Small Works To Showcase

59 Cambridge Artists for Maud Morgan Center

by Susie Davidson

CORRESPONDENT

Artistic talent in any given medium is hardly in short order within the confines of this city. A Sacramento Street Gallery exhibit opening Friday and running through Dec. 20 will showcase a very broad panorama of local talent in a fundraiser for the Maud Morgan Center.

The second annual “Small Works” show will feature the works of a full 59 Cambridge artists. Obviously, for such a representation, the works must be unencumbering; they all thus measure approximately 12 inches by 12 inches, and will cost $150 to $1500.

Half of the proceeds from sales will benefit the Maud Morgan Center; the other half will go to the artists. The Center, which will house programs and workspace in painting, drawing, printing, sculpture and ceramics, will be built in a 19^th century carriage house behind the Agassiz Neighborhood Council. When the Center is finished (groundbreaking is projected for 2003), children will obtain high-quality hands-on experience in the visual arts, while artists can meet, experiment, exhibit, and teach as they acquire space where they can work collaboratively as well as on large projects.

Artists featured in the Small Works exhibit, which will help to raise the $1,400,000 needed to build the Center, will include painters Maggi Brown, Paul Shakespear, Michael Mazur, Wendy Prellwitz, Joseph Barbieri, John Devaney, and Tabitha Vevers. Sculptors and artists in three-dimensional formats are Mags Harries, Brenda Star, Nancy Webb, Paul Grey, Phyllis Ewen and Peter Haines. Artist Peik Larsen will show prints. Photography by Dan Ranalli and John Lueders-Booth will be available as well as ceramic work by Marcia Halperin and Judy Motzkin. Andy Magdanz, Susan Shapiro, Linda Lichtman and Lillian Hsu Flanders will contribute their objects of sheer beauty, including glass pieces, Mitch Ryerson will present two candlestick holders from found objects, and a necklace of hand blown glass beads by Thalia Tringo will also be included.

Collage artist Jeannie Motherwell will be represented at the show for the second year. The Senior Program Assistant for artist Daniel Ranalli at Boston University's Arts Administration Graduate Program, she studied art at Bard College and the Art Student's League in New York, and is represented at the Lyman-Eyer Gallery in Provincetown. She praised the gallery, which she said has always supported local artists.

“My involvement with Noca (North Cambridge Arts) Open Studios,” she said, “spearheaded my connection to the Cambridge art community, following my move from the New York area in 1998. The Sacramento Street Gallery seconded my emotion by offering Noca a show last Spring, giving us another opportunity to share our work with the neighborhood.”

The Agassiz Neighborhood Council is a private, non-profit organization which has, for 30 years, helped to promote the health, safety and welfare of Cambridge residents through educational and cultural programs for almost thirty years.

“I feel honored to be included again this year,” said Motherwell, “in a show exhibiting such a marvelous array of accomplished artists.”

The Sacramento Street Gallery is located at 20 Sacramento St., just north of Harvard Square off Mass. Ave., and is open Monday through Friday from 9 a.m.–5 p.m. Admission is free; all contributions to the building fund of the Morgan Center are tax deductible. For more information, call 617-349-6287.