The paintings, sculptures, and tapestries showcased in “This is America,” the latest exhibit at Newton’s Nearby Gallery, seek to depict the United States in all its varied complexities.
The exhibit, curated by Jamaal Eversley, will run through March 5. It features work from 29 artists and one poet. According to Eversley, “[The exhibit] is about showing the good, bad, beautiful, and ugly of America. Unity through diversity of voice and thought brings success to the whole. This is the People’s Art Movement. This Is America!”
Located at 101 Union Street in Newton Centre, the Nearby Gallery is an artist-owned showroom and community art space which offers workshops taught by professional artists and comprehensive portfolio reviews for a fee. The space can also be rented for private events and paint parties. On February 25, the venue will host a slam poetry event alongside the “This is America” art exhibit.
Nearby Gallery has been open now for the past two years. According to co-owner Sam Belisle, “The goal of the gallery is to bring visibility to people who are having trouble breaking into the arts scene.” Belisle and co-owner Cal Rice invited Eversley to create an exhibit that specifically provided opportunities to artists from under-represented groups related to income, race, gender, and political orientation.
Fernando Fula, from Boston, has two pieces in the “This is America” exhibit. His painting “Thoughts & Gov,” shows a hand reaching out as if in prayer draped in an American flag. In a novel twist, artist Alex Martinez created the blue frame which surrounds the painting. Fula’s second piece, “I Don’t Understand America,” features a person gazing out towards the distance, their eyes blank and white.
Fula wants viewers to decide for themselves what his paintings mean. “I found that our politics are a lot of special interests, certain parties, agendas, consistently telling you how things are,” Fula said. “These particular pieces are really just me wanting individuals to think what they think, versus me saying, ‘this is what it is, this is how it is.’ They’re not very descriptive in the sense that I want individuals just to really reflect on what they believe America to be.”
While most of the pieces in the “This is America” exhibit are paintings, other types of media are also represented. One unusual mixed media sculpture is titled “Desert Storm House of Cards,” by Andrew Fish, in which the artist presents the Gulf War of 1990-1991 in Kuwait and Iraq as a house of cards involving U.S. political leaders, weapons, and military units.
Related exhibits
Located in the Newton Public Library, not far from the Nearby Gallery, Fernando Fula’s solo exhibit, “The Hunger to Reclaim Childhood,” will run through February 28. This exhibit focuses on the idea of reclaiming lost childhood innocence as adults.
As Fula describes, “The solo exhibit is for folks to, not just examine the timeline in my life, but to figure out when they lost a particular innocence. For me, the innocence is as kids, we all draw, we all create, we’re all like little artists, but then at one point, we kind of lose that. So I ask the viewer to ask themselves, at what point in their lives that they drop off from that creativity.”
Audrey Garon is a senior at Brookline High School with an interest in journalism. Richard Primack is Professor of Plant Ecology at Boston University and lifelong Newton resident.
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