Cofounders of artists collective Rifrákt transform their mission to book form

The Boston Globe
Aug. 28, 2010
By Cate McQuaid, Globe Correspondent

Stephanie Goode (left) and Carolyn Hulbert (Montserrat College of Art Class of 2007) co-produced “25 Emerging Boston Artists 2010,’’ a coffee-table book that is made to order. (Dina Rudick/Globe Staff)

Ten years ago, if a scrappy group of young artists wanted to get their work seen, they’d find a dusty loft in a neighborhood where the rent was cheap and call it a gallery. Any art scene habitué older than 30 remembers Oni Gallery and Bad Grrls Studio. These days, it’s harder to find spaces where you can throw a show on the wall. Rents are higher. Many of the old, cheap neighborhoods have been gentrified.

Rifrákt, a nomadic collective of artists that first met a year ago in printmaker Carolyn Hulbert’s Jamaica Plain living room, has taken other routes to showing their art. They have mounted exhibits in people’s homes, taken over Hallway Gallery in JP for the month of April when its owner got married, and now they’ve published a hard-cover, coffee-table book of 56 pages, “25 Emerging Boston Artists 2010.’’

“We didn’t know how big it was going to be,’’ says Hulbert, 25, in a conversation with her Rifrákt cofounder, photographer Stephanie Goode, 27. The two have met for a bite to eat in Fort Point Channel, where Hulbert works full time as a receptionist at a law firm and Goode retouches photography for an online shopping site. (Hulbert is a 2007 alumna of Montserrat College of Art) Read more…