Roots of Passage: Artists Examine Immigration
July 12-August 17, 2024
Atlantic Works Gallery, 80 Border Street, East Boston, MA
Atlantic Works Gallery Summer Exhibition investigates and celebrates immigration from artists’ personal experience.
Become Responsible for What You Have Tamed 2022 Flattened paper sculpture, paint, lace, threads & strings, gold leaf, 21x16x1 inches
UNTANGLED
Presented by ArtSpace Maynard and 6 Bridges Gallery
Juried by Janet Kawada
June 29 — August 3, 2024
Reception on Saturday, June 29, 4:00–6:00 pm
Juror’s Talk on Saturday, July 13, 3:30-5:00 pm.
ArtSpace Maynard and 6 Bridges Gallery are pleased to announce the opening of “Untangled: Original Fiber.” For this collaborative exhibit, artists were invited to submit works in fiber in every shape and form, whether woven, felted, sewn or quilted.
Invited artists showed works in fiber, of every shape and form, whether woven, felted, sewn or quilted.
The Leap from ‘Mi’ to”Fa’ 2022 Flattened paper sculpture, paint, threads, crystals, chain, gold & copper leaf, 20x16x.75 inches
See the full interview HERE
DIG
Joe Caruso, Jennifer Liston Munson,
Christine Palamidessi and Marsha Odabashian
May 12 – August 11, 2024
189 Alden Street, Duxbury MA
DIG remembers, recognizes, uncovers, unearths, resurrects, and validates personal memories, past events, or current practices. Using a wide range of materials in their creative processes, four artists explore the taken-for-granted, the ordinary, and the passed-by. Each artist transforms their subject matter into something extraordinary as they remind us of what makes us human.
Christine Palamidessi’ draws inspiratiuon for her wqork from ancient figurines and vessels, Paleolithic adornments and Mediterranean myths.
Her sculpture and imprints are shaped from the material and techniques of cartapesta, a high-form of paper mache practiced in South Italy, where Roman, Byzantine and Greek cultures overlap, and where she spends her summers.
Unlike archaeologists who work from the outside-in, excavating layers to uncover artifacts, Christine works from the inside-out. She layers and stacks paper soaked in hardening agents to build forms such as classically-infused masks, breast-plates, or life-sized figures.
She states..."To nurture my creative practice, I track down things. For instance, one summer I searched for frescos in recently discovered underground chapels and hideaways; last winter I scooted around Rome looking for remnants of Vestal Virgins. The remains I find embody what was once created to provide decorative, religious, or sacred functions. I absorb the artifact’s sublime essence by touch, experience and context. The markings and forms that I then build allude not only to the storied landscape of history but also to whom we have always been.
The Wedding Veil 2022 Flattened paper sculpture, fabric, pearl beads, lace, silver paint, 24x20x2 inches
Saturday + Sunday, May 4-5, 2024, from 12-6 pm
This year the art-loving public is invited to walk through Palamidessi Studio’s “Cucuteni” door and walk out with 5-foot tall posters she made especially for this community event.
Christine Palamidessi’s 6 Vernon Street Studio will be open Saturday + Sunday, May 4-5, 2024, from 12-6 pm & her “The Wedding Veil” Vestal Plate (24 x 20 x 2 inches) is on view at the Somerville Museum, Somerville Museum 1 Westwood Road.
Christine Palamidessi: Spirit Vessel
Boston Sculptors Gallery
486 Harrison Avenue, Boston, MA
April 4 – May 5, 2024
Christine Palamidessi’s exhibition Spirit Vessel features archetypal figurative forms that have persisted over time in cultures all over the world. Palamidessi builds these iconic shapes using multiple layers of hardened Lecce paper, a traditional technique she learned in Italy from master mask makers and cartapesta artisans. The figures will resonate with the viewer as remnants of our common history revisited through the eyes of this prolific Boston artist.
Strongly influenced by archeological finds housed in museums and private collections, as well as in caves, Palamidessi’s sculpture is also informed by her work as a yoga teacher and writer. Yoga references allude to alignment, chakras, and the notion of the soul pressing out onto the inside layer of our skin. Viewers can actually look inside many of the hollow pieces, sparking an appreciation for the sacred vessels that contains our spirits. As writer and visual artist, Palamidessi’s narratives continue to celebrate art, myths, goddesses, saints and couples, warriors and virgins.
SUMMER
Christine Palamidessi
Atlantic Works Gallery
80 Border Street -First floor, East Boston
June 3-30 2023
Gallery hours, Fridays and Saturdays, 2-6PM and by appointment
Make a trip across harbor and step inside the sun-filled SUMMER world of Christine Palamidessi. The Boston artist builds upon her fascinations with one-piece swim suits, the mood of South Italy in June, and prismatic views from her Street Art collection.
SUMMER features more than 90 photos, 20 miniature paper sculptures and both humorous and political visuals from the around the world. The immersive installation winds around the new Atlantic Works Gallery, which is located on the Harbor Walk in East Boston. The gallery is open to the public on Fridays and Saturdays.
June is the artist’s favorite month. “I was born in June, school’s out, pools open, and pink and white peonies are in bloom.” She considers SUMMER her most light-hearted show of the past decade and is thrilled to share the colorful work with New Englanders and seasonal waterfront visitors.
Palamidessi has a studio in Somerville and a summer studio in Puglia. She works mainly with paper, creating monotypes and making figurative sculptures. Her work investigates the mystery and cultural citation of the female form’s movement through time. She studied the high art of paper mache-- cartapesta--with artisans in Lecce, Italy. Her work is in collections in France, Italy, Canada, the Dominican Republic and Brazil and has been exhibited in the USA and elsewhere.
LINK to Atlantic Works Gallery
Download the Press Release at the link below.
Everybody Loves Somerville Open Studios!
SOS is a two day city-wide event that gives access to the work of visual artists living and working in the city, providing everyone with the opportunity to view art made within the community; to interact with local artists; and to have access to artists’ working spaces. The goal is to broaden the public’s exposure to, and appreciation of, finished works of art as well as the art-making process.
Christine Palamidessi’s 6 Vernon Street Studio will be open Saturday + Sunday, May 6-7, 2023, from 12-6 pm & her “Internet Madonna” diptych (36 x 52 inches) on view at the Somerville Museum, Somerville Museum 1 Westwood Road.
The Bristol Art Museum’s Miniature Monumental, featuring artwork that can be held in the hand or measures less than 25 square inches in size, opens on Sat., Feb. 4 and will be on view until Fri., March 31. Patricia Miranda, a New York-based artist, curator and served as juror. Among 300 entries from a national call for art, two of Christine Palamidessi’s delightful one-piece swimsuit sculptures juried into the show. The exhibit also features Russian lacquer boxes on loan from the Museum of Russian Icons in Clinton, Massachusetts.
Bristol Art Museum
10 Wardell Street
Bristol Rhode Island
Dante Alighieri Society of Massachusetts presents
Carol Bonomo Albright and Christine Palamidessi
THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 2nd AT 7:00 PM
Come join us to meet well-known Italian-American authors Carol Bonomo
Albright and Christine Palamidessi.
Carol Bonomo Albright presents her recently published novel, "Hold Up the
Head of Holofernes", a riveting story of three women who experienced
similar horrific assaults on their bodies, and one who wants to help victims
like them through legislative means. Taking place in three different eras,
each of the women taps into her power to heal herself through her own
ingenuity and creativity. The novel discusses Resistance activity in WWII
Italy and the sexual politics in 17th-century Rome.
Christine Palamidessi, author of "Bridge of Love", invites us to glimpse
back a hundred years and peer into a time not so different than ours. Partake
in the story of the courtship of two Italian farmers living in a small Tuscan
village as you read the letters of thes 'promessi sposi'. This work collects
these young lovers' tumultuous journey to have a 'love that lasts forever'.
these young lovers' tumultuous journey to have a 'love that lasts forever'.
Both books will be available for purchase and signing at our authors' table
and guests will be able to meet the authors during our post conference
coffee and pastry reception...an literary event not to be missed !!!
Christine Palamidessi’s St. Barbara the Byzantine, 24x21 inch monotype of a 7th century Saint was selected to be a part of the winter exhibition “From the Heart” at the Mosesian Center for the Arts. The exhibition explores creativity, inclusion, and unity.
According to legend, Saint Barbara was the beautiful daughter of a Syrian pagan, who kept her guarded in tower to protect her from harm. When she professed Christianity and refused marriage, she was beheaded. Her executioner was struck by lightning and reduced to ashes while walking home. Since then, she has been venerated as a “helper” during thunderstorms and is the patron saint of artillerymen and miners.
From the Heart
January 27-March 10, 2023
Mosesian Center for the Arts
321 Arsenal Street, Watertown MA
Feast
Mosesian Arts is excited to present an exhibition that finds inspiration in food!
Depictions of food have been around since antiquity. In mosaics and frescos from Roman times, wine, fruit, bread, and grains were depicted in private homes and temples. In later centuries, paintings portraying both religious and secular themes often incorporated food and drinks. The still life genre pioneered by the Dutch and Flemish masters has endured for centuries. From the early representations of lavish food displays of grapes, lobsters, game animals, and exotic fruit to the still life paintings of Cezanne and Warhol’s Cambell soup cans, artists have been fascinated by food. It is imbued with symbolism and is often used to make commentary on economic and social issues. In earlier times, food still life paintings represented wealth, and some illustrated the simpler meals of bread and fish of the less prosperous. Throughout the centuries, religious and symbolic works of art often incorporated fruit and other foods to express ideas of knowledge and enlightenment, to represent the cycles of life, death, and notions of good and evil.
Kai & Murdock Shop Only at Whole Foods 2022 Plaster, paper, gouache on wood block print background, 12x11x2 inches, framed
AMERICAN ACADEMY IN ROME
Christine Palamidessi
Visiting Artist - December 2022
Researcher: Ancient Statuary and Vestal Virgin sites
'Bridge of Love' collects love letters between a Pa. coal town and Tuscany
Sarah Gallogly
November 15, 2022
Cousins Christine Palamidessi and Nancy Livorio discovered a side to their grandparents that they never knew when they found old love letters among family documents.
Palamidessi, an artist who lives in Boston, has collected them in a book, “Bridge of Love,” that reveals and translates letters sent in the early 1920s between Angiolino Palamidessi in Freeport, Armstrong County, and Pia Biondi, who was living in their hometown of Chiesina Uzzanese in Tuscany, Italy.
The couple met at a dance in Tuscany. Shortly after, Angiolino immigrated to the U.S. with the intention to earn enough money to buy land in Italy. They communicated through letters for a year before Pia immigrated to the U.S. herself; they wed at a church in Manhattan in December 1920. The pair traveled to Pittsburgh where many other Tuscan immigrants were working in coal mines, and settled down in a mining town called Furnace Run. In the coming years, they had three children: Orestina, Aldo, and Fosca.
“Wishing you lots of beautiful things, and holding your hand tightly, I say to myself you are my beloved,” Angiolino writes in one. “Confident of your love I send you from this faraway land a thousand affectionate kisses.”
The young lovers also write about inflation, food shortages, second waves of the Spanish flu, new immigration rules, small-town gossip and anxiety about leaving their families. The books also includes family photos, immigration documents, passports and colorful collages by Palamidessi.
The Heinz History Center houses the original letters, donated by the family. The book is formatted with the Italian and English versions of the letters side by side.
Palamidessi recently gave a talk about the book and her grandparents at an Italian American Studies Association’s conference at the University of Pittsburgh. The book is available for $25 at palamidessi.com or the Heinz History Center gift shop in the Strip District.
Review Essay: Enduring Love in the Time of Migration and Fragmentation
Bridge of Love: a Story of Young Love, Immigration, Family, Hope by Christine Palamidessi.
Letters translated by Roberto Romeo. 2020. 114pp.
Review by Carol Bonomo Albright
This is one of the most beautiful Italian-American books that I have seen. The book tells its story in 32 letters (presented in the original Italian with their translation on facing pages) by two young Italian lovers, separated by an ocean, trying to forge a union that will last. The book also has a brief, charming historical introduction as well as an afterword. With its glossy paper, striking collages by the author, its photographs of the people involved and, with their muted tones, the documents needed to emigrate, it presents a unique tale of two characters in all their complexity. Despite their limited education, Pia and Angiolino write sophisticated letters in their graceful Italian script. Their words uncover the psychological aspects of not only their own personalities but also of all the pressures connected with emigration...
Continue reading in the bibliography section HERE
More information on Bridge of Love HERE
Christine Palamidessi presents a unique show of figurative female sculpture at Galatea Fine Arts in the center of Boston’s lively SOWA district. Palamidessi works both in her studio in Somerville, MA, as well as in the environs of Lecce, in Italy’s south. It is there that she became acquainted with the tradition of cartapesta, which utilizes paper to make church statuary mimicing marble sculpture...
Continue reading through PDF link below
AFTERNOON TEA & ARTIST TALK
W/ CHRISTINE PALAMIDESSI
THURSDAY OCTOBER 6.
2:30-4PM
FIGURES - VESSELS, VESTALS, ETUDES
Galatea Fine Art 460 Harrison Ave # B6, Boston, MA 02118 (617) 542-1500
Rachel Wilcox; Exit China Town Oil on canvas, 30 x 28 inches SOLD
It’s All About Our Town”
Paintings by Jeffrey Fichera, Chris Plunkett, Rachel Wilcox and drawings by Leigh Hall
Curated by Christine Palamidessi
October 2022 through April 2023
Opening Reception Thursday, 10 November,2022. 5-7PM
“It’s All Happening in Our Town” is ClipArt Gallery’s October 2022 through April 2023 exhibition featuring paintings by Jeffrey Fichera, Chris Plunkett, Rachel Wilcox and drawings by Leigh Hall. The show is curated by Christine Palamidessi.
Visitors to the gallery will see landscapes, and not always the ones they’re used to seeing: night time gas station, bridges, folded orange umbrellas at Downtown Crossing, Fenway food vendors and a metal fence that faces towards Boston Harbor.
Each artists’ paintings bend light towards the realistic as they push sensations of movement with brush strokes, color and composition choices. The person in the window, in a corner of Jeffrey Fichera’s exquisite night cityscape, is about to move into another room.Viewer’s can hear the voices and feel the weight of the hot dogs on the shoulders of vendors in Chris Plunkett’s Fenway series. Looking at Rachel Wilcox’s “Exit Chinatown” feels like you’re speeding down the highway. Leigh Hall’s illustrations for her award-winning iron fences separate a walker from the sloshing sea.
ClipArt is located on Boston’s Seafront in East Boston at 65 Lewis Street and is open to the public every Saturday between 12 noon and 4 pm. https://www.clippershipwharf.com/art/
CHRISTINE PALAMIDESSI & LIVIA MENEGHIN
Saturday, September 17, 2022
6-8 PM EST at I AM BOOKS 124 SALEM STREET, BOSTON
Download PDF below for more information
VESSELS
Christine Palamidessi
OCTOBER 1-30, 2022
Galatea Fine Art
460B Harrison Ave., #B-6 | Boston, MA 02118
Early Press Release
Christine Palamidessi is known in the art world for a practice that spans writing,
filmmaking, sculpture, and printmaking and deals with the interweaving of memory
formation and perception of time. Her work typically shows fragmented artifacts, myths
and words that have been partially reconstructed using tactile traditional materials, such
as paper, plaster and inks. The creations are animist, imbued with spirits of the past that
persist not only in form but also in ancestral and historical memory.
Her October 2022 “Vessels” exhibit at Galatea Fine Art in Boston brings awareness to
human grace; to be a vessel of grace requires the liberation of emptiness. The “Vessels’
are indeed empty: The life-sized, acephalous paper sculptures are light enough to fly yet
are deeply rooted in the form of Egyptian, Cucuteni and Minoan statuary.
The Future Has an Ancient Face
October 1 – October 31, 2021
Galatea Fine Art
460B Harrison Ave., #B-6 | Boston, MA 02118
Statement
Press Release
In 2020, Christine Palamidessi called on the Goddess Nike, the embodiment of Victory, to make a comeback. “Who are the warriors, the champions, and what challenges are they fighting?” the goddess asked. “Pandemic. Politics. Conspiracies,” the artist answered. Nike handed Palamidessi her face, “Use it,’ she said.
The artist used Nike’s face as a container to make masks that embody a swirl of words and emotions: Wuhan, Shedding, Lockdowns, Culture Cancelling, Recounts. She painted, stitched, bejeweled, and wrote on the masks; some are frightening, and others make us smile. Each reminds us we survived something hard: we entered an interrupted world and have the opportunity to create a different, more humane way of life--a life without masks.
The collection of Goddess Nike Masks at Galatea Fine Art chronicles an auspicious era and intersects myth, art, and history. Palamidessi’s exhibitions always tell stories.
Christine Palamidessi, Nike Breastplate #5, mixed media on compressed sculpture, 20x17x4 inches, 2021.
Heroes and Villains artists explore the human tendency to relate to icons of good or evil as avatars of the Self. A collaborative exhibition with student artists from SPOKE (formerly Medicine Wheel).
Christine Palamidessi’s work investigates the female form as a cultural vessel. Here you see Nike’s beautiful breastplate, compressed by the journey she took through time to get to us in 2021
January 8 - January 31, 2021
Galatea Fine Art
460 Harrison Ave Boston, MA
Christine Palamidessi, Pandora 2021, Installation, 2021.
The mixed media installation expresses both doom and hope, as released by Pandora the first month of 2021. The particular focus is the effect the pandemic has had on children.
Saturation
Curated by Anna Salmeron
Atlantic Works Gallery
January 22- March 29, 2021
80 Border Street, East Boston, MA
Christine Palamidessi, Brewster Sunsets,
During the month of December, Galatea Fine Arts, SOWA, Boston presented a collection of smaller works, priced under $200, that were sold off the wall. Proceeds went to The Pine Street Inn of Boston, the largest homeless provider in New England.
“Somehow the world and its stories are older than we think and at the same time living right beside us in the continuous present. In the panoply of images and guides I dip into for art making, Nike called to me during the 2020 pandemic. Nike: the winged goddess of victory; Zeus’ chariot commander; the darling of marathons; an apotropaic figurehead; the distributor of trophies that recognize success; the swoosh on our shoes.” Christine Palamidessi
Galatea Fine Art, 460 Harrison Ave, Boston, Ma
September- November 2020
MARJORY KAYE, GALLERY DIRECTOR Note: The artist will accept none other than Victory. Through her practice, both artistic and yogic, through the despair of the difficult moment, she allows the breath of Challenge to enter her consciousness and rides it like a chariot to the victory over fear and personal implosion. The artist is the embodiment of her subject matter, Nike.
Christine Palamidessi, Rogers and Out, Plaster, 16 x 15 inches, 2020.
Christine Palamidessi’s plaster computer icons are explorations of time as seen through a heightened awareness of the everyday tools we use.The whiteness, the starkness and the contemporary presentation of the work expresses modern technology as ‘stone age’--perhaps with a bit of humor.
ClipArt Gallery
Clippership Commons, 65 Lewis Street, East Boston, MA
November 7, 2020 - April 24, 2021
The COVID-19 global pandemic spread through droplets. Sixty-seven international artist participated in the fashioning of ‘droplet’ books: containers of ideas, filled with annotations, drawn, or otherwise.
Christine Palamidessi contributed two artist books to "Droplets": Fucking the Devil and On the Face of It in “MMXX”. Both books are mixed media compilations of inks, watercolor, paper, thread, collage. Above a page spread from Fucking the Devil.
Hallspace
950 Dorchester Ave, Boston, MA 02125
September 5- October 10, 2020
Christine Palamidessi is showing large monotypes and sculptural talismans inspired by a treasure trove of Byzantine wall paintings that she discovered in out-of-the-way chapels, crypts and Crusader hideaways in Salento, Italy. You can see them during the month of February at Galatea Fine Art in Boston’s SOWA district.
“When I made this series, I followed the traditional image-text pattern that Byzantine painters used a thousand years ago. During that era pictures of the divine were linear and flat and stable; in candlelight they could flicker, move and fascinate.”
The art on exhibit, like Palamidessi's other work, address the conundrum we all experience--where we came from and where we are now--both personally, ancestrally and culturally.
Christine Palamidessi
Galatea Fine Art
460 Harrison Ave, SOWA, Boston, MA
February 5- March 1, 2020
Palmieri's Foundation, Chiesa di San Sebastiano, Vico dei Sotterranei, in Lecce, Italy. (Opened 7 March 2020; closed one week later due to Covid restrictions; re-opened 18 to 31 May 2020)
Palamidessi, Christine, Silenced by Capitalism, 2017 installation sculpture, 13x10x10 inches each.
Geo-Graphies is a dialogue between cultures that reflects on the contemporary world, on environmental issues, on women's rights and on the dynamics of non-acceptance towards human and cultural diversity. Geo (earth) and Grafia (writing), is the writing of the earth, and through art, a powerful tool at the service of society, the environment and life and the artists on display, express their point of view on the world and on the relationship with others. The venue, Sebastiano, embraces these new geographies, evoking its history between echoes and references, between discoveries and listening.
Two great artists of XXI Century: Louise Bourgeois and LeoNilde Carabba are represented in the exhibition. Their autobiographical stories and works are symbols benefiting the observer in a reciprocal catharsis. Louise Bourgeois left us in 2010, while LeoNilde Carabba - who lived the period of the "Women's Movement" in Italy - will attend the National Preview in Lecce.
Identity Rituals: Sama Alshaibi (Iraq), Laetitia Ambroselli (France), Bikkel Artist (The Netherlands), LeoNilde Carabba (Italy), Pey-Chwen Lin (Taiwan);İrem Çoban (Turkey), Aristi Hadjisavva (Cyprus), Beatrice Hansson (Sweden), Kohlene Hendrickson (Switzerland), Maria Luisa Imperiali (Italy), Agnieszka Laskus (Poland), Kacie Lees (Usa), Christine Palamidessi (Usa), Zhiwei Pan (China), Sandra Miranda Pattin (Columbia), Tanja Ravlic (Croatia), Margot Reding-Schroeder (Rep. Luxembourg), Sihui Shao(China), Sal Sidner (Usa), Sall Lam Toro (New Guinea).
Fragile Ecosystems: Brigitt Müller Hunziker (Switzerland), Catherine Bercusson (Uk), Daria Makarenko (Russia), Valerie Novello (Belgium), Tomomi Sato (Japan), Christel Sobke (Germany).
https://primopianospecialprojects.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/CALENDAR-2020_compressed.pdf
(More than a Dozen) Male Nude Drawings, charcoal on Lecce paper, each 7 x 9 inches, 2019.
January 2020 - Atlantic Works Gallery-80 Border Street, East Boston, MA
Six-month Inaugural Show, curated by Marjorie Kaye. Opening September 24, 2019.
ClipArt Gallery 65 Lewis Street East Boston, MA 02128
"Laced Vest" by Christine Palamidessi, 20 x 16 x 5 inches, $1000.
July 8-August 24, 2019 ( opening reception July 15, 6-9 pm)
Atlantic Works Gallery
80 Border Street
Boston MA
Installation wall. within the show..."chris. etc."
Painting "Cool Water (Quinn)," Chrissie Murphy; Wall Sculpture "Kundalini," Christine Palamidessi; "Beating Heart in a Jar," Christina Balch.
Feature: Member Spotlight from the Cambridge Art Association
In the panoply of images and guides I dip into for art making, Nike called to me during the 2020 pandemic. Nike: the winged goddess of victory; Zeus’ chariot commander; the darling of marathons; an apotropaic figurehead; the distributor of trophies that recognize success; the swoosh on our shoes.
During Covid, I have been making ‘Nike Project’ masks and breastplates, molding the faces and bodies of young, strong women in paper and gold leaf, pieces of copper and jewels. Some items are flattened or painted, some swiped with plaster, and some propped-on pedestals. I like to stitch through the dimensions of this work with sewing needles threaded with silk and linen. Sewing and stitching are both a way to heal and a way to join past and present. With my needles, I sink down into my material, myths and imprints of flesh, tugging the thread to join what we humans do during a pandemic—protect ourselves from getting sick, protect our loved ones, stand guard, persevere, do not get overwhelmed by the people we are stuck in the ‘submarine’ with, and strive to be the best person we can be while waging war on the virus, waiting for victory.
...
Continue reading online here or download the PDF below.
Christine Palamidessi and Bohuslav Petran
February 9-March 2, 2019
Atlantic Works Gallery, Boston
Artists Christine Palamidessi and Bo Petran stir-up Wabi-Sabi in Boston. The quintessential Japanese aesthetic--irregular, intimate, unpretentious, earthy, murky, simple--meets the artists own Italian and Czech sensibilities. What results is a flowing visual umami tempered with classical beauty, existential grace and two zen gardens.
Opening Night, February 9, 2019
Photo Shoot with George Bouret
February 7-27, 2019
Kathryn Schultz Gallery
25 Lowell Street
Cambridge, MA
Juried by Martha Wakefield
OTRANTO Journal, 2014 A colorful, emotional and intellectual chronicle of an artist in residency. Christine Palamidessi’s sketchbook, from one month in Puglia, Italy, brings together the fantastical, sites the mythical, and adores nature. We see drawings-- a woman fainting from dancing the tarantella, Pope Vincent deboarding in Fiumicino, artists picking black olives--interwoven into an artist’s plans for her exposition. An impressive presentation on tan-colored paper with watercolor, pencil, ink and collage.
$2000.00
This is how it starts is an exhibition of sketchbook. For some artists, the sketchbook serves as a warm-up to their studio practice; for others, it is a place to record explorations and capture new ideas. For others, there is no sketchbook but preparatory drawings or painting. And, there is the digital sketchbook – the iPad.
December 13-January 4, 2019
Fay Chandler Gallery
20 Sacramento Street
Cambridge, MA 02138
More Than One Season to Celebrate Women, 2018
monotype diptych (Sumerian goddess Ishtar with rock n’roll text)
$1000 framed
THIS IS A TWO-PART WORKSHOP; THE FIRST SESSION WILL BE HELD ON 11/7, 6:30-8:30PM; THE SECOND SESSION WILL BE HELD ON 11/14, 6:30-8:30PM
Want expert help writing your artist statement?
Attendees of this two-part workshop will end up with a succinct Artist Statement that can be used on their website, as well as for gallery, grant and residency submissions. Attendees will work collectively, receiving back-and-forth feedback from other artists in the workshop, to define and crystalize the emotion and intent of their work. There will be editing homework between sessions. You'll be doing independent work as well (with guided editing homework between sessions).
Attendees are asked to bring their laptops to the workshop. Free wifi is available.
About the instructor: Christine Palamidessi is an award-winning artist and professional writer who understands the visual-verbal conundrum artists may experience when confronting words and defining their work. She is author of two novels, a book editor and was Professor of Writing at Boston University for 13 years before resuming her career as a visual artist. In 2017, she was a Visiting Artist at both The American Academy in Rome, and at Mass MoCA.
Palamidessi, who also has a degree in filmmaking, began her writing career in New York, where she covered the emerging video and independent film scene for the Village Voice, Interview and New Woman magazines and hung out with artists such as Basquiat, Warhol and Emile de Antonio. She earned a MA at the well-known Boston University Creative Writing program where she studied with Leslie Epstein, Sue Miller and Aharon Appelfeld.
She believes the writing process is less primal that the visual art process, and because of her practice and experience in both fields, she has keen insight into how a visual artist’s mind works.
Today we’d like to introduce you to Christine Palamidessi.
Christine, please kick things off for us by telling us about yourself and your journey so far.
I don’t know if artists’ stories are unique because one thing we all have in common is knowing that we are artists by the time we are 4 or 5-years old. Considering the opportunities that come our way, our families, and where we happen to be born…. it’s a blessing to be a person who is actually not only determined but also lucky enough to follow through and realize her talent and particular gifts. How many times do we meet lawyers who say, “I really wanted to be a writer, I started a novel but haven’t finished it yet,” or hear dentists say, “All my friends said I could have been a great sculptor.”
- Boston Voyager Magazine
FEBRUARY 3- 24, 2017
AT THE KATHRYN SCHULTZ GALLERY.
On view: the installation "Science: The Light Within US." Featuring Prometheus Lights-#1, #2, #3, and #4 and Pandora Light.
This sale is particularly wonderful for me: the work goes to Dominican collector who had purchased a painting several years ago. She says, "it is an honor to have my work in her house."
Terra Madres: Lionness and Moon is a twin sculpture, that re-mythologizes both the fierceness and comfort qualities of mothers. I incorporated imagery of earth, for sure, to root the story, as well as a visual expression of volcanic explosion tempered by streams of blue water, watchful luminescence, real gold (to emphasize value--both familial and commercial) nurturance, and stability. In addition, it so often feels as if we each have more than two mothers: the unconditionally accepting one and the mother that pushes us forward into the world and away from home. I created these twins, stamped from the same mold of love, to bring forward the story of motherly, earth-bound power.
So happy it has found a home with a savvy woman who is both a lion and moon mother.
Vestal Virgin Vest #1
2017
In this issue, you’ll find work where writing and bodies intersect, as well as work that asks questions about what it means to be a/some/any body in an increasingly dematerialized world. Speaking on behalf of everyone at Interim, I’m happy to present fierce and fearless work from writers and artists from all over the world. I believe all of the work gathered in this issue answer questions regarding Being by challenging and expanding how the body is understood by those alive in this era. We hope you enjoy this issue as much as we do.
Autumn Widdoes, Curator INTERIM 35.2
Photo info: Collapsed sculpture, stitched with silk and linen, inlaid with gold and copper
2018
Mixed Media- paper, text, woodblock print, cotton thread, wire, tubing, pins, pastel & LEDs
(price on request)
Christine Palamidessi
Atlantic Works Gallery
East Boston, MA
May 1- 28, 2018
A dilemma for an artist is how to make art out of information that most of us would rather ignore. This May, at Atlantic Works Gallery, leading Boston Artists focus on the political character and power of art. Their honest, intimate and visceral work is both personal and historical, with surprising juxtapositioning of images, such as the high color guillotine next to a headless nude besieged by digital gadgets. The collection reveals the mechanisms of power in all its manifestations with the intent to impact the viewer into being an active participant in the information circuit.
Gael Kills Sisera (detail), 2018, Stitched monoprint
Christine Palamidessi
Woman Made Gallery
Christine Palamidessi
Chandler Gallery
Personal Geographies
Small Works Salon 2018
Juror: Heidi Whitman
Dates: March 26-April 20, 2018 Reception: Thursday, April 5 6:00 pm-8:00 pm
“Shall I Freeze My Eggs?” is a visual commentary on the precipitous decline in American fertility, a clock, as well as a game-board from which can hatch the sea and the sky, light and darkness, gravitational singularity and the Big Bang. The question begged is: can all things be born by science and without the male and female taking time to pair up? A pinned butterfly without wings.
Yoga, Buddha, Jesus, 2018, mixed media installation
Christine Palamidessi, Invited Artist
Atlantic Works Gallery
East Boston, MA
March 3, 2018 through March 30, 2018
Yoga, Buddha, Jesus collapses the space between heaven and earth where we find the rush of God, of the divine, of our center line. I experience this bliss in my body--in the practice of yoga, in prayer and during quiet contemplation. The pineapple, both a symbol that welcomes and joins people, begins as hundreds of flowers that join together to make fruit.
Female Suicide Vests, 2017, Monoprint with pastel, drawing & color pencil
Christine Palamidessi
Atlantic Works Gallery
East Boston, MA
January 12 – 27, 2018
Historical perspective of both ancient and modern women who have strapped on explosive vests, either by coercion or choice, and who were either honored or forgotten by their causes.
Made at Mass MoCa, 2017 Visiting Artist residency.
Exhibition in November 2017 at Atlantic Works Gallery, Boston. Installation of castings of actual cannonballs used by the Ottomans during the 1480 seige of Italy.
"Silent. Silence. Silenced", at Atlantic Works Gallery, pits the duality of quietude vs. inquietude within a provocative month-long show that is likely to stir up some controversy.
Exploring the particulars of silence, Boston artists Charlene Liska and Christine Palamidessi slide between sound made visible and the unquiet silence of nature; between the shrouding of a spokesperson and the aftershock of decapitated explosives. Each artist takes a different approach while working together to consider both the existential character of silence as well as the modes-of-being that cause us to remain or appreciate the silent, whether we have been made speechless by regime or silenced by awe.
- Atlantic Works Gallery
Christine Palamidessi’s Science: The Light Within Us makes up one-third of the Inside Out exhibition and is an installation of five 3-D lights made from casts of sidewalks around Harvard University Science Center. It draws its inspiration from the “Glamour, light emissions, and the pondering steps of scientists” who have walked over the cracked sidewalks around Harvard’s Science Center building at the end of Oxford Street. Palamidessi describes herself as a sculptor who works with the exchange of energy between materials. “Many famous scientists walked on these sidewalks and my intention was to capture and share their march.” She adds, “Thus the Light within us all–and the light inside the sculptures,” referencing the Greek myth of Prometheus, who gave humans the gift of science by bringing fire down from Olympus.
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Yogi Stupa / A Crack In The Mirror
Works by Christine Palamidessi and Walter Kopec
Atlantic Works Gallery
March 3-26, 2016
Christine Palamidessiʼs Yogi Stupa recreates the inside of a Buddhist shrine: rows and rows of repeated images; in this case, plaster simulacrums of Yoga teacher chests and torsos. The installation is inspired by the artistʼs yoga practice and her visit to The Great Stupa in Clement Town, India, that was constructed by Tibetan monks as a place for people to go to pray for world peace.
- Atlantic Works Gallery