{"id":24055,"date":"2023-11-03T12:37:27","date_gmt":"2023-11-03T16:37:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/?p=24055"},"modified":"2023-11-03T14:06:42","modified_gmt":"2023-11-03T18:06:42","slug":"blue","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/2023\/11\/03\/blue\/","title":{"rendered":"Martha Friend Brings ‘Blue’ To Somerville Museum"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

\u201cBlue\u201d at the Somerville Museum is a dream pairing of curator and theme. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The group exhibition\u2014on view from Sept. 21 to Dec. 2, 2023\u2014is organized by found object and assemblage artist Martha Friend, who is best known for transforming her home into the landmark<\/a> art house on the corner of Highland Avenue and Sycamore Street in Somerville. You can recognize it by the tiny outdoor gallery on the right front corner of the lawn, the silver horses on the front porch roof, and the blue and green glass sculptures that surround the place. Inside, she\u2019s carefully decorated rooms with art and collections of globes, driftwood, ceramics, toys and other things that arrive with past lives. In the cellar and garage, she\u2019s made haunting installations of dolls.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Friend has a great eye for the weird and wonderful\u2014which she then often arranges by color. You can see this outside her home in how she gangs up lots of blue glass and green glass together creating dazzling color harmonies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

These skills make the selections of furniture, clothing, jewelry, paintings, photos, and sculptures, mostly by local artists, in \u201cBlue\u201d so enchanting. Across an opening wall of the exhibition is a quote attributed to the artist Henri Mattis: \u201cA certain blue enters your soul.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Martha
Martha Friend at “Blue” at the Somerville Museum, 2023. (\u00a9Greg Cook photo)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Friend identifies blue as the color of the night sky, of the sea and the “Blue Planet” Earth, the color of calm and tranquility. She writes: \u201dI have loved the color blue my whole life. Most of my wardrobe is blue and turquoise, and when my daughters wear blue their eyes sparkle like marbles. I think blue might just be everyone’s favorite color.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Participating artists include Alexandra Rozenman, Anne Randolph, Bekka Teerlink, Bess Paupeck, Daniel D. Coughlin, Dave Palmquist, Deb Peeples, Emily Falcigno, Gary Duehr, Gina Halstead, Heather Balchunes, Hilary Scott, Iku Oseki, Johanna Schulman, JT (John) Bullitt, Julie Friend-Gray, Karen Molloy, Kerri Kemperman, Laidy Saenz, Laurinda Bedingfield, Marcella Stasa, Martha Friend, Matt Carrano, Michael Robbins, Nathaniel Devarie, Pauline Lim, Rachel Mello, Resa Blatman, Richard Curran, Robin Hazard Ray, Ron Kopreski, Ruth Faris, Sarah Sutro, Sholeh Regna, Soozie (Suzanne) Lubeck, Susan Strauss, Wilhelm Neusser, and Zainab Sumu.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n\n\n\n

If this is the kind of coverage of arts, cultures and activisms you appreciate, please support Wonderland by contributing to Wonderland on Patreon<\/a>. And sign up for our free, occasional newsletter<\/a> so that you don’t miss any of our reporting. (All content \u00a9Greg Cook 2022 or the respective creators.)<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\""Blue"
“Blue” at the Somerville Museum, 2023. (\u00a9Greg Cook photo)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
\""Blue"
“Blue” at the Somerville Museum, 2023. (\u00a9Greg Cook photo)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
\""Blue"
“Blue” at the Somerville Museum, 2023. (\u00a9Greg Cook photo)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
\"Martha
Martha Friend, “Found Glass Sculpture,” 2023, mixed glass media and silicone.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
\""Blue"
“Blue” at the Somerville Museum, with (at left) Johanna Schulman, “Perhaps,” 2023, multimedia collage. (\u00a9Greg Cook photo)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
\""Blue"
“Blue” at the Somerville Museum, 2023. (\u00a9Greg Cook photo)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
\"Pauline
Pauline Lim “Last Night I Went to Dries’ House,” 2019, oil on wood<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
\""Blue"
“Blue” at the Somerville Museum, 2023. (\u00a9Greg Cook photo)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
\"Ruth
Ruth Faris, “2 Blue Cages,” 2023, painted cages with beaded interior. <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
\"Richard
Richard Curran, “Blue Cosmo,” 2023, inkjet print on canvas.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
\""Blue"
“Blue” at the Somerville Museum, 2023. (\u00a9Greg Cook photo)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
\"Liz
Liz Rawls “Marvelous Martha’s House,” 2023, cotton thread and mixed media.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
\""Blue"
“Blue” at the Somerville Museum, with (on floor) Gwen Friend, “Mountains,” 2015, ceramics.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
\""Blue"
“Blue” at the Somerville Museum, 2023. (\u00a9Greg Cook photo)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
\""Blue"
“Blue” at the Somerville Museum, 2023. (\u00a9Greg Cook photo)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
\""Blue"
“Blue” at the Somerville Museum, 2023. (\u00a9Greg Cook photo)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cBlue\u201d at the Somerville Museum is a dream pairing of curator and theme.  The group exhibition\u2014on view from Sept. 21 to Dec. 2, 2023\u2014is organized by found object and assemblage artist Martha Friend, who is best known for transforming her home into the landmark art house on the corner of Highland Avenue and Sycamore Street […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":24023,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[100],"tags":[1101,999],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24055"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=24055"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24055\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":24112,"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24055\/revisions\/24112"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/24023"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=24055"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=24055"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=24055"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}