Gallery Stories, February/March 2026: Magic, Layers, Solstice, Winter Showcase, Contemporary Landscapes
Discover the stories behind 5 art exhibitions going on in Watertown then go visit the galleries and experience the art yourself!
Released February 21st, 2026
(Click here to listen on streaming apps) (Full transcript below)
Pictured: Crystal Ball Emoji by Anna Von Mertens
Lynn Bratley: Layers
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Watertown Free Public Library, T. Ross Kelly Family Gallery / 123 Main St, Watertown
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On View Through February 28th, 2026
Pictured: Heron Preening
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Watertown Free Public Library, T. Ross Kelly Family Gallery
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123 Main St, Watertown
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Opening Reception March 8th, 3-430pm
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On View Through March 31st, 2026
Pictured: Equilibrium
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264 Arlington Street, Watertown
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On View Through April 19th, 2026
Pictured: Works by Dale Belcher and Alan White
Contemporary Landscapes: From Observational to Symbolic
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321 Arsenal St, Watertown
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On View Through March 6th, 2026
Pictured: Beginning of the End by Erik Grau (left) and Patience by Bredt Handy (right)
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Transcript
Matt: 0:07
Hi there, welcome to the Little Local Conversations Podcast. I'm your host, Matt Hanna. Every episode I sit down for a conversation to discover the people, places, stories, and ideas of Watertown. This episode is a new type called gallery stories, and I went and visited some different places around the city that have art exhibitions going on right now, but in typical Little Local Conversations fashion, I didn't go and just get the exact details of the show to share with you. I also collected a few stories from artists or curators. So this episode has short segments with five different gallery’s shows that are going on right now. These shows are all free for you to go visit and go be in the city and let your mind go to a different place for a bit.
Matt: 0:49
I'm here today in yet another gallery here in Watertown that has a great show going on. So go ahead.
Beth: 0:55
Hi, Matt. My name's Beth Kantrowitz, and I'm one of the co-directors of Drive-By Projects. My partner at the gallery is named Kathleen O'Hara. And we started the gallery in Watertown 16 years ago. This is our sweet 16.
Matt: 1:11
Nice. And what's the name of the show that you have going on here? And tell me a little bit about how it came about.
Beth: 1:17
The show is titled Magic, and it features four artists: Lena McCarthy, Linda Nagaoka, OH Projects, and Anna Von Mertens. And it came about, I think we're in these dark times. Kathleen and I have been thinking about what would spark some magic, what would bring people in, what would kind of make us feel a little better, bring us some good luck and a little bit of protection. So we came up with the idea of calling the show, Magic.
Matt: 1:47
And do you want to walk through some of these pieces and explain how they fit into that theme and the story behind them?
Beth: 1:53
Sure. Let's start with OH Projects. The pieces here are made out of paper, archival paper and glitter. They're called glitter Rorschachs. OH Projects has been working on this for a couple years. And they're a way of transforming materials and engaging the viewer to see what they see in the Rorschach. And they're colorful and sparkly. And it's been fun having people see them and people walk up to them and they go, wait, I see that, or I see that. So they're very striking because of the glitter. They pull you in, and they're also magical.
Beth: 2:29
And then we have Lena McCarthy's, and hers are a little different. They're very vibrant. They're kind of a riff off folk art hex paintings, kind of what you see in Pennsylvania Dutch barns. Lena would say these are used for good luck. They're a little bit decorative, but they almost transcend decorative. They have bright colors. A couple pieces have skulls, butterflies, flowers, things that are part of nature and part of humans. And bringing a little bit of mysticism and hope into the world is how she thinks about these when she's creating these pieces.
Beth: 3:09
Another artist in the show is Anna Von Mertens. These two, four, six, seven pieces that is all framed, all done in colored pencil. And they're emojis, they're hearts, unicorns, stars, smiley faces. And these question what's real and what is illusionary. She uses these emojis as a way to connect with people because we're so used to using emojis, and sometimes the interpretation can be mixed. So these give you a little bit of interpretation of your own to what you bring to it. Like anything in the show, what you bring to it is what you see and feel.
Matt: 3:49
Yeah, and it's kind of cased in a shiny medium. So it really looks like it's on a phone rather than I didn't even realize that it was colored pencil when I was looking at that. Yeah.
Beth: 3:57
And I didn't even realize that they look like a phone. So we were trying to photograph these today for our Instagram. And every time we photograph them, we are in the piece. And so we're photographing them and we're standing near them, and then we're surrounded by the hearts or the unicorns. So they're very reflective and they're fun to be around. Every time people come in to see these, they try to imagine, you know, if they saw that emoji on their phone, they stand by their phone and see if they could find that emoji. So it's a really fun way to bring people into the piece. And all the frames are made by Anna's lovely father who passed away a couple years ago. And so people always say, if I were to acquire these, would they stay in those frames? And all of us consider the frames part of the piece because it's a very important, almost like a collaboration with Anna and her dad.
Beth: 4:48
This is another piece of Anna's. This is her crystal ball. It's also a color pencil, it's also an emoji on our phones, and we have it hanging over our desk, kind of bringing us hope for everyone, you know, hope for everything that's happening in this country and the world. But it has a very mystical, magical feeling to it. It's just in the middle of the paper, so there's nothing surrounding it. It's not on a table, so it has this little floating magic to it.
Beth: 5:18
This is Linda Nagaoka’s work. She is a multidisciplinary artist who combines nature into her Asian heritage. She's Japanese American. Her pieces feel like a magic garden. Like there isn't a sky that's this purple or landscape that's this purple, but it feels like you're in this, again, magical space. I can kind of see almost fairies dancing in this piece. As we've had the show up for a while, each piece starts bringing more information to it. And Kathleen and I, when we look at these pieces, we start getting to know them better and we see different things. So it's more of a landscape with pops of flowers and greenery and the background's purple. So it feels like a little bit of a magical mystery LSD tour.
Matt: 6:08
Yeah, and is there purple in every single one of these? I feel like purple is kind of the color of magic here.
Beth: 6:14
Yeah, you know, I didn't even I, we did not think about that when we curated the show. The way that we curate the shows is we have a theme and then we select the artists. And as the art started coming in, we noticed that also. And then I guess I just forgot about it until you brought it up. But yeah, there's definitely something happening with purple in every one of these pieces. And in the window, we have a magic ball that's also purple that's on a pedestal that also hopefully when people drive by or come by gives a little bit of a magical quality.
Matt: 6:44
And yeah, I mean, you've kind of hit on it a bunch already, but is there anything else you want to say about what you want people to experience when they come in here and view this show?
Beth: 6:52
I think that what we hope, and I think we hope this with every show that we do, that when you come into the gallery, it transports you into another place. That you can engage with the art, think about the art and what the art might mean to you. We want people to just enjoy this and leave feeling a little lifted from all the drudgery that sometimes exists in our worlds.
Matt: 7:14
Yeah. So the last thing would be where are you located? When can people come see this? And how long is the show up for?
Beth: 7:20
We're located at 81 Spring Street in beautiful downtown Watertown. And we are a storefront. So we called our gallery Drive-By because if we're not here, you can drive by and see the whole show through the windows. We're open Fridays from 12 to 4. And always by appointment, you can go on our website, you can text us, email us, and we can meet you here at a time that's convenient for you. And this show is on view until Saturday, March 14th.
Matt: 7:50
Great. Well, thank you for chatting about this show and people come check it out.
Beth: 7:54
Thank you. We love being part of Watertown.
Matt: 7:58
So thank you to Beth for showing around the show going on at Drive-By Projects. Again, it's called Magic, and it's up through March 14th. We can find that at 81 Spring Street, and I'll put links in the show notes for you to click through to their website for more details.
Matt: 8:14
I'm here today in the Watertown Free Public Library. Up on the second floor, they have the T. Ross Kelly Family Gallery. I'm here with the artist who has stuff up in February. Want to introduce yourself and your show here, and then we'll get into a little bit of stories.
Lynn: 8:28
My name is Lynn Bratley. I lived in Watertown now for 54 years, and my favorite place to go is the river. So all these pictures that I have in the gallery are taken at the river.
Matt: 8:41
Yeah. And I should say this show is called Layers. Is there a reason for that title?
Lynn: 8:46
I knew I wanted to call it Layers right away because that's how I see my walks around the river. I'm open to what's happening in the sky. I'm open to the reflections in the river of the sky. Also, like what's under the river. So I've got turtles, fish, sky.
Matt: 9:07
Yeah, and sometimes you got them all in the same picture with the actual layers playing in the photo.
Lynn: 9:11
Sometimes. Yeah.
Matt: 9:12
Yeah, so these are all photos of the river, and they give you these different perspectives, looking up, looking down, sometimes straight at an animal. Yeah, do you want to give a story behind one or two of these to give people a sense of where these came from?
Lynn: 9:25
Well, I live near the river, and when I want to take a break from my desk work, I'll walk down to the dam. And May and June is a very exciting time because the fish are running. The alewives are running. So if the reflections aren't too bright, I just point my camera down into the water and watch the fish swimming under the dam there. And it's beautiful. It's just beautiful. I have many, many pictures of the fish.
Matt: 9:57
Yeah, we're looking at one right now that has I don't know how many in the photo here, but it's quite a lot of them just in a little capture here. Maybe people walking down the river don't notice, they don't look down and see that's just teeming with so much life there.
Lynn: 10:10
And also what you get at the dam is the herons. I think everyone must have a heron story. Like I saw one doing this or that, but the picture that I have here in the gallery is of a heron preening its wings. And so you see all the layers of this beautiful bird and the head reaching down and the long beak to pick out all the, to make himself beautiful. So I captured this picture. It's one of my favorites.
Matt: 10:41
Yeah. And are there any other heron moments that you've enjoyed while by the river?
Lynn: 10:47
Oh, so many. Oh, so many. I mean, it's fun to watch them just walk along under the dam and wait. I always hope that they catch a fish because they're such skinny birds. I always think, you need to catch a fish. The other thing about the river is that it provides a big sky. We all live amongst many houses, and it's hard to see a whole sky. So I can wake up in the morning and look at what the sky is doing and think, I think there's going to be a sun circle today. And that's where I have a picture here of one of the sun circles that I saw. So it's a big enough sky that you get to really see a whole gigantic circle around the sun. So the river is a perfect space to get to look up and see clouds, sky, moon. I have some moon pictures. I can see from my home, I can see the western sky. And if I see a lot of clouds or something interesting gonna happen, I put on my coat and walk down there and see if I can get a good cloud picture or a good storm picture, a good sunset picture.
Matt: 11:57
Yeah, so you have things that are the faraway layers like the clouds over the moon, but then you have some of these super close-up ones of ice too, with layers of things in the ice. So how did that one come as an idea for you?
Lynn: 12:09
Well, all along the river, the ice freezes along the shore. So if there's no snow, like right now, there's a lot of snow, so you're not going to find pretty ice pictures, but the formations, they're full of bubbles, frozen bubbles and leaves underneath. That's another layer. The picture on the end has grass because there's deep puddles up on the land and they freeze over too. So you can see through the ice to the grass.
Matt: 12:40
Yeah, it's cool to go through the different perspectives as you look around at these different versions of layers. Anything else you want to say to people about this show or people who might want to come out and check it out at the library here?
Lynn: 12:52
Well, I think check it out. Let me know what your favorite one is and how you identify with it. Various people have come in here and said, Oh, I love this one. I really want to have this one. I would like to have this one in my home.
Matt: 13:06
Any other last things that you want to send it off with?
Lynn: 13:09
Well, I want to say that this has been a labor of love from the beginning to the end. Choosing from my, I have to say, thousands of photographs taken over the years to pick my favorites and to pick the ones that really say layers to me and then to share them with people. Each step of the way has been a labor of love for me. So I hope everyone enjoys this display as much as I do.
Matt: 13:36
Awesome. Thanks for this little chat. People come check it out. It's up through the end of February, correct, all the whole month?
Lynn: 13:42
The whole month of February.
Matt: 13:43
So come check it out at the library, second floor, T. Ross Kelly Family Gallery.
Lynn: 13:48
Thanks, Matt.
Matt: 13:50
Thanks to Lynn for sharing her stories about her exhibition going on. Again, that is at the Watertown Free Public Library, the second floor, the T. Ross Kelly Family Gallery. Library is at 123 Main Street. And Lynn’s show Layers will be up through the end of February.
Matt: 14:07
Welcome again. I'm here with another gallery story with a Watertown resident. And you want to introduce yourself and a little bit about who you are?
Sarah: 14:16
Yeah. So my name is Sarah Pizzi. I am a fine artist living in Watertown, Mass. I create oil paintings about belonging, connection, and luminous wonder. My main subject matter is the figure, and sometimes it goes to abstract light pieces.
Matt: 14:34
And why we were connected is because you have a show that is about to go up, right?
Sarah: 14:37
I do, yeah. It’s on March 8th, from 3 to 430 pm. And it's at the Watertown Public Library.
Matt: 14:45
Awesome. And it's going to be up the whole month of March there, right?
Sarah: 14:47
Yeah, yeah. It ends March 31st.
Matt: 14:49
So tell me a little bit about the show. Does it have a name?
Sarah: 14:52
It does. So at the beginning of the winter here, I started doing a Solstice series. And something that came to my mind a lot was the phrase return to the light, because when the winter solstice turns, it brings back more light. And so I realized this entire past year, 2025 into 2026, I have basically been going back to that. As my art pieces used to be about light primarily, I realized I have to go back to that, go back to my roots there. I realized it fit perfectly for all of my work going into this show. That return to the light is actually return to myself.
Matt: 15:33
Nice. And how many works is it approximately?
Sarah: 15:37
Right now it's looking like 16 to 20 pieces of my original work.
Matt: 15:41
And so they're all based around this theme of light.
Sarah: 15:44
Yeah. A lot of it has to do with unexpected hope, I'd say. They're not necessarily happy pieces that you'd walk into and think, whoa, those are really hopeful. They're making me feel like fun and excited. They're mostly quiet moments of reflection and perspective taking. So you have a little bit of the juxtaposition between darkness and light. I don't want it to be painfully obvious that they're about hope.
Matt: 16:13
Cool. So maybe you could take me through a piece and describe it a little bit.
Sarah: 16:17
So I actually want to talk about my favorite one. My favorite piece is called Equilibrium. It's currently not in the studio right now, it's in Vermont because it was in a gallery show in November. So but that was my first show in like seven years. So it was a pretty big moment for me. But that piece is my favorite. It was a painting I made in the summertime, and it's about healthy communication and healthy balance in a partnership. It's just very special to me, and it's inspired from my own marriage. And I just think it's not really represented much to see a healthy balance in a relationship. It just shows you can be committed to someone and also they can support your dreams and watch you go after something without worrying about constant checking in and constant communication. So it's just healthy and good. And yeah, it's a very special painting.
Matt: 17:13
Yeah. Can you describe a little bit? How would that come across for somebody? Is it representational?
Sarah: 17:17
It's representational. It's so hard because it's not here right now, but it's similar to the one next to me right now. I know it's a podcast, so we can't see it, but it's just me standing in a meadow and my arm is outstretched. Then on the other side, like the last three-fourth of the painting is his arm grasping mine, and you don't see any more of him. So it's basically I'm looking off into the next thing, but he's right there. And so it's, we are committed to each other, but I'm still looking ahead to my future and my dreams, and you're right there with me. And so it's this equilibrium, this balance of we can have each other, but also chase for our dreams.
Matt: 18:02
Cool. Is there any other stories behind some of the pieces?
Sarah: 18:07
Yes, there is one. This is kind of a different piece. It's a standalone piece. But I went to Savannah College of Art and Design, and my first roommate could have been this really great photographer. Her work really struck me later on in life. And so I asked last year, can I reference some of your photos to paint? Because they are just beautiful. They really fit what I'm going for. I'm just trying to increase my portfolio. And she said, Yes, you can absolutely reference any of my photos. What an honor. I would love for you to paint them. And one of my favorite ones, I didn't even know who the people were in it until later, but it's from Zohran Mamdani and his wife Rama's elopement. And so I painted them. It's over there. He and Kara McCurdy, that's the photographer, they are really good friends. And she's been right there beside him when he was a nobody. I didn't know. And I painted their elopement, and it's called Old School Romance in a New Manhattan.
Matt: 19:14
Nice. Have you reached out to him about it?
Sarah: 19:16
No. It was mostly what it felt for me when he was elected. I don't want to get political, but it, oh, things are possible. And this is nice to see a man who is not shy about his connection to his wife and this old school romance and what they're doing for the city of New York. And Kara's work is represented properly, and I'm so glad for her. And I just thought it's great to collaborate with other people.
Matt: 19:43
Awesome. Is there anything else about this show like when people walk in and see it that you want them to experience as they are there?
Sarah: 19:52
That's a really good question. I think I want them to reflect in their own lives, what things do I hold dear to myself? What things bring me joy and hope each day? Just reminding us that there's still things that are good in this world, and who is around us that really matter, and who is around us that's really stuck by us, and what things are you just joyful to see every day? So little stuff like that make a big difference.
Matt: 20:25
Yes. I guess the one question I didn't ask is there any particular new process or medium or anything you explored in the making of this collection?
Sarah: 20:33
This might come off like an advertisement, but R&F Paints is this brand. They do encaustic wax and drawing oils and pigment sticks. And they recently came out with oil sticks, these small sticks of oil paint that I have had so much fun drawing each painting with and then painting over them. And it's just been really nice added texture, material that I have never used before this year, and I love it. So if any artists are out there, try them out.
Matt: 21:05
Nice. Any other last thoughts you wanted to say?
Sarah: 21:07
Just thank you for doing this. Like I think artists are really fighting for the voice and outlets to do it and feature their work. And I just really appreciate you taking time to sit down and ask me these questions that I just talk to myself about. So yeah.
Matt: 21:24
Yeah. Well, thanks for taking the time. People go check out the second floor of the library, the gallery behind the reference desk. The month of March will be this Solstice collection.
Sarah: 21:32
Yeah, thank you so much.
Matt: 21:36
Thank you to Sarah for sharing details about her show and sharing some of her stories. Her Solstice show will have an opening at the Watertown Free Public Library, T. Ross Kelly Family Gallery, again at 123 Main Street, and her opening reception is going to be on March 8th from 3 to 430 p.m. And if you can't make that, you can still check out her art up in the library for the month of March.
Matt: 21:58
We're here today in the TILL Wave Gallery, and I'm here with.
Dale: 22:02
I'm Dale Belcher. I'm the curator of the gallery. I've worked for TILL for 15 years as someone who works with adults with disabilities. Then this opportunity came where the owner of the company gave us this space and said, what can you do with it? And we found what we wanted to do. So right now we're working on our Winter Showcase, which we feature five artists. These are artists that we've seen throughout the year. What I like about our gallery is it gives us the opportunity to show new artists. Once you're here and they're showing their work and somebody likes it, it gives them the motivation to keep working. And I think that's really important. We're also an art gallery for all. Working with people with disabilities, we see a lot of talent and people who have disabilities, and sometimes it just blows you away at how incredibly good it is and what is going on in their head, and it's really exciting to see.
Matt: 22:50
Yeah.
Dale: 22:51
So I mean we can walk over.
Matt: 22:52
Yeah. So we’re walking through the space. We've got some paintings here. We've got different forms of media here.
Dale: 22:57
We do. We have watercolor, acrylic, photographs, mixed media. This is my work. I collaborate with my husband, Alan White. And we've been working on these for quite a few years now. The stories kind of evolve as we work with them. And I think a good example would be this particular piece. I grew up in western New York in a small town. And the rumor was there was an opera singer from New York who retired there. She built this beautiful home. By the time I came into the world, she was gone, but the house was still there. So when I saw this photograph of this woman, I was like, this is Anna Christina. This is who she is. And so we created this piece as an opera piece. Waiting in the Wings is the name of it.
Matt: 23:40
Yeah, so we're, this opera piece, we're like looking at a, it's a house, it's got two floors with a little bedroom scene and then a stage scene, and you got the photo with opera paraphernalia attached on it. So it's kind of this smorgasbord of found items to make this scene.
Dale: 23:56
I've been collecting, I call it junk, it's not junk, for a long time. So it takes me a while. It takes us a while to do pieces. We have a lot going on at the same time because as you're working, you're going through your junk, and you find a piece, and go, this is the perfect piece for that. So that's how these kind of evolve as time goes on. Sometimes they're a story like this one with the opera, a story, but sometimes it's the item that creates the piece of work. And then we started doing smaller pieces. I work with some people whose son have a metal detector, and he found all of these lures. And so he gave me a box of lures, and I was like, there's definitely something I can do with this. And so we came up with the fisherman and his tall tale fish stories. And then a lot of it is, you know, stuff that we have from our families. This was Alan's grandmother. This piece here is called Alice.
Matt: 24:46
Yeah. Where did you get the idea to make these type of pieces?
Dale: 24:50
I think it started out. We had a friend who we really wanted to do something special for. It was their anniversary was coming up. And so we decided we would do an altar for their garden. And that's how it kind of evolved. So we started doing these garden altars. Actually, Alan and I have a few in our garden as well.
Matt: 25:06
Yeah. And why would someone find us interesting to come check out? What is the appeal for a visitor?
Dale: 25:12
I think it's mystical. I think it's magical. Kind of helps you expand your imagination. And I like it because it can be your story. It doesn't have to be my story. So I think that's where it comes.
Matt: 25:23
Little story boxes. Come in and find your story.
Dale: 25:28
And this is a gentleman, Connor Thompson, who is a photographer. He has autism. And I think his ability to be calm works for his benefit because he's able to capture these pieces because he can kind of sit and watch and wait.
Matt: 25:43
So these are photographs of birds captured at the right moment in flight or landing or.
Dale: 25:48
Feathers, Insects, and Fur, what we’re calling it. So over here we have some of the, I mean, I think it's fascinating or interesting that he was able to sit and wait long enough until he saw Bobcat walk by.
Matt: 26:00
Geez. Yeah.
Dale: 26:01
And the foxes. This stuff's really great.
Dale: 26:05
And then we go contemporary, where we have some modern sculpture. Jill Jacobs. And so she is someone, again, this is a good example of somebody who we put a call out for art. We've never seen her. She saw it, she brought a piece in, and we loved her piece. So we have these five pieces from her. I think they're beautiful, beautiful pieces.
Dale: 26:26
And then we have Dawn, who is a watercolor, who is just incredible. I mean, a lot of these I look at and go, like, how is this a watercolor? It's beyond my comprehension. I think she's so very talented. She designed tarot cards. So these are her tarot cards. And I think they make a really beautiful statement.
Matt: 26:44
It's a set of tarot cards made with penguins representing the different scenes.
Dale: 26:49
So she's been really great to work with as well.
Matt: 26:54
Yeah, Dawn’s a legend in the Watertown art scene. Yeah, we have some great stuff here. Cool. I feel like we've covered a lot.
Dale: 26:57
I really would encourage people to come see it because I think it's a really beautiful show, and I think they would really enjoy it.
Matt: 27:05
Thanks to Dale for showing around the TILL Wave Gallery. Again, that's the TILL Wave Art Gallery. They have their Winter Showcase up right now, and it's going through April 19th. Again, I'm going to link to all these places in the show notes so you can click through to their sites for more information. And their gallery is at 264 Arlington Street. Go check that out.
Matt: 27:26
We are here today in the Mosesian Center for the Arts’ gallery, we’re right when you walk in. You want to introduce yourself and the show?
Matt Jatkola: 27:34
Yeah, Matt Jatkola. I'm the Associate Executive Director here. We have a new show up called Contemporary Landscapes. And that's going to be up through March 6th, 2026. So come on by. Our gallery hours Tuesday through Friday, 12 to 6. We're open before shows too. And if you need to make a special arrangement, you can email us and we'll let you in, probably.
Matt: 27:55
Great. So tell us a little bit about this show.
Matt Jatkola: 27:57
Yeah, so we're really excited about this show. We had a record number of submissions for this show. We had so many great artists that just wanted to be part of it. I believe the final count is 123.
Matt: 28:09
Wow.
Matt Jatkola: 28:10
Which is a lot. Usually kind of the sweet spot for us is like 80 to 90 pieces in the galleries, and we just needed to accept a lot more because there was just so much great work that we couldn't say no to these folks. So we're very thrilled about that. There's a lot of 2D work, photography, painting, printmaking, but there are a few sculptural pieces that I want to shout out. And one of these is by Gail Gelburd, and it's called Dryad. It's right as you walk in the gallery on the right, and it's this kind of figurative piece that has pieces of wood. It's painted. There's like tree matter, all sorts of cool stuff sticking out of it. It is a mixed media piece. As far as how she did the print, I don't actually know, but it's a very cool black and white sculptural piece that we have installed on the first floor.
Matt: 28:58
Yeah, it almost looks like some type of fabric that's glued together and then painted on. Or yeah, it's a really cool conglomeration of things there.
Matt Jatkola: 29:06
Absolutely. Yeah. We have a few other sculptural pieces in this gallery too. Right when you walk in, is this one by Erik Grau. It's called the Beginning of the End. Right when you walk in the gallery, you cannot miss it. It's this sculptural piece, again, mixed media. I do not know how he makes all of these. He's done a lot of them, but it's like human height, and we have mushrooms growing out of it. We have little stalagmite, stalactite situations. We have gems growing out of it. It's very earth-centric, very sturdy, monolithic.
Matt: 29:40
Almost looks like a little fantastical village for magical creatures or something.
Matt Jatkola: 29:45
Oh, you totally want to climb in there and just live there.
Matt: 29:47
Please don't climb in the art.
Matt Jatkola: 29:49
No, do not climb in the art. But yeah, it's definitely inviting. You definitely want to just be with it. We have a lot of paintings. They're all very different. They run the gamut from like these really traditional seascape, landscape type of things to these very non-traditional pieces that really have a big narrative behind them that does not have to do with the landscape. It will have to do with like a social issue or something like that. So if you do come in to see the show, I would just encourage everybody to look at the pieces through that lens. They're not just, here's a pretty landscape. A lot of them have a really cool backstory to them. And you can just tell that by spending a little bit of time with them.
Matt: 30:29
Yeah. Do you want to talk about contemporary landscape? How did you come up with that theme and how did you interpret that as you're putting it together?
Matt Jatkola: 30:36
Yeah, well, we decided on the theme because we hadn't done a landscape show. We knew it would probably be a popular one. I don't think we anticipated it being quite this popular, which is awesome. But we just knew that there were artists out there who, like I'm saying, would not just stick to here's a forestscape, the end. You know, it's like, here's a forestscape, but here's the other layer on top of it narratively or whatever. So we knew it would be ripe for different interpretations in those ways.
Matt Jatkola: 31:05
It's been fun having these mixed media pieces here too. So we're in one of the back galleries now, and we have a couple artists who have been with us for a long, long time. Janet Buck is here, Ann Forbush is here, CJ Lori is here. They're always showing with us, and their work is often inspired by nature, but they fully take it to the next level. And they usually incorporate some interesting materials. Like Janet Buck, she's using actual stuff she's found outside in the piece and plants and pieces of pine and things like that.
Matt: 31:34
She made a landscape with actual landscape materials. Yeah, that's interesting.
Matt Jatkola: 31:38
Yes, yes. And Ann Forbush has this other mixed media piece that's wood. It's landscape, but then there's an eye in the middle of it. There's these cutout butterflies, it really plays with your perspective and it's kind of a fun use of all sorts of different materials. So we're just excited to have them continuing to show with us. And if you walk around the galleries too, you'll see little red dots next to things. That means we've sold the work, which we like to see. So just a reminder that if you come to this exhibition or any exhibition, all of the work, or I'll say the majority of the work's usually for sale.
Matt: 32:12
Unless otherwise noted.
Matt Jatkola: 32:13
Exactly. Yeah.
Matt: 32:14
All right. And we've made it to a corner where we actually have one of the artists with us today. And so do you want to introduce yourself and the work that you have here?
Bredt: 32:23
Sure. My name is Bredt Handy, and I am an artist and painter, lives in Watertown, proud Mosesian member, and honored to have a piece selected for this Contemporary Landscape exhibit. My piece does not have a horizon line, but it is definitely inspired by nature. It's called Patience, and it has some grasses in the lower left that you can see vestiges of them across the bottom, and then a spaciousness. And that's what I look for in my work is both groundedness and spaciousness. The yellow is always a color of hope for me.
Matt: 32:58
Yeah. So you're using some, like you have grasses there, but they're not necessarily traditional colors you'd use for grasses. So it's looking at the landscape through a different lens. So using color to kind of tint that landscape and the emotions you want people to come across with.
Bredt: 33:12
Yes, color is very important to me. I can represent exactly what you see in the landscape, but I like to tweak it a little bit.
Matt: 33:20
And is there any more backstory to this piece or as you were making it, was there an interesting thing I came up with a process or anything like that?
Bredt: 33:27
Yeah, I did need to exercise patience in creating this piece. I was going through a period in my life where I needed to be very patient. And that's what I was searching for was that expansiveness and also some kind of grounding and rootedness. I had to paint over areas. People like to see an abstract work, they like to look for recognizable things. There's maybe a little bird, there's grasses. I'm calling them grasses, but really could be any kind of botanical thing.
Matt: 33:58
And is there anything else in terms of what you want people to feel or experience this piece like?
Bredt: 34:04
Well, I want people to experience whatever they do. I hope that it evokes some kind of emotional response. For me, as I mentioned, it's hopeful and serene in a way, and yet also there's a vitality that I hope also comes across. But as I said, people will experience what they experience, and that's the beauty of art.
Matt: 34:26
Yeah. Awesome. Well, this one is, so if you head straight back when you come in the door and then you head towards the left corner, that's where you'll find Bredt’s piece. Well, thanks for being here today. Was there any other sections you wanted to show off?
Matt Jatkola: 34:40
Sure. We can head into the MBar real quick. So when you walk in our front doors, you head to the left, the MBar is there. If you were to come here for a show, we would have the bar open. We can buy snacks here. Right now, we're midday as we're recording this, and it's quiet. And we have a nice smattering of all sorts of types of work that's in here, including three video pieces running on one video screen. That's something we're excited about. We just encourage multimedia artwork here. We're a multidisciplinary art center. So we have some really interesting video art from Claudia Ravaschiere is one of the artists. Ken Ueno is one of the artists, and Dominick Rivers is another one of the artists. They're a mix of narrative pieces. There's some storytelling to some of them, but like Claudia's is really this meditation on the water, which is kind of nice. And it just pops up and you just get taken into it for a minute. You can just meditate on it. It's kind of nice. So yeah, really engaging work.
Matt: 35:42
Yeah, it's, there's such a wide range of stuff in here. There's something for everybody. I mean, if you like representational, like abstract, you like things with lots of layers, you like sculpture. There's yeah, really a wide variety here. Do you want to say a few words about how you group these and hang these and how you make those decisions?
Matt Jatkola: 36:00
Sure, yeah. Boriana Kantcheva is our director of visual arts, and she is the mastermind behind a lot of it. I do assist her with some of it. We have an art installer that we just hired. I used to hang every single art show here, and I've delegated some of it to a new art installer, and she's been doing a fantastic job. But, you know, you mentioned color earlier. We do tend to start grouping by color because when we start thinking about it in terms of media, it then turns into, oh, we're gonna throw all the sculptures over here together. It's very like on the nose. However, for whatever reason, color is not as on the nose. And that's a good anchor in a lot of these places, like how the colors work together, not necessarily we're gonna put all the red pieces over here and all the green pieces over here. It's how do they work together color-wise? And that's often a through line that we play with with laying out the shows, and media-wise too.
Bredt: 36:57
I'd like to point out that the sculptural piece that you see on the right as you come in, so it's very vertical. And right next to it are two paintings, also very vertical, and they just work so well together, and it's clearly deliberate and yet just makes sense. It doesn't feel like it's trying too hard to be that way. It just one piece flows from one to the next.
Matt: 37:19
Yeah. Cool. Well, any other thoughts to share?
Matt Jatkola: 37:25
I should probably just say we've had a really great response to it so far. It seems even more so than some of our other gallery exhibitions. So I just think it speaks to the caliber of the work here. And the artists, you know, we're here to showcase them. So I give all the credit to the artists for coming to us with great pieces that we could put together in this theme.
Matt: 37:46
Awesome. Yeah, and if you go upstairs, it continues upstairs too. It's not just on the first floor.
Matt Jatkola: 37:50
It does. There's a lot of work, so come spend some time with it.
Matt: 37:54
Awesome. Well, again, this is up through March 6th, Contemporary Landscapes. Mosesian Center for the Arts. Come check it out.
Matt: 38:03
Thanks to Matt and Bredt for showing around the Mosesian Center for the Arts’ current show, Contemporary Landscapes. That's up through March 6th. Lot of stuff to take in there. So head on over to 321 Arsenal Street. And again, you can link through the show notes to find out more information about that show.
Matt: 38:19
So that is it. That is all the gallery stories for this episode. Hope you enjoyed hearing this new episode type. Let me know what you think, and I hope you go check out some art and let your imagination wander a little bit this week. Alright, and if you like the podcast, I have more arts and culture related episodes, but also just one-on-one interviews with people around the city, local government updates, live podcast events, lots of stuff going on. Check that all out at LittleLocalConversations.com. There you can subscribe to my newsletter to keep up to date with everything going on from new episodes, when podcast events are coming out, and just some thoughts I share every week in my weekly newsletter.
Matt: 38:56
Alright, and I want to give a few shout-outs here to wrap things up. First one goes to podcast sponsor, Arsenal Financial. We're a financial planning business here in Watertown that's owned by Doug Orifice. He's a very committed community member, involved with lots of things in the city, and his business helps busy families, small businesses, and people close to retirement. So if you need help in any of those areas, reach out to Doug and his team at arsenalfinancial.com. I also want to give you thank you to the Watertown Cultural Council, who have given me a grant this year to help support the podcast. So I want to give them the appropriate credit, which is, this program is supported in part by a grant from the Watertown Cultural Council, a local agency, which is supported by the Mass Cultural Council, a state agency. You can find out more about them at WatertownCulturalCouncil.org and MassCulturalCouncil.org. And a couple more shout outs to promotional partners. First one goes to the Watertown Business Coalition, which is a nonprofit organization here in Watertown. And their motto is Community Is Our Business. Find out more about them at WatertownBusinessCoalition.com. And lastly, Watertown News, which is a Watertown focused online newspaper. It's a great place to keep up to date with everything going on in the city. Check that out at WatertownMANews.com. So that's it. Until next time, take care.
