link to story: http://www.heraldnews.com/article/20151014/NEWS/151018111
Artist Nora Rabins stands next to one of her pieces at the Narrows Center for the Arts. Photo: Dave Souza
By Linda Murphy , Lifestyle Editor
Posted Oct. 14, 2015 at 1:01 PM
Updated Oct 14, 2015 at 1:45 PM
In former mill space throughout Fall River, artists are at work in their studios creating pieces in all media from paintings and prints, to furniture and metal sculptures. Aside from an occasional open studio, few in the community know of the caliber of artists making use of the city’s former mills, but now art enthusiasts can take a first-hand look at some of the pieces they’ve created at a new exhibit at the Narrows Center for the Arts.
Smokestack Studio opened last Saturday featuring the work of 12 acclaimed artists who work out of the cooperative studio located just up the road from the Narrows including the studio founders, Rosanne Somerson, Alphonse Mattia, Eck Follen and Charlie Swanson, all of whom are nationally known in the studio furniture movement that started in the 1970s.
Somerson, president of RISD, is showing a hand-turned wooden vase for this exhibit. Alphonse Mattia’s piece, complete with a giant pencil and pencil sharpener, is whimsical, but with regard for craftsmanship, said Nora Rabin, one the artists featured in the exhibit.
The exhibit includes a series of encaustic paintings from Follen, Swanson’s bow-shaped metal piece with thin sheets of laminated masonite and Isabel Mattia’s six voluminous steel forms.
“A lot of the people in the show are related to the Furniture Design department at RISD,” said Rabins, adding the furniture making machinery at the studio also links the artists, though many of them work in a variety of media.
A three-dimensional design teacher at RISD, Rabin’s work for this show includes three metal pieces and a portion of a wood and string installation she created for a walking path at the Haystack School of Craft.
The pieces in this show run the gamut from utilitarian furniture, to a soft fabric sculpture by Sira Udomritthiruj and Carrie Hyde’s series of necklaces with hand-carved wooden pieces.
The other artists featured in the Smokestack Studio exhibit are Brad Herzlich, Gail Fredell, Nick Ventola and Tyler Inman. An artist’s reception is scheduled for Saturday, Oct. 17, at noon. For more information, visit www.narrowscenter.org.
