so dangerous. Someone should get OSHA on the line.

Because the only question I really asked during our 2-hour interview was about that camera, I felt compelled to include everything I learned. And because Steve left me with so many verbal jewels, I’ll cut the narrative. Here are just a few of his linguistic souvenirs: I can’t imagine being normal.

The best drinkers: Roman Catholics.

I didn’t want to be Steven. I wanted to be invisible.

You have to keep going, keep moving.

Death, it’s a leap of faith for everyone involved.

It’s really about serendipity. That pivotal movement: forward, backward. I’m not one for running around and around. I stay still. I mean, I’ve been on Martha’s Vineyard for 20 years!

You’re a soldier. Fuck it.

Dinners are a performance. There’s always a community there, with friends.

I threatened to kill them if they didn’t let me into their lives back in the 80’s.

Formality changes everything.

It was a six-year project and it took me three years to realize I was letting go.

There are rituals around sharing wine. Really, dinners are just accessories to wine.

It’s all about making something to the best of my ability so that someone can relate to it.

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Andy Fish

Veronica Hebard 12

The wet dreams of every student in my Cult Film; American Studies graduate course rest in the home of Andy Fish and Veronica Hebard.

The graphic novel maharishi himself, and his nowherenear-distress heroine, welcomed me into their very own subculture Bat Cave.

Adam West is a client of mine, admitted Andy [Adam West was the original Batman during the days of the series]. According to his very own Wikipedia site, Fish has worked with DC Comics, has created several graphic novels of his own, including the Undercover Fish anthologies, and even plans on adapting Travis Simpkins essay into a screenplay. To top it off, he wants to direct. However, that was Wikipedia – meaning take everything you find there with a grain or two of salt – and speaking with Andy in his studio and in the flesh is way more revealing.

My worst enemy is boredom. I need to continuously feel inspired, he said. Perhaps that’s why Fish left New York and returned to Worcester: different space = different life, a slight touch of Bovarism in the most literary sense. Or it could just be the neighborhood.

It’s interesting trying to establish a movement here in the community, with my friends.

Yet, there’s one true, blue friend that is by his side and it’s easy to see why. Veronica, Andy’s partner, isn’t only an artist in her own right; she’s the so-called saving grace – she keeps him on track. And we went to high school together, so she’s good people. It’s exciting to get up everyday and create something and then survive on that, she said, calmly enamored by her nine-to-fiver.

It’s nice to be able to keep the lights on and to make art everyday. Plus, I love the challenge of working for different clientele.

And, it’s a different kind of dialogue that’s evident in their relationship. Both may seem to be rather quiet on the surface, but just walking into their abode, you can hear their personalities scream. The King Kong throw gently sits over the butterfly chair, violet rugs along with the color-tile carpet break up the blue-green sheen of the apartment, figurines of Batman and Spiderman are encased in their original wrapping, Dracula adornments dot the space, and the homemade faux brick façade in conjunction with the yellow walls brings a whole SoHo vibe to Central Mass. It was a graphic explosion. If only the Dick Tracy, Evil Knievel, Under Dog, and Lucha Libre bobble heads could talk.

It’s important to remember that commercial artists enjoy fine arts, too, Veronica directed at Andy. The Yin and the Yang. Andy, who attended the School of Visual Arts in New York and later went on to hone in his painting skills at the Rhode Island School of Design, said he found Angry-Man-Syndrome very, very alluring in terms of his work. Spiderman? He’s too nice, there’s no challenge there. But, Batman and other pulp heroes who are based on graphic novels of the 30s era, that’s darker. And with great reads from, say, Julie Doucet, it’s clear that there’s nothing douce about his taste.

Yet, once again on the softer side, is the douce Hebard, a proud graduate of Massachusetts College of Art in Boston. Unlike Andy, she said she isn’t very good at telling a story, but something tells me that was a story in and of itself. I’ve done editorial work on a Girl Scouts of America mural and even a clothing store in Houston. It seems as though Veronica is a fellow sucker for fashion and it’s design.

Poised and quiet underneath a Mona Lisa smirk, it’s all too clear that Hebard is the Akira Kurasawa to Andy’s Ed Wood, Jr. and somewhere in the middle they meet at Quentin Tarintino.

Both she and Andy do freelance work as well as teach at the Worcester Art Museum. I work with kids and teens creating portfolios, said Hebard. With kids, it’s a completely different dialogue.

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Antionio Fonseca

A toe-licking Westie named Tugger greeted me a little before Antionio Fonseca-Vazquez could get to it.

Tugger’s warm - slightly slobbery - welcome was arguably one of the most inviting I’ve ever experienced – perhaps only second to his owner.

On the hottest day Massachusetts had to offer in the spring of ’08, I ventured out to Sevengaits studio, Antonio’s current headquarters. After meandering around the renovated factory building – which had about three entryways; of course I went 0 for 2, meaning I was an inherent victim of inverse photophobia as my eyes struggled to adjust to the lighting with each exit and entry – by a bubbling river in Southbridge, I finally found the studio after a flight or two of stairs.

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Wavering from the heat and slightly glazed with perspiration, I first noticed Antonio’s joie de vivre, which, fittingly enough, was followed by two kisses à la francaise. After some chitchat about his not so doppelganger, Jorge Garcia a.k.a. Hugo “Hurley” Reyes from the TV show Lost, we were ready to get interviewing. However, I could already guess that this interview was going to be anything but typical.

In fact, this Puerto-Rican native is quite extraordinary and extraordinarily humble. The once brush-cleaner of the famed Arnaldo Roche-Rabell let me in on a secret: He too is famous.

He even has a Latino publication, glossy and framed, hanging on his studio wall to prove it. The reporter came to the U.S. to interview me and it was funny because he thought meeting me would be a very dark experience because my work is so, “existentialist,” recounted Antonio with an eye roll and air quotes. You know, I don’t intend to critique or glorify. There’s more humanity; my aim to create a dialogue and my work, it’s a reflection of what I feel, who I am and what society is.

All this in the first three minutes, or so. Clearly, Antonio isn’t only a master artiste, but a master communicator as well. I’m sure it doesn’t hurt that he can speak at least four languages: Spanish, English, French and Italian.

A bohemian cowboy after my own heart, Antonio has seen – and lived in – more cities and countries than most of us have ever even thought of going to: from Cuba to, his favorite, Puerto Rico; from Chicago to New York City; from NY’s rural Upstate to Pennsylvania; and from Florida to Mexico, one tends to wonder, how did he find Worcester? City living: I love it, but I can’t live it, he said. I just felt so encapsulated; I need that liberty to be able to leave all of the chaos and enter into tranquility. I’ve been in the Worcester area for about two years now and it’s the longest time I’ve stayed still.

The home of the smiley face, the old-school diner and perhaps a great writer or two, Worcester County now can celebrate this breath of fresh, Latin air.

I don’t sketch or draw before I begin work on any piece, he said, so graciously opening up his psyche.

Because of that, one may tend to think that the work wouldn’t be entirely precise, but the details in each of his pieces are absolutely meticulous. Maybe his artistic education in printmaking laid the groundwork there.

By the time I begin working, it’s already finished in my head; painting is challenge, and you don’t want to solve it before you even get started.

His most recent work, a depiction of the seven deadly sins, took him four years of thought before he was able to put paint to paper. So many people thought it would be cliché to do the seven deadly sins, but I thought ‘well yes, if you just illustrate them.’ A theology scholar hailing from Cornell, Antonio clearly made sure that this piece would grow to be anything but trite. I did a lot of research on the duality of sins and, you know, the Eastern perception isn’t equivalent to contemporary stereotypes. There’s actually more of a confrontation there.

Being religious, he said, may stereotypically go hand-in-hand with his Latin-Caribbean roots –Religion was like a rule, he said with a laugh – but he admitted to being more agnostic than anything.

I do like that mystical aspect to theology and trying to understand the symbolism and the manipulation that can occur there, but, honestly, I’ve never really asked myself if I were “religious.” Once you go on record saying something like that, you have to live with that statement. It’s just too much responsibility because people grow; they mature.

His work, he said, is extremely personal and is a representation of a very deep, internal discourse. One series of pieces he created surrounding his relationship with his father physically altered his homeostatic state; he was literally hurting. As the stereotype would have it, every artist must suffer for his work. If, indeed, that’s true, Antonio’s “existentialist” motif can only reflect the demons he perceives, whether they are personal, spiritual, global, or academic. In academia, there’s this pressure, said my fellow scholar. There’s this desire to create global art, but people forget the need to embrace their own culture first. If you can’t do that, then everything you attempt after is just too impersonal.

Working large – If I work small, I feel like I’m overpowering the piece, pushing it too much – in photography, painting, drawing, or printmaking is all just fine with Fonseca-Vazquez, as long as he’s using what the work calls for; art can be bossy. But, when asked if he had to choose only one to practice for the rest of his days, he said he would do printmaking: It’s my baby.

Even if he does feel comfortable making that choice, Antonio said his work relies strongly on the evolution of man, one man, himself. As an artist, you can’t afford to be comfortable, you need to change and evolve. If you get too comfortable, you slow down, and you don’t produce the same quality of work.

Like the evolution of communication, like the evolution of language, Fonseca-Vazquez is continually adapting to his surroundings: It’s all really just language…

What I’m looking for is a common language; it’s a fight between the piece and me and it’s exhausting.

Achieving stasis was never easy. Just ask Aristotle.

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Tom Grady Tom Grady is my brother, older brother, of five years.

One of my first memories of Tom and I begins and ends with controversy; being ever so considerate as a girl of three or so, I was concerned he couldn’t see the television because I had been blocking his view with my three-year-old nuances (i.e. dancing, jumping, and moving about to the beats that only three-year-olds appear to hear). After asking Can you see Tommy?

Can you see? probably more times than I should have Tom yelled back, Yeah I can see. Shut up! I was so taken aback I resorted to the outdoors for solitude, where I found a giant – in comparison to my stature – branch. I took said branch back to the den where I witnessed the heavy bark strike Tom’s heavy head.

My father only had one thing to say as he lowered the daily newspaper below his glasses, Tom, don’t hit your sister.

This is not how the interview went.

Things were much smoother, much nicer. We even partook in a glass or two of wine. What I’m really trying to capture is the tension between the flat nature of a painting and the illusion of multiple dimensions, he said of his most recent work that mimics a photograph so much so that each pixel is enlarged. In front of those painted pixels appears to rest a glass of water or, in other pieces, a brick. The trompe l’oeil is quite stunning. I was trying to see how far I could push the abstractions without losing it. While the pixilated American soldier threw me, I recognized the naked body.

I guess you could say I’m becoming less impressionistic. Or, at least with these media-mimicking pieces, he’s even more so; by taking that extra step toward examining the function of color through pixels, he’s seems to be nouveau impressionist.

After being out of the country and the state for so long – 7 years or so – I didn’t realize how much I missed until this interview. Tom perfected his craft and I just traveled the world accomplishing the art of rien du tout.

Look, he said pointing to one of Antonio López García’s pieces “Campo del Moro,” look at that color. I want to go more in that direction. Garcia, who typically does urbanscapes so perfectly it’s deceiving, was Tom’s latest influence. He’s just so intense with his color. Grady, who has been known to be highly influenced by his family, is in the mid-jump; he’s working to expand his repertoire to the banal. But, don’t let that fool you. Just look at writers like Flaubert or artists like Hopper and Rockwell.

One thing that hasn’t changed in seven years, however, is his appreciation for reflection. I do use a lot of mirrors, reflections, images within image, worlds within worlds.

He showed me new paintings like chuckle-inducing “A-Bomb and Two Glasses of Water,” which is a pixel imitation that plays with H2O optics and “Street Lights,” another piece that puts the viewer in the driver’s seat, literally. The point of view is directly that of driver in-between strokes of windshield wipers. This image-obsession goes so far as paintings of his own paintings in his new paintings. The Hitchcock might have even taken a few notes on reflection from this guy.

Another Grady motif is layering. Tom sometimes takes one painting – occasionally it could come from Masters like Carvaggio or Titian – and layers two or three paintings over that base, like his piece “Swim Forever,” or “Renewal.” You can see Jesus’ face in her hair, he said of the latter, which is based on Titian’s “Entombment of Christ.”

So with a sense of humor and a sense looking back, the one that keeps Grady going is his sense of mortality.

Words like immortality, preservation, legacy, and living forever were sprinkled over our conversation. It’s hard to hear family members talk of such things, but perhaps his fuite du temps fixation is why his family has been the focal point in a majority of his work. I’m trying to depersonalize it. There’s a sentimental quality to a lot of the work. That can be bad. It becomes kitch, explained the Copley Artist. I came to a point where I just asked myself ‘Do they even care?’ I mean, I care, that’s why I do them.

So with inspiration from Sontag’s “Dream within a Dream” and more physiological influences, like Richard Dawkins, Tom has leapt from family musings to everyday observances, including my father’s CAT scanned head after he tumbled from a rooftop. “Ode to My Father, the Image-maker,” was slightly jolting for me, but accidents happen. They happen to anyone. That day, it just happened to be my father.

A father in his own right, Grady admitted his daughter does join him in the studio. The Assumption College professor, Worcester Art Museum teacher, and Art All-State instructor has no qualms with helping her learn the art of art. She’s good. She’ll just come in, paint, and mix colors. She tells me what color to do or what shape. She’ll say, ‘Circles,’ or ‘Squares.’

She’s two.

Maybe that’s the key to his immortality: surround yourself with youth and escape the throws of time through producing art. I’m sure the occasional “Undercover Fish” graphic novel anthology doesn’t hurt, either. One thing that is for certain with this RISD graduate is this time, things won’t end in controversy.

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Michael Hachey Natural contrast, said Michael Hachey of his evolution into rhythmic color study, it’s there, there’s a certain harmony.

Natural harmony, I’ve heard before. Natural contrast, however, is another story.

In conjunction with his love for contemporary minimalist music - including the sounds of Philip Glass, Terry Riley, or Steve Reich - Hachey is clearly the epitome of interdisciplinary, so much so that the word synergy comes to mind. There’s a physical quality to music, he said, to the instruments, to the voice, to sound. The vibrations, the harmonies, the dissonances, they’re all so analogous to visual color.

It’s all very fitting; he is the Chair of the Department of Visual and Performing Arts at Worcester State College.

I’m really lucky to be there. His route to visual academia began in Massachusetts. The Worcester native attended the Massachusetts College of Art both as undergraduate and graduate student. After starting work as a guard at the Worcester Art Museum, Hachey then applied for a position in the educational sector of WAM. Eight years or so later, he was off to Clark University to mold the minds of the intellectually curious and finally he was welcomed onto Worcester State’s campus. We’re at a place where quality meets opportunity, Hachey gushed about WSC. And, why Worcester?

It’s where I came from. It’s me.

But arriving anywhere comes only with evolution, whether it be slight or significant. Professor Hachey had to start somewhere and for him, it was a phase of high-class graffiti that started it all.

In the late 80’s and early 90’s, Hachey worked mostly in black and white, mostly in chalk. I would just paint a wall with chalkboard paint and use white chalk over it. These large-scale pieces relied heavily on geometry and the natural synergy between the classics and the contemporary. I would take from famous artists or heavy art historical pieces and add a post-modern twist. Brugel’s Beekeepers has never been so haunting than in white chalk on a blackboard.

There’s an interesting terror involved, he said of his work with post-modern visual collisions between Yankee and African art. The New England landscape is great. There are gravestones on one end and masks on the other. Still finding harmony in contrast is something of a knack for Hachey.

The division of space with geometry is symbolic.

There’s a rhythm to dividing space and form, like the Golden Section..

Hachey seems to have found his rhythm in working that geometry; in a national competition to paint a mural in Worcester’s Federal Court House, he won.

Soon after, he broke back into Technicolor, so to speak. The mid 90’s was a sign of the times. There is beautiful drama and poetry in black and white. You get that film noir, theatrical feeling, but I was a trained colorist. It didn’t seem right not painting that way. So, I went back to my abstract roots: geometry.

With color, music, and the ability to capture the intangible, Hachey began to paint sound, everything from the calm color and flow drawn out notes to staccato brights. His foray back into color didn’t end there.

Music eventually led to science. Subatomic particles... colliders...radio telescopes...the Hubble... microbiology...

Clearly, I am not a science major, but in true journalistic fashion, I’ll write what people tell me. Colliders, they kind of work backwards. It’s like dropping a car from the top of a building and looking at the junk to figure out how it works. Inner destruction, as teen angst survivor, I get that.

One canvas appears to be infested with hot microbes.

Initially I thought to myself if epidemic had a color scheme, it would be found here. Yellows and oranges came together forming what could be the flow of an unseen organism or, as Hachey suggested, the sun.

There’s always a repetition of patterns, small or large.

It’s a secure thing. And, there’s always some sense in nature based on physical necessity. From small spheres of life to larger ones, his next task followed a similar suit: concentric circles. I got the idea from contemporary cosmology, he said. The idea that no matter where you are, things are always just rushing away from you in equal force; the idea that space is expanding and that there’s unity in acceleration.

And, in true Hachey style, there’s a clash on a couple levels: physically - he contrasted colors and textures - and theoretically - medieval cosmology was also involved in concentric circles in a sense that Earth was the center of it all.

At the center of my own world, looking at the natural contrast in life, I was finally able to see the beauty of a suburban New York sunset beyond the scattered trees and industry from my perpetually rusting fire escape.

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Scott Holloway Dissection isn’t everyone’s favorite thing to do, although, I remember anatomy was one of my favorite subjects for a number of reasons. What teenager doesn’t dabble in body-discovery? However, anatomy, to me was much more. Cutting into that formaldehyde ridden piglet for the first time was certainly sordid, yet oddly addictive, much like the work of Scott Holloway.

I became interested in anatomy so I could improve my portraits, Holloway admitted. I guess it just evolved into this. This being his dark art, his renditions of the holy, the sacred, and the morbid: Scott’s new Trinity.

Scott himself has a quiet what-you-see-is-what-youget demeanor. He also has a Chihuahua named Paulo who is, on the surface, much more – just more.

My subject matter’s pretty off the wall, said the Montserrat College of Art graduate. Admist an array of visceral collages and some dangly skull lights, Holloway appears to be über cool, as in dark German Goth-art, Goth-thought cool – which, actually, is quite fitting because some of his work hangs in the dark-art gallery Strychnin.

It may be a surprise to some that Scott is very much into Renaissance works, but it just makes sense.

If someone is so into dark anatomy, why not go back to those who perfected its depiction? I love the Old Masters, he said, basically, anyone with the name of a Ninja Turtle. Nice. Holloway was coming out of his own shell.

There always artists like Da Vinci, Vermeer, Rembrandt and Bouguereau can capture flesh like no one else can.

From time to time, Scott also does corporate portraits; his paradox ensues.

Still, at his most visceral of visceral places – his heart – Scott is enthralled with the techniques and materials that are typically associated with that faithful chapter in everyone’s art history textbook. I make my own rabbit skin dust. And then there’s the gesso marble dust – it’s Italian, Julie. Clearly, I am only a verbal artist. The grisaille technique is something else that I do. [For the artistically challenged, the grisaille technique is basically a series of grey washes. The end result is a sculpted look that artists can either leave as is or go back over using transparent oil color glazes.] Scott’s also been known to clean a painting with a potato on occasion.

See, it’s just like jell-o. Clearly, Scott had moved on while I was still trying wrap my head around grisaille technique and rabbit skin dust. This jell-o-like substance, he told me, is used for sealing panel.

If you too are confused about rabbit skin glue, Google it. The first site on the list is Scott’s flickr account.

It doesn’t really explain much. I’m not good with words. But, Holloway did say a few things worth noting, like how he incorporates the Golden Section into his paintings.

It’s a little hard. A little hard is celery that’s been left to its own devices in the fridge for too long.

It looses its crunch. But, the Golden Section, the Golden Ratio, or the Divine Proportion is hard, no matter what you call it. It’s how I compose most of my paintings. You just have to keep flipping it around over and over again. Some people say it makes the painting more Godly.

Always striving for the divine – I like doing things the way they should be done – this 10-year Worcesterite grew up in Bellingham, Mass. Worcester is definitely getting a lot better for the art community. You can really see artists coming together. Scott does have a point.

Art-types – which after writing this project really means nothing – can be found at Nick’s in Kelley Square or Ralph’s over off of Grove Street, then there’s always Vincent’s by Grafton Street. As Worcester is turning things around, Holloway has always remained fixated on the guts of things. Humans – he even has a real human skull on resting on his sitting room table – the throws of Christianity, and now decrepit houses.

In this piece there’s a tree that actually destroyed a wooden house, he explained. I’d like to think of it as a little payback. Nature isn’t the only one that can dish out payback, either; Holloway is also a practitioner of Kung Fu; take that Ninja Turtle masters. With all of these small quirks and surprises lurking behind the otherwise quiet-guy comportment, it’s no wonder Scott likes to leave small ocular treats in his paintings: Look over here, there are some footprints in the snow.

And there are curtains up in that window over there. It makes you wonder a little bit.

Wonder, indeed; this calm warrior of the darker side of art seems to possess just as many, if not more, layers as his work. And if you head to his flickr site, not only will you not learn anything about rabbit skin glue, you’ll also get a sneak peak at some of his paintings. It turns out Holloway is just as candid about each tier of a painting-in-progress as he is about himself.

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Howard Johnson People don’t read that stuff, so you have to keep it short and sweet. Howard Johnson is Howard Johnson.

I’ve never met anyone quite like him, and his art is equally, if not more so, unique. He was engaging, but clearly thrived on reactionary actions. Case in point: I’m not a fan of the human race; I’m not a peaceful person; this is what I wear to piss a lot of people off.

He ran into his room only to emerge with a UZI trucker hat. [UZI is an Israeli machinegun, submachinegun to be exact, and is considered to be the first successfully mass-produced weapon to use a telescoping bolt.

Israel suddenly became a nation with great potential in small arms production.] Wait, continued Howard, let me see if I can find the other one…this one is for the Christians.

Before anyone assumes anything, Johnson revealed that he was also a bit the victim. People complain about me, he said, and they did. He showed me clippings from the Worcester Telegram & Gazette from angry readers who wrote in to exclaim their disgust at Howard Johnson’s ability to snag another hefty grant.

But, there was just something about his work. Just ask those in charge at MOMA. They called him for a show.

I do collages. They’re just sort of spontaneous, he explained of his more recent work. I guess I’m really influenced by Ernst and Picasso. And, really, the surrealist periods. While his collages aren’t of humongous magnitude, there is definitely a lot going on.

Looking into one of his collages is like getting lost; it’s like floating down the Rabbit Hole only to find that everything else – and I mean everything – is falling up.

A provocative woman featured in an ad for soft-core porn could very well share space with Mammon, the Judeo-Christian god-like figure of prosperity, finance, and wealth. I like to take pokes at things, he said, explaining his artistic psychosis. The sketching alone is enough to induce a bad trip for the most accomplished acid dropper.

That vagabond lifestyle began when he was in his late teens. I did anything possible to avoid day jobs. And, I’ve been all over the world; anyplace where there’s a party. A UB 40 poster donned the walls of his office.

There’s only one thing worse than Disco, he said looking sternly my way, Country Rock.

Johnson said he was more of an original punk rocker, from the days of bootleg records and indy labels.

I save everything, he said in regards to his Sony Viao.

I took a look around the room. He had successfully held onto a German cabaret poster, a plethora of Fedoras and the like, along with other small trinkets.

He really did save everything.

Books like Last Exit to Brooklyn and The Mass Psychology of Fascism lined his shelves, not to mention a long list of Philip K. Dick pieces and some from Rasputin. Another important installation was his gun collection. The UZI hat should have tipped everyone off.

A custom .357 magnum. It’s the best, all the way. This was his bedside gun and not a bad choice. If it’s good enough for Dirty Harry, it’s good enough for me. I guess I’m the Ted Nugent of the art world. Johnson explained his beloved collection was locked away, but always at the ready.

Johnson never ceased to surprise me, even after all this. I’m willing to help any young artist, he said, with sincerity. You know, before they get fed all that crap.

When I was younger, it was just like a river. The floodgates opened. A self-proclaimed incessant worker, Howard only took jobs on a part-time or temporary basis in order to keep up with the flow of his artistic thought. It started in the 60s. I was trying to oppose the Vietnam War, and it wasn’t like today. It was not a nice resistance, he recalled not so nostalgically. Then, with a turn in tone: Really, I’m just a street hippie.

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Jonathan Lucas

Roland Barthes is one of my all-time favorite thinkers.

The French native has deconstructed the system by which fashion magazines are compiled; he has taken apart the semiological facets behind steak and frites, the Citroën, Gretta Garbo, and other myths; he even shook up the photography world with his work “Camera Lucida,” an enlightening commentary contrary to the camera obscura school. In this light, Jonathan Lucas has deconstructed love and lovers, only to rebuild it in his mixed media.

On that faithful day, I followed the Worcester native into his studio. I either work really big or really small, said Lucas. He wasn’t kidding.

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Upon entry, you could see that his huge studio space housed pieces, which were in pieces, that were anywhere from seven to ten feet tall, in particular his Love’s Protest series.

I like to use people that are actually in relationships, he said of his models. This particular series is centered on phases of love and contains some founding principles in the theory of photography. Lucas, who did his undergraduate at Clark and furthered his studies at Tufts and the Museum School, takes photos of his friends, digitally blows them up to a massive size, prints them on vinyl, and mounts them on Plexiglas. From there, his finely tuned imagination meets subtle symbolism.

In “Love’s Protest # 6” hand-rusted metal meets bones, camera parts, and, of course, his piercing photography.

People don’t know what to make of the mixed media, he said. Plus, it’s overwhelming, you know, in size, or underwhelming for that matter. Lucas showed me some works that measured 4 x 5. But, I wanted to make monuments, so it’s got to be monumental.

As for the pieces in their entirety, everything is homemade, down to the rust. I went to the junkyard looking for old metal, but all they really had was tubing, so I had to just go and buy the metal and rust it myself.

Jonathan then proceeded to tell me his rust-o-magic mixture of chemicals. While he spouted out his list, I began to think to myself: art or chemistry? After all that, he said, I was dying. I had to get out of the studio; it was like mustard gas! he said with a smile and his hand clearing the air in front of his nose.

Lucas was not only enlightening, but very, very funny.

In regard to his “Love’s Protest # 6” – which is an adequately sized house façade complete with sexed-up [not sexy] tiles, slots for love letters from which to burst out, and plenty of windows for photos that speak to the soul – Lucas said, you just sort of pop it out and there you have your breast…not your breast, he said looking at me, but a breast.

He made the naughty tiles – which depict everything from penises to vaginas, and yes, the aforementioned breast – from latex model molds. They actually spell out words, he said of the tiles, if you’re familiar with brail. After hearing all of the symbology going on within his work, like the stairs that go nowhere, or the subtle body language of the models, or the white bones and camera pieces that lay behind the vinyl photos creating a slight luminescence to the images, I wasn’t surprised.

Really? I asked him, rather impressed. No…but that would be awesome. We burst out laughing.

Back to seriousness.

There’s that creep factor there, I think.

People are thinking ‘Is it O.K. to be looking at this? Can I touch it?’ Yet, I love the idea as body as home; how when you’re in a relationship that other person’s body is home for you.

Home can be a tricky thing, especially for people from the Worcester area, as I’ve come to find. Even for myself. But, despite Lucas’ turmoil in returning to his native land, he said that he truly believes in the communicability of art, regardless of its size. I mean, people are thinking, ‘Where would this go?’ and that’s when I say, ‘What color is your couch?’ Like any relationship, much of what he creates is really a huge leap of faith, due to the size of his work.

I guess they’re more for galleries or corporations or museums. But, why do I do this? I do it for me. It’s like letting go.

It’s only here I should back track – Have you ever had a relationship where things went bad just as fast as they began? asked Jonathan. Lucas continued, You know. At the drop of dime, it all goes wrong; as soon as someone says ‘Oh, you’re perfect!’ It was the proverbial kiss of death – People don’t know how to take my work. I mean, photos are interesting, he said, they’re taken in the present for the future, and they’re a reflection of the past. There’s always a certain time transition there.

But, sculpture is concrete and it’s in the present. If I were to show this now, just as a structure, he said of “Love’s Protest # 6,” people would say ‘It’s just not done,’ as his Dr. Pepper can sat in one of its empty windows.

After speaking with Lucas for the better part of an hour, I couldn’t help but wonder, perhaps like the world of mixed media, people may not have understood me, but maybe I just wasn’t done. As Barthes himself wrote: Myth deprives the object of which it speaks of all History. In it, history evaporates. It is a kind of ideal servant: it prepares all things, brings them, lays them out, the master arrives, it silently disappears: all that is left for one to do is to enjoy this beautiful object without wondering where it came from. Or even better: it can only come from eternity…

But, I’ve definitely sexualized the pieces, without it being just sexy.

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Rosalie Olds One of my final interviewees, Rosalie Olds, was supposed to be one of the first. Due to innumerable scheduling conflicts and a change of address, our initial meet was long awaited, but delicious.

She served me brunch.

After having attempted to eat arguably the biggest omelet these eyes will ever see, Rosalie took me to the fiery depths – of her kiln.

I hope that I make people happy, make them laugh, she said. I hope that they see the human picture through my work. Maybe.

Her series “Soup-terrines” was apparently very well received, not only by critics, but buy buyers.

Everything in that series sold, said the 50-year Worcester inhabitant, except the bigger pieces like her.

“Her” would be the practically life-size Nordic opera singer: “Soup-rano.” Inside the Viking helmet held by the Scandinavian beauty is soup bowl and a ladle, which acts as one of the horns on said helmet.

That will to tickle the fancy of her critics and spectators has put Rosalie at the forefront of the witty-artist chain of command. In the sculpture’s living room sits a threeheaded swan – beautiful, yet somehow still reminiscent of Cerberus, the mythical three-headed dog of Hates – a carousel of bulky, legless workhorses and a woman who is in the midst of looking at her very own reflection, while the viewer can look through her. Literally, you can see through a gaping space in the back of her head, through some strands of hair.

Another artistic snack was her piece “Cat-soup,” a cheetah, mid-stride, hovering over a Heinz-like bottle of Ketchup. The cat also doubled as a soup bowl.

I don’t really try make any comments, explained Olds.

The titles of her previously mentioned pieces are interestingly quirky and/or paradoxical, like “Merry Go-Round” and “God’s Gift.”

I sketch with clay. Once again, making the seemingly impossible, possible, Rosalie continues to astonish her followers.

Rosalie herself is rather paradoxical: a very warm, sweet woman, petit as can be, whose focus in her education was on the sciences rather than art, found her career throwing huge, satirical pieces, lifting them into the kiln in her basement-studio. I used to throw pieces on the wheel and have to get up on the top of my step ladder, she said: the wonders that can lurk behind great landscaping and suburban doors. Olds, a fervent gardener, writer and chef extraordinaire said that there’s just one link between it all: My theme in anything, really, is communication.

Perhaps my personal favorite – besides Cerberus the swan, of course – was “My Yellow Soup-Terrine.” Like the popular Beatles hit, this yellow submarine promised surprise and enchantment. Yes, of course it was able to take on a double role as functional art, but this piece, complete with sailors lounging on the deck, actually sits in the middle of a small current of water.

A “sketch” she has almost completed is “Fanfare for the Common Man.” But, there is no man, per say, who appears in the clay creation, only meerkats. And, some of them aren’t even “common.” We have one here who’s a fisherman. Here’s a doctor. Oh, there are the lovers. But we also have Einstein, Degas’ famous ballet dancer, and Charlie Chaplin.

Inspired by the trendy “Meerkat Manor,” animal planet’s answer to “Dynasty,” “Dallas,” and the like, Rosalie set out to portray a sphere filled with the tiny creatures that overtly connects Man to his fellow beast.

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I have no expectations about anything. Whatever you write is fine with me. Terri Priest is a gem.

So candid, so blunt, so true to herself, an interview with Terri somehow turned it into an interview with me: Where did you go to school; are you from Worcester; what do you do; etc. Before I could let her get any answers, I had to make sure to ask some questions of my own.

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Terri Priest In line with her inquisitive nature – her most recent public piece, “Paths to Divine Light through Vermeer’s Lens” now on exhibit at Holy Cross, took her four years to research and complete; that’s not counting the months she spent pondering whether or not to commit to such a piece – Terri was as steadfast in her exploration as ever.

After having been on the Worcester scene for 54 years, bouncing around from the old Artworks Gallery on Union Street to WAM to an artisan sign shop, where she credits her education, to Holy Cross College, where she educated others, Terri has certainly had the chance to make her mark.

I’m at the peak of happiness as an artist, she explained.

But, that doesn’t mean I’ll stop. At 80 years old, Priest has no qualms about putting in all the necessary grunt work, which comes with the territory. There’s nothing wrong with sweat-equity. I’ve been a practicing artist since 1954…I’ve risked everything over, and over, and it was worth it.

Talking with Terri was like talking to my own reflection, minus a few inches of height on her part, a change in hair color and length, swap out her gorgeous silver frames for my librarian-like Chanel’s… well really, we aren’t alike at all, at least physically speaking. We did share, however, the same bold and brazen voice.

He gave me that voice and it was wonderful; it worked, she said of a former boss, who inspired her to use that same honest voice in a New York City restaurant to get some decent service. He gave her the gift the kept on giving.

You know, Julie, I’ve raised the roof already. I’ve raised probably 100 times more than any other artist in the region and if not, I’ve definitely paid my dues, she said of her career. I’m 80. My body restricts me – my reach, my energy when it comes to scouring for galleries – so I have to reassess how I go about everything and I’m perfectly content with that.

Another thing Priest is quite content with is not having a top-notch website. It never really gets the true essence of the work, she explained. And, if people don’t want to bother coming down to the studio, that’s fine with me.

It really is quite a studio in that it’s impeccable. It’s the only way I can work.

I used to apologize, but this is how I can put out as much work as I do. Maybe it’s obsessive compulsive, she wondered as she repeatedly, and continuously, folded a small strip of paper. One more thing about her studio, it used to be a gallery, which went practically unnoticed for 12-13 years. We never had any more than 12 or 13 Worcester area artists in there, she said seeming rather disenchanted. I got disenchanted – how coincidental.

It’s too bad that most artists won’t do anything unless they can directly benefit from it, Terri continued. I’m not a user; I always sent people to other artists. I used to participate in groups too, but we just kept talking about the same things over and over again. There were very few actions.

Priest did admit to never actively pursuing artist stereotypes: I have never tried look like an artist or dress like an artist. I always made sure to be who I was…you can’t live, isolated, in an art world. You live in the world and that’s what feeds you ideas.

Still, another inactive pursuit is selling her work. You see, Julie, I’m a slow person; I’m happy to wait until some one see what I’m doing and inquires about it. That way, I don’t have to try and sell everything.

One of her first solo shows was at WAM in 1974 – and, it wasn’t in the education wing, either…it was in the actual museum, she fondly remembered – she hasn’t slowed since.

After handing me a six-page resume to mull over, I began to realize I was speaking with one of the most accomplished women I’ve yet to meet.

I remember growing up on Millbury Street in Worcester trying to fight off the bullies, she recounted. Eventually, we just figured out ways to avoid them. Oxymoronically tough and sweet, tough cookie Terri had no other fate: My first crib, it was a drawer.

Jumping passed that phase, Terri grew up to travel the world.

She’s been everywhere from Italy to Germany, to Greece and back and while she may have left her heart in Paris (like someone else I know) Worcester, she said, will always be home.

I feel safe in Worcester. I still feel safe walking down South Main Street. Safety is really just a persona you display; you create safety.

And with this, she offered me some fresh, green grapes to take home. Each small sphere was packed with bursts of delightful flavor – playfully resting somewhere in between sweet and tart – a bit like my host, herself.

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Derek Ring Like the Creature of the Black Lagoon pines for his female counterpart, I pine to be cool. Somehow, it appears as though I’m just not there yet. Especially compared to likes of Worcester’s own Derek Ring, graphic novel artist extraordinaire, who not only enjoys the aforementioned movie, but also has created an enviable piece of what could be seen as fan-art based on one of the plot’s possible outcomes.

Oh, check this out, he said to me after I commented on one of my most favored cult classic pieces of all time.

With the excitement of teenage boy on prom night checking in to that mythic hotel room, Ring pulled up some fan art on his computer via YouTube. It’s one of my favorite things. Nine Inch Nails song “Something I Can Never Have” paired with a montage of memorable scenes from film came together in synergy to create a whole new meaning to what typically was the classic horror flick circa 1954. Derek Ring was the kind of cool I could only hope for.

Before you stereotype Ring as a graphic novel, Comic Con groupie, let me tell you he’s not. My earliest inspiration came from mythology when I was younger.

I used to have this book with these really crude drawings to go along with the text. I guess it just stuck with me.

Otherwise, one of his current muses is his girlfriend.

For this piece, my girlfriend was the inspiration. That piece was a zombie in the middle of rounding second base with a hot heroine reminiscent of a 1960s cigarette girl. Yummy read the caption.

Ring, who went to Clark University and majored in Studio Art has an eclectic resume. Some might know him as a Halloween mask prodigy or web-designer guru but his career began in an advertising agency.

Not every artist’s dream, clearly – crapwork was a word that may or may not have been thrown around – but now his focus is on the humors underbelly of myth.

It’s not art [creating Halloween masks]. It’s not satisfying and I’m really in the process of pushing out of that.

But, no matter what, if you put quality into whatever you do, it shows up later on. It turns out Ring’s quality factor rests in part by taking horror slightly out of its comforting genre and blending in some romantic-comedy.

Amongst his assorted portfolio band posters, masks and websites, Derek can also to add an “Undercover Fish” [that Fish stands for Andy Fish] feature and cover.

With all the comforts of a cozy, zombie-love-filled apartment, Derek showed me some of his most recent works and, equally importantly, how they work. Here’s my personal philosophy. We’re all just two seconds away from a really bad, embarrassing day. Even Frankenstein, he explained. It’s just funnier when it happens to him.

This mix of sweet humiliation is at the foundation of Ring’s work. You’re stuck in the terms of your life, even if you are a horrible monster.

Amidst bicycles, Godzillas, a fur bomber hunting hat and enveloped in warm, deep purples and oranges, Ring essentially told me he is magic: DR: I work with Adobe Illustrator, so there are no pixels.

JAG: Preposterous.

DR: It’s all created with vectors.

JAG: I got a C in geometry. Explain. I did have mono that year, by the way.

DR: O.K., there’s no resolution bits, no blocks of color, no pixels.

It’s all just numbers and lines. You can just keep zooming in and it will always be clear.

In disbelief I made him prove it. He isn’t lying, but he never said he wasn’t into the dark arts of technology.

So, with perpetual zoom in hand and some of the most heart-felt zombie stories, Ring has set out as a freelancer and it appears as though paving his own way has been rewarding. With morsels of an idea, he starts out small – They’re like half-thoughts when you wake up and there’s just no limit to how big it can become (e.g. a huge Frankenstein-like, technicolor monster which originated from a tiny, tiny sketch).

It would seem as though zombies stalk Ring, or vice versa.

I went to Paris one year during the World Cup. I guess France was in one of the final matches and the city was like a ghost town. Nobody was out; they were all crowded around the bars, watching the game on T.V. Suddenly, as the game ended, people began streaming out of the bars and flooding the streets cheering and yelling; just going crazy. It was like monsters were just coming up out of the ground.

I don’t know what’s more fitting: Derek Ring, master of good humor horror finds terror in the form of rowdy Frenchmen, or that the city of lights and love welcomed him with a Dawn of the Dead bonjour.

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Haruo Shiga I’d like you to meet my new friend, Julie, Haruo Shiga said to each person to whom he introduced me. Haruo is the most – this is not arguable – genuine soul I’ve ever encountered.

I made the trek out to Holden directly from my new New York abode. The week before had been a nightmare at my nine to fiver, especially because I was stuck for over 12 hours in Dulles International Airport.

I was going on five hours sleep for a 48-plus-hour period. I was late for the interview.

Look, while I was waiting I made this, Shiga said as he directed my eyes to a surprising beautiful duct tape-covered stool; purple, red, silver, white and teal covered the seat in a pattern fit for a couture seating venue. Yes, they have stores specifically centered on the art of the seat, only the finest rest onto which you can rest your seat.

Haruo, who is Japanese, went to the University of Denver to find his way in the world. Like his father, a charitable businessman – who became so successful he gave the gift of electricity to his hometown in Korea – Haruo set off to follow in his footsteps, but found his calling at a bus stop. ‘Where are you going with that’ I said to a fellow student who was holding this giant portfolio. He told me ‘I switched my major to art, Haruo.’ In Japan, you don’t just switch majors.

I was shocked. That’s when I decided to look into this art major. Soon I found that sculpture was for me; you don’t have to prepare a canvas or the brushes, you can just start now. There’s that freedom. Anything goes.

But, even more than art, it was clear that Shiga believed in teaching. Being with kids purifies me… and the dog, of course, he said with laughter ensuing throughout his tiny in-home studio, the walls and ceiling of which are literally covered in drawings, notes, and now my signature. During our interview, Haruo introduced me to his long-time student and assistant Daniella. It’s $10 per lesson. My wife says it’s more like charity than art, he said smiling. And I always pay my assistants. It was $3, but now with inflation and everything, I pay them $6. His Holden-based enterprise all began when he saw that elementary schools were cutting back on funding for the arts: I just couldn’t stand that, so I went to the town and got a permit.

In all actuality, Haruo graduated from the Rhode Island School of Design with an M.F.A.; he has taught at elementary schools in the area, in his own atelier,

and at the Worcester Art Museum; yet, somehow he doesn’t find the word teacher to fit quite right: I’m not really a teacher, he said as he looked to his assistant.

What am I Daniella? Her reply: He’s more like a best friend.

So, with $100 worth of duct tape, I followed Haruo to the Worcester Art Museum to observe him at work. I just give them the materials and the freedom, he said. If they pay me back, O.K., if they don’t pay me back, that’s O.K. too. In my opinion it’s a great way to spend $100.

Haruo’s class was full – they’re always full, he admitted – and it’s no wonder why. Not only did the kids eat up his minimalist teaching methods, they all had room to spread their wings and fly about by way of their imaginations.

With some rolls of colored duct tape, I witnessed some of the most terrifying, loud, wild children [mind you, to me, children are horrifying] metamorphose into the quietest, most concentrated pupils I’ve ever seen. One student was making belts, bracelets and flip-flops; another was into baseball caps; and some students and myself were working on handbags that could rival the leather craftsmanship of Louis Vuitton himself.

I never tell anyone ‘This is how you do this,’ Shiga admitted. I might say ‘O.K., that works, but doing it this way is definitely helpful. With a unique, calming approach, Haruo appears to take on the role of teacher by reexamining the role of student. There is no age difference in my classes. Kindergarteners work with eighth-graders, high school students work with elementary students; nobody is left behind.

A similar approach – simple, candid, and equally succinct – is taken when Shiga tackles his own specialization: contemporary sculpture. It’s just like this fan, he said. Look, there’s no more cage to protect your fingers; there’s paint; and there’s added movement, he explained as he turned it on and colors flew round on the blades, which, with their propulsion lifted a small cut-out creation that danced about on the currents of air. The worst thing is to over-finish it.

This fan, it’s done. It’s ready for critique. You have to be brave here. You have to think, ‘If people like this, then great, but if people don’t like this, then it’s still great because I still like it.

As his contemporary fan sculpture brought new waves to wind technology, Shiga brings new thought to schooling.

In his pink polo and his hand-designed work boots [he took a creative swipe at livening up the taupe classics by way of what seems to be colored marker], he brings his organic ideas to the artists of tomorrow.

You need to work on your nail polish, Daniella, he said to his assistant, again with a smile that never really leaves his face. It needs to be more…pretty. But, I guess that’s just proof of creation.

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Erika Sidor The truth about Erika Sidor is that she has three, very active, Boston Terriers: Emma, Elliot, and Edgar. Emma is the smallest and Edgar is the largest, and oldest, and probably most human as he fights the good fight to keep pace with the young. Fighting time is inevitable.

As a youngster, you ignore it and don’t appreciate it, but as years trickle by you hang on to memories, to photos, which are really the only things to ever capture time.

Erkia is a photographer.

Using alternative kinds of cameras give you a certain spontaneity, she said. For work I use digital, of course.

It’s really specific and it allows you to manipulate the mechanisms of the camera. But, with the Holga’s, I can just let go.

Her camera of choice, for her project of choice, The Dog Park series, is a Holga. They’re something from another era: a classic black box, no lens attachment, and light. They’re like little, plastic toy cameras, she explained. And, of course, there’s no LCD screen; you can’t view the picture that you’re going to get. It’s a departure from control, and I really can enjoy it. With these cameras, you really have to think, see, and plan for the moment, that moment. And still, you don’t get the pictures until you’re done processing the film and negatives a week or two later.

Every weekend, as often as she can, Sidor heads down to Worcester’s dog park attempting to capture the secret lives of canines. The dogs are crazy. You really just have to be in the right spot at the right time. You almost have to predict it because you’ve only got one shot. And she’s not afraid to do what it takes to get that shot. You have to be on a different scale; when you’re at ground level, you’re in their world. You start to see people as obstacles to their navigation. As people parts decorate the perimeter of the frame, you begin to understand.

However, that one shot syndrome might not always be so enchanting. Sidor, who captures weddings on weekends and works at Worcester State College during the week, hasn’t extensively experimented with the Holga there. One of her books does depict one gracious wedding party through the eyes of one.

During peek season, it’s hard to keep up. The dynamics of people’s personalities come out, but you never really know until you get there. Essentially, it’s a daylong adrenaline rush.

Her home studio, which is just a warm and friendly as Erika herself, was filled with an eclectic mix: the room was orange with gentle lighting and just a touch of green in the curtains; an Annie Leibovitz poster donned the wall; a photo from Tufts Wildlife Clinic brings the spectator face to face with a mouse caught in the talons of a large bird; Emma, Elliot, and Edgar are cuddled up right next the computer, right next to Sidor. You make such a nice model, she said to Elliot as we checked out her most recent dog park photos.

The dogs depicted are almost graceful and with certain quirks from the Holga, images can vary. Things like vignetting, light leaks, double images and blurring can occur, adding an interesting spontaneity to the finished product. Keeping a flash on a cable can be more helpful than hurtful. Just keep one in one hand and one in the other. That way you can just shoot from a high angle or a low one, bird’s eye view or dog’s. But, you’re just guessing with the focus and you have to trust you’ve chosen correctly.

It appears as though Erika has chosen correctly.

Between the dog park, the weddings and Worcester State, she still finds time to traipse the globe with her Holga in hand. Sometimes I have three cameras hanging off my neck at any given time, she admitted. It’s kind of ridiculous.

I’m sure that when Erika first picked up that Hogla 12 years ago, she didn’t even realize just how ridiculous it could be. In her most recent excursion, she left for India. I needed something to shake me up. While her next trip may be to Nicaragua – or Mongolia, or Cambodia or Thailand – sticking around the dog park appears to satiate Sidor’s need for that youthful exuberance Edgar is after. It makes me want to run around, too, you know, to have fun.

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Asparagus is one of my favorite vegetables. When Susan Swinand and her photographer husband Lou invited me to stay for dinner, initially, I had politely declined. But, when asparagus was thrown into the mix along with pan-seared salmon, I just couldn’t bear the thought of turning down such hospitality.

Like her warm personality, Swinand’s art is equally delightful and intriguing. I want to give a different life to watercolor, she explained. If you use watercolor on homemade paper, it gives it much more presence, pattering, and texturing. And, indeed, she had. I’ve never seen watercolor manipulated in such a way.

The color in her work is so rich and so pure I couldn’t believe my eyes, but after showing me some accolades from the American Watercolor Society, I gave in.

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Susan Swinand People today aren’t really committed to shape. And it’s hard to create a shape that evokes meaning without being corny, she admitted, raising her eyebrows and giving a candid shrug. Her doodley things – her words – are rather abstract, although through that jungle of polygons lays a cohesive world.

I’m really into natural forces and passages and other dimensions growth and mystery, Sue said with excitement growing progressively throughout the enumeration.

I want to create shapes that are full of meaning and potential, but that aren’t so specific so the viewer is active and involved and engaged.

Susan comes from a family of the art-inclined; her two sisters are also practicing artists. And, as previously mentioned, her husband is a retired computer whiz turned photographer. [And a great one at that. Just as generous as Sue, he invited me along on a fashion photo shoot in Quincy, Mass., but that’s another tale for another publication.] Her sons, however, have more interest in non-art industries like law and media.

Despite their considerable differences, it appears that the entire family shares at least one key trait: intensity.

Making a painting is like making a symphony. Everything has to come together as a whole to reinforce the same feeling or idea. Everything is contributing.

Swinand then took out one piece that was less cohesive and more – microbial. It’s all very subconscious; just look at the positive and negative space – Sue literally filled the entire canvas with shapes that were feigning life – everything is influencing everything else. Everything is alive. Life is everywhere. Filled with bright colors and curious shapes, the work was writhing with life and was filled with improvisations: This shape left this space open and it become something else.

Her liquid geometry speaks for itself. The paintings eventually turn into events in their own right. Your material really becomes your partner, she said. Sometimes it’s hard to engage the paint, but you have to persist. If you hang in there and just get out of the way, something new will emerge.

Realistic, sublime, and wild, art seems to imitate life – or life imitates art – in the Swinand household. Above her studio, upstairs, is a painting that depicts the view out of a window. The painting hangs directly next to that window.

Sue isn’t short on humor, or grandkids. There’s always a rotating schedule of guests here. She has seven grandchildren and admires each one of them. When they come over, they paint.

They’re using good materials too, but they don’t care, to them it’s just paint. They splash around and make a mess. It’s just liberating for them. They have no fear whatsoever. It must be hereditary.

I seldom start with an idea first, and then execute it.

You just need courage and confidence. Then you just do it and don’t worry too much. I think at this point, Sue was giving me advice. I took it.

Swinand never got her M.F.A., but that never stopped her. It’s good to get an education, but I think anybody can educate themselves. She currently teaches at Wellesley College and the Worcester Art Museum.

Naturally inspired by the forces of nature, Sue proved that with enough studying, anyone could master anything. “Flow,” her series on how nature creates that particular energy when it acts on earthly matter, is awe-inspiring. I don’t know very many artists who can capture wind in a jar and unleash it on a painting.

Another aim of Swinand’s is to create visually arresting pieces, but no matter what Sue admits she does have traditional tendencies. I care how my work looks, said the perfectionist. In that sense I’m traditional.

Her exciting originality speaks volumes. That’s clear.

But, her opera singing is even louder and less traditional in every sense of the word. The spaghetti is ready sang Swinand in her aria, proving that the most beautiful sounding opera could hold the mundane. You just may not recognize it. It’s challenging, avoiding clichés, she went on. And so many people are into shock value now.

What isn’t shocking is that Sue brings the same wild life to any medium she chooses, like her sculpture “Light Keeper,” an anthropomorphic wunderkin straight from the depths of Swinand’s independent spirit. And, like her very creative, very personal, and very individual works, her salmon was very top, too.

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Charlotte Wharton I can’t ever remember a time as a child where I wasn’t best friends with a Ms O. Together, we were unstoppable and together we still are. Her mother became a close confidant, advisor, reference, inspiration and second-mom only to my own and it just so happens that Charlotte Wharton is an uncanny spirit to the likes of Mrs. O.: soft-spoken and filled with laughter, quiet strength, smiles, and memories.

And, as I had trouble finding a chapter of my life sans Mrs. O., Wharton couldn’t recall a life without a paintbrush. I can’t ever remember a time as a child where I did not want to paint, she said as her memory jogged a bit. My mother didn’t even give me coloring books. She always just said ‘Draw your own lines.’ Growing up on a large farm, she said there wasn’t one acre she didn’t paint.

As a child, little did Charlotte know that her with her mother’s early encouragement she would become a renowned portrait and landscape artist.

Giverny, home of the famed Claude Monet, was arguably one her most memorable trips. I was just so inspired. And to think I saw what he saw; it was the same as how he left it. And to walk the grounds and stumble upon the famous scene of his painting Water lilies, it was just amazing.

A Kansas native, Wharton has seen a sizeable chunk of the world: Italy, Russia, France, England, and most of the U.S. My favorite to paint is New England, but France has those great umbrella-like trees. And Brittany and the south of France are just marvelous, although Italy was fantastic. There’s just something about Italy that just makes you feel more alive; It’s just more romantic, sexier. But, I do love to visit Kansas. There’s just great pastures and land out there. And in the southeast you have the Ozarks.

Sitting in her basement studio – There’s no north window, but it’s comfy – it was impossible to ignore her picture-perfect portraits, some even more glorious due to their golden frames. Her landscapes were equally brilliant: an oceanscape filled dotted with boats; candids of women draped in wonderfully colored dresses; women reading…

She said she had to work slowly, earning some fame in Worcester, then getting more accolades in New York, only to return back to central Mass.

At the time, (25 years ago) everyone was doing trendy abstracts.

My work got rejected.

Wharton said she started out with by writing 25 or so notes a week with her work labeled and taped inside. I would do work for free for a while, then ask returning clients to pay for my supplies, then that grew to a small commission, and finally people began to call me!

She began her formal training at Clark University at the age of 32. I had two kids. Really, no matter what you do in life, it all means nothing if you don’t raise your children well.

With more than a few national and international awards under her belt, one may wonder how on earth did this mother of two grow to be so accomplished: she was asked to study under Everett Raymond Kinstler – He just called me up – she had a 70 piece show at the Kraft Center, she’s been recruited to work for major corporate and private accounts – I have two pieces at Yale. Oh, and there’s another at Mechanics Hall: Abby Kelly Foster – and one of her most celebrated portraits is of Beth and Angela Quitadamo, circa 1980. This is just a miniscule list compared to her resume. So, how did she do it?

I joined art associations, she said.

She joined nine to be exact. I went to the library, went through the art association books, state by state and town by town. That’s how I started getting into juried shows. Before that, I knew no one and nothing.

Her work has been compared to J.S. Sargent – That’s very nice, but not true – and she still manages to keep organized and send thank-you notes. I work all day long, day and night, night and day, and I’m very organized. My kids even call me anal-retentive. But in my work you can find serenity, beauty, and quiet. That’s what really reciprocates with viewers. I like quiet country scenes with animals and women who are alone or pleasant.

Aiming to recharge by way of Nature itself, and inspired by the quiet demeanor of her daughter who often poses for her Wharton finally revealed her angle as an artist: Nature just really fills my cup. Other than that, I have no real agenda.

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Cynthia Woehrle

Pulling up to a giant, yellow Victorian in Worcester, expectations were wavering. There seemed to be so many contradictory art stereotypes that I had come across in my life and at that moment they were all floating about from synapse to synapse: the clichĂŠd starving bohemian artist digs of yore versus the pristine well-to-do domicile of successful artists; or there was the caricature of trendy, preach-y artist folk who made statements just for statement-sake versus the antiartists who isolate themselves churning out introverted piece after introverted piece; and of course, the overdone, decadent art scene of New York City versus the unknown of Worcester residing in its infamous triple-deckers.

All preconceived notions aside, Ms Woehrle’s apartment smelled great.

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That powdery potpourri scent welcomed me along with the warm glow of a fish tank in the background. Cindy was to be bright, but serene as she offered me a cup of hot tea – served in the most subtly, luxuriant cups and saucers – which was everything I could have asked for on that rainy, gloomy Sunday afternoon.

I can’t paint in a green room, Cindy said. I need to see the true color of the paint, so the walls should be white or grey. However, she was adamant on the whowhat-where portion of the interview. I paint for myself, I remember Cindy saying. I paint what I want; I paint when I want.

This idea of painting for oneself seems to often be at the foundations of a good-art heart, but [stereo]typically, that notion dissipates en lieu of that hardcore exploitation-manipulation wave we think of in larger cities, or in Stewart Home’s novels.

A majority of Cindy’s work on display in her homestudio was landscapes – the most calming scenes and soothing colors to hit Worcester since the real thing went out with Industrialism – most which had a vintage of about 10 years.

It takes time to be ready to sell, she said. It’s about building a body of work that I feel good about sharing.

Two years prior, one of her pieces was stolen from an exhibit, whose goal was to up the ante for a fundraiser in town. I hated not knowing what happened to it, she said with a shot of painful nostalgia. She thought things could have gone two ways; either, it could have been the greatest compliment, or it could have been at the hands of some adolescent prank and now was a lost child of sorts. It could have been dumped in some lake somewhere; I don’t know.

Woehrle, herself, wasn’t exactly a lost child; she grew up with one brother and four sisters. She was the fourth child; in retrospect she said art was her escape from what could be considered a boisterous family life.

You learn to appreciate your personal space.

As far as her art goes, she typically uses oil colors, for their luminosity is just too alluring: I just can’t give that up.

One of her biggest influences was a former teacher from the Montserrat College of Art, George Gabin. One of his pieces, “Conversation” was up in her apartment: I just love the way it focuses around one small gesture.

And it was small. The painting depicted a well-kept, seemingly European, park: perfect landscaping, perfect design, no one on the grass. In the middle of park was a statue, but against the edifice were two barely-there people gesticulating to one another.

With a quiet, serene demeanor, Cindy cautiously would slip in and out of in-depth explanations of her work; not unlike most other artists. She would explain, calmly and in between sips of tea, how nature was her greatest inspiration.

After growing up in New Hampshire, with that great appreciation for nature, she then attended Montserrat for her B.F.A. and now has been in Worcester for a total of 11 years.

Nature is just that break you need, she’d say. You can just take the world in and that moment, that’s the only important experience.

Worcester, she said, has treated her well. And it’s got just enough nature to keep her satiated: I need that mental break, that tranquility. Outside her living room window, you can see a small wooded area across the way.

You still have to wonder how Woehrle remains so calm in the hustling-bustling New England area, more importantly the eastern Massachusetts environment.

Perhaps it was her 10 year stint training in the art of Kung-Fu: I guess, she said with the nonchalant shrug of her shoulders.

I am influenced by Asian culture, she admitted later.

There were small Asian adornments throughout her abode: tiny figurines atop the mantel, which was harboring a small cardboard-cutout fire, the tea cups painted with Japanese characters, even the Zen-like vibe of her apartment.

As we digressed into culture conversation – I’m openminded as far as culture goes…I definitely have a general interest in culture, especially cultural taboos – the simple-chic Cindy expressed the happy direction her life has taken.

I’m at the point where I just want to be happy. I have my goals and I’m not going to sacrifice them for anybody else.

A confident, self-assured, self-motivated artist, Woerhle-girl certainly seems to have come a long way since her days of looking-for peace-and-privacypainting up in the natural scape-scenes of New Hampshire.

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Agnes Wyant Everybody loves to talk, said Agnes Wyant as I was leaving our interview, especially about themselves.

It’s true. Most of our interview was dotted with odd similarities; from our mutual love for horses and the crowd that surrounds that barn-culture to our mutual love for the work of Brian Burris perhaps more importantly, our love for W magazine.

I googled myself the other day, Wyant admitted bravely, and all I could find was my letter to the editor in W. Her 20-plus year subscription surpassed my 10-plus, but we both seemed to gravitate to the controversy the magazine perpetually stirs up. Their second annual Art Issue, it was so controversial, I ate it right up.

As I was eating the cookies she set out –along with an amazing iced tea blend – I began to appreciate Agnes for her complete self-approval, and therefore her complete honesty. It’s a collective consciousness of things I experience personally, she said of her work, particularly in her Jumping Ship Series. You know, like major transition things.

Wyant, who studied under Chuck Close at UMASS Amherst, is a self-described obsessive-compulsive, and it’s all over her work. There are lots of patterns; it’s almost metronomic. Really, my work is very ritualistic.

From rituals to rights, her work could even be classified as oddly religious. There are religious aspects there.

I was studying Kabala for while – not the Madonnarock-star kind – but I loved the idea of striving to know a higher consciousness.

However, growing up Roman Catholic, she said, was a good thing. At this point, I was introduced to her Boys Town Series, watercolor-based collages. Look here, see how they’re all regimented, marching along very nicely. And, like most of her pieces, you can see the Column of Consciousness shinning down through the image, splitting it nicely and adding to its composition.

I take the academic part of art, very seriously, but I wouldn’t use the term artist with me. I’m more of a… visual humorist.

And quite a successful one at that. Between the spinning phallus – which instantly caught my eye – and the tiny coffins Agnes has a lot to say. But her creative streak reaches far beyond collage. I make journals – also visually humoristic, one in particular having headless woman on the cover; perhaps it’s lost in the pages – and these painted egg things. Those egg things were brilliantly painted ostrich eggs. There were quite a few laying about in colorful, eclectic home. Amidst the yellows, greens reds, purples, and blues of her home was a Celtic harp – I’d play it, but I’m no good – Nkisi, a small Congolese fetish, and an Agnes original icon. In all of its organized cacophony, it too began to resemble a collage.

A fellow tall girl, Wyant led the way through her home.

Her fiery laughter, short hair, brazen attitude and redpainted toenails gave way to slightly larger bits of her personality. My three favorite things are men, horses and food. You can quote me on that. I just did. Well, I guess next to my artwork of course, she slipped in.

But, she did like men; her biggest muse being Francesco Clemente. Female artist Vija Celmins did come in a close second.

Very open about her astonishment at the education of others, she went on after UMASS to receive an M.A. from Rosary College in River Forest, Illinois, which came complete with an educational stint at Villa Schifanoia in Italy. Despite her education fixation, Wyant said the bureaucracy and pretentious attitude toward art weren’t at all part of her scene. But, one scene she was a part of was the Middlesex County Prison, where she taught for sometime. Prison art, it’s delightful.

Yet another smiling controversy for this horse-crazy, boy-crazy, visual humorist.

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Julie Grady Julie is a twenty-something writer from Auburn, Massachusetts. After seven years of roaming the globe, she ended up earning a B.A. in Communication and B.A. in French from Randolph-Macon Woman’s College and an M.A. in French from Bowling Green State University. Armed with a relatively long history publishing for local and regional journalism in New England and France, she finds herself in New York writing and working for the French-American School of New York by day and fueling her desire for creating non-fictional and fictional prose based on non-fiction events by night.

Locally, you can find her work in Pulse and Vitality magazines.

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Scott Erb I never interviewed him, but Scott Erb’s artistry goes beyond a scheduled chitchat, however, hours spent working together on this project can attest to more than a simple meet-and-greet. Erb is one of the few photographers that can run the gamut from local to national with clients range from Assumption College to Beyondus to Baba Sushi. Perhaps it’s his ever-lasting patience with hard-to-photograph models [e.g. myself] or his easy-going personality that keeps business going, although, it could just be sheer talent. With the most current technological advances and a proper knowledge of past technique, his Worcester studio Erb Photography, is one of the fastest growing commercial photography ateliers and was voted Best Photo Studio

by Worcester Living Magazine.

He graduated from the Southeast Center for Photo/Graphic Studies in Daytona Beach, Florida with an AS Degree and has taught at the Worcester Art Museum. Erb wanted to share his passion for photography so he founded the Worcester Photography Center in 2003. Erb’s work has also been heavily awarded by CIPNE [Commercial Industrial Photographers of New England] and has been shown throughout Massachusetts.

Donna Dufault A smile from Donna can light up a room and as Erb’s assistant, that thousand-watt smile only adds to the fabulous lighting. Together with her husband and business partner, Scott, Donna has resided in Worcester for over 10 years. Donna is the voice of Erb Photography from the first phone call to the last. Her ability to not only communicate, but bring a snappy sense of humor and careful eye to everything she does only adds to the allure of Scott’s business. Balancing out the Erb’s creative side with an organized mindset and Can-do attitude, Donna can make the impossible possible.

Donna is also a founding member of the Worcester Photography Center and her foundations were set at the Rochester Institute of Technology in New York, where she graduated with a BA in Fine Art Photography.

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In Memory of Tom Lewis and Leon Nigrosh I don’t know art, but I know what I like has turned into the cliché phrase of impromptu art critics everywhere.

Yes, we all know Art can be subjective. However, the Artist is, and will always be, projective. No matter how solitary, how reclusive, or how unattainable, one’s art is oneself and one thing that isn’t up for debate is the sheer fact that the work of the late Tom Lewis and Leon Nigrosh helped mold the Worcester art scene. And who better to paint their picture than the artists who knew them.

- Julie Grady Tom Lewis leaves a legacy of human rights advocacy.

He was always in the forefront advocating for the rights of the poor and overlooked segments of the human race. He was a peace activist, who frequently put himself on the line with other heroes like Phil Berrigan and was arrested many times because of these activities.

I will always remember his gentleness and low-key approach to teaching art to many children and adults.

- Terri Priest Tom and I had been teaching at the Worcester Art Museum for many years together, and we would often encounter each other in the studios during off class hours when we could produce our own works. He was a staunch anti-war protestor, artist, radical and possibly one of the craziest and most passionate people I’ve ever known…we disagreed wholly on almost everything, but I found his willingness to stand and fight for what he believed to be inspiring. I was also a big fan of his work…Ironically, on the night he died, Tom Grady, Veronica Hebard and I were admiring some of his extremely large and provocative linoleum prints that were left hanging to dry in Studio 205. They were complex black ink printed from intricate carvings carrying an anti-war message with some ghostly skeletal figures.

Easily some of his best work. I found out he had died the next…and I was truly shocked. Tom had always had so much energy; I don’t know if the fact that he had died or that I learned he was 68 surprised me more…

I always admired his drive, his energy to utilize art to change thought, and therefore the world. Tom Lewis was an innovator, a rebel and someone who wasn’t afraid to stand up against authority or oppression.

I admired both him and his work greatly.

- Andy Fish

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If you were involved or participated in any facet of the local art scene, starting as far back as the ‘70s and right up to the present, Nigrosh has had some effect on your cultural life. He was a practitioner, mentor, critic and one of the most unique and prominent figures in the arts. It might be that you own a Nigrosh or two, proudly displaying a porcelain platter, globe, cylinder or mosaic wall piece. Leon the teacher has taught thousands of aspiring studio potters. To know Nigrosh one on one, he was a solitary and sensitive soul; his daughter Maya was the center of his world.

Now gone, he leaves behind an establishment of artists and patrons who are indebted to his long commitment to help mold the arts that exist today in Worcester.

- Steve DiRado, as quoted by Worcester Magazaine Not only was Leon an incredible ceramics and clay artist, he was also a writer with Worcester Magazine. I first met him when he wrote an article about me for the magazine…To Leon’s family, he was a great guy and an amazing artist. A true voice for Worcester Artists everywhere and someone I liked very much...I didn’t get to know Leon until after I met him when he was writing for WoMag — in fact I didn’t even know he was an artist, but later I discovered his work and bought one of the books of his work. I was impressed with both his talent and his humility.

- Andy Fish Leon Nigrosh was a ceramist of great renown. He wrote several books on the subject, gave lectures and traveled extensively to craft shows throughout the eastern states. Leon wore many hats and worked for a number of weekly and monthly magazines writing reviews of shows of Worcester area artists. He was also at the openings and frequently would take the artists aside for immediate interviews. He had a great eye and knew how to encourage the community to visit shows, and his reviews often encouraged collectors to buy art from the shows.

- Terri Priest

Artist Contact Information Scott Boilard......................................www.scottboilard.com Brian Burris........................................www.burrisworks.com Stephen DiRado............................www.stephendirado.com Andy Fish......................................www.undercoverfish.com Veronica Hebard................................www.hebsandfish.com Antonio Fonseca.......antoniofonsecavazquez@hotmail.com Tom Grady...................................www.tomgradystudio.com Michael Hachey............................... michael@worcester.edu Scott Holloway....................................www.paintingloft.com Howard Johnson...............www.howardyezerskigallery.com Jonathan Lucas..........................www.jonathanlucasart.com Rosalie Olds.....................................rosalieolds@verizon.net Terri Priest..............................................www.terripriest.com Derek Ring.....................................www.abnormalbrain.com Haruo Shiga.............................haruandorigami@yahoo.com Erika Sidor.............................................www.erikasidor.com Susan Swinand....................................... www.swinand.com Charlotte Wharton...........www.charlottewhartonstudio.com Cynthia Woehrle...........................www.cynthiawoehrle.com Agnes Wyant..................................skunk.massed@rcn.com 47

Sunset

By Cynthia Woehrle