IN THE ANNEX
January 2021
Justin Life, Miller Opie, and Dennis Stein
UPDATE
SoWa First Friday Art Walk: Due to the recent increase in Coronavirus transmission numbers in Boston and throughout the region, we will be closed for the SOWA First Friday Art Walk on Friday, January 8th.
Please stay tuned for an Art Walk Relay to be released the evening of Friday, January 8th on our website and social media. Participating galleries include: Beacon Gallery, Boston Sculptors Gallery, Fountain Street Gallery, Galatea Fine Art, and Kingston Gallery.
January’s Virtual Artist Talk: Sunday, January 31, 2021, 3PM
RSVP HERE FOR THE ARTIST TALK ➢
Justin Life, Miller Opie, and Dennis Stein expose life-altering experiences through different lenses of understanding and investigation.Using photography, drawing, and the act of collecting, these three artists explore beauty, decay, and the fragility of our existence. *This exhibit was originally scheduled for April 2020.
The ANNEX is a section of the Gallery where we spotlight new work by regional artists.
Justin Life
Justin Life’s recent artwork evolves from photographs he has taken while exploring wooded areas in Boston, MA, and Chapel Hill, NC. He transforms and reverses the photos to inspire scratch-board drawings. In these works, he improvises mandala-like images that connect the fractal structures found in everyday life with structures found in representations of the universe and Baroque figurative painting.
Justin Life is a Boston based artist and educator. He received an MFA from Tufts University/School of the Museum of Fine Arts (‘07) and a BFA in painting from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro (‘02); he also studied at the Winchester School of Art at Southampton University in England (‘02). Life shows locally and nationally, most recently at the University of North Carolina’s Drawing Discourse Exhibition (’17). He is a part time professor at Tufts University and an instructor at the Museum of Fine Arts Boston.
Miller Opie
Miller Opie’s work explores and exorcises her life-altering experience that began in 2009 when she learned that she had several benign tumors that were destroying her jawbone. The over three years of surgeries and procedures inspires Miller to intimately explore beauty, decay and fragility. She has a life long passion and obsession for collecting bones and other natural objects. Working with found organic materials allows her the thrill of the hunt, the experience of discovery and the joy of combining and manipulating shapes. Miller creates something better, something more compelling, by repairing a broken cow femur or combining moose ribs and feathers. Inspired by the new metal plate in her jaw, she adds brass screws or metal chain to these discarded, decaying animal parts to give them a new life. Her work investigates how female beauty is defined through mortality and rejuvenation.
Miller Opie grew up in a family of makers and earned her undergraduate degree from the Rhode Island School of Design in jewelry and light metals. After several years running her own jewelry design business, she evolved her passion for design into a 20-year career in the home fashions industry. She has led design and brand development for several high profile brands in all product categories. Opie’s jewelry and sculpture work is in many private collections. She makes art in Western Massachusetts at Rumpus Studio, which she created with her sister and her husband. Opie is a recipient of the 2020 Mollie & Albert Jacobson Sculpture Award, a member of the Silvermine Guild of Artists and a member of the Sculptors Guild of New York City.
Dennis Stein
Dennis Stein takes photographs. Walking around with at least one camera in wooded areas or along the streets of Boston or Manhattan he reacts and photographs what he sees, composing it with or without the viewfinder. The resulting images are visually powerful. In these images he highlights the connection in the patterns of branches and limbs surrounding him. By using film toy cameras and pinhole cameras, the final images are not what he “sees” but what he senses and feels. The imperfections in the cameras, light leaks, overlapping of film frames, double exposures, lead to unpredictable results. Also, the simplicity of the cameras makes the composition that much more important, as he has no way of focusing, or adjusting the aperture, shutter speed, or depth of field. The final images are serendipitous.
Dennis Stein is self-taught, supplemented with some formal instruction in photo workshops. He has worked in editorial photography for Boston Rock Magazine and the MetroWest Daily News. Stein’s photographs have been part of numerous group shows both at the Bromfield Gallery and at shows of toy camera images, including The Somerville Toy Camera Festival and shows in Oregon, Texas, and California. His book, Simple: Plastic Camera Photographs won Honorable Mention in the 2008 American Photographic Artists National Photo Competition. He currently has a studio at Norwood Space Center, Norwood, MA.
What will you remember? | Elin Spring and Suzanne Révy