Greg Cook Exhibits in Lowell

July 26, 2012

Montserrat faculty Greg Cook will be among the artists featured in Friends of the Zeitgeist, the first exhibition the Zeitgeist Gallery Lowell, formerly of Cambridge and Pittsfield, is presenting at its brand new space at 167 Market Street in Lowell.

The show features sculpture, painting, drawing, monoprints, video/sound and lightboxes by Asa Brebner, Greg Cook, John Engstrom, David Grant, Steve Kinney, Greg Kowalski, Angela Mark and Michael Shores, Markus Nechay, Patrick Pierce, Miranda Ryan, Bill Turvillle, Brent Whitney, Jeanne and Will Winslow, Elaine Wood and Rick Breault. Stop in while you’re at the Lowell Folk Fest this weekend.

Reception: Thu, July 26, 7 – 9 pm
On View: July 27 – Aug. 28
Hours: Wed – Sat 1 – 8 pm

Meanwhile, The Boston Globe featured a review of IntraCountry: Patriotic Expressions, a group show at Gallery Kayafas in Boston through Aug. 11 that also included Cook’s art.

Click below to see the review from The Boston Globe:

Galleries around Boston: ‘The Space Between’ and Beyond
By Cate McQuaid | JULY 24, 2012

A Multiplicity of Voices

The idea for “Intra Country: Patriotic Expressions,” the sweeping summer group show at Gallery Kayafas, occurred to gallery owner Arlette Kayafas during the Republican primaries. “The rhetoric was so hostile and divisive,” she said, when I stopped by the gallery. “I wanted to do something about patriotic expressions.”

Love of country is not simple; we all may sign on to American values we hold dear, but those values come in wildly different shades of red, white, and blue. Kayafas wisely offers up a multiplicity of voices, although there’s clearly a blue state slant to the show. Rachelle A. Dermer’s “Miss America” artist’s book and video, for instance, narrates the Facebook exchange between this liberal, lesbian artist and her cousin, whom she describes in her statement as “a paleoconservative.” It’s a thoughtful piece, but ultimately it does not breach the divide.

Much of the photography in the show has a photo-journalistic feel, giving viewers room to form their own feelings, such as Bill Chapman’s sweet, crisp “Armed Forces Night, Fenway Park, Boston, MA,” with its dozens of servicemen ringing the diamond, sharply saluting a giant flag.

Then there’s Charles “Teenie” Harris’s photo of a mid-20th-century billboard, “Vote Republican, Pittsburgh, PA,” which enjoins the public to “make our homes and streets safe’’ and features threatening hands looming over a blond girl, who most curiously holds a black-faced doll.

Roberta Paul’s three “Paper Tiers” drawings are moving, large-scale versions of drawings of flags she asked her elderly father to make after Sept. 11. He had a type of dementia that affected his ability to draw, so the images, mounted vertically, get progressively more ragged and flailing. Kayafas says one visitor looked at them without realizing they were flags, and asked if they depicted the Twin Towers under attack.

There’s much more here, some pointed, some puzzling over the cracks in our society, but Paul’s proud but disintegrating flags, in a way, say it all.


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