Northshore magazine showcases the best that the North Shore of Boston, MA has to offer.
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110 museum for more than three decades. "It's great to grow this part of our collection." e annual show helps the museum acquire new works, giving contemporary women artists their proper place in Cape Ann's extraordi- nary artistic history. Obvious heavy hitters such as Fitz Henry Lane, master interpreter of Gloucester's waterfront, made up a 2009 survey show, forcing the museum to examine who it had left out: the women artists of Cape Ann. "I'm part of the women's lib movement of the 1970s," says Oaks. "I love spotlighting these women." In her experience, there is definitely a natu- ral camaraderie among women who are in the serious and solitary business of making art, says Juni Van Dyke, whose two lovely abstract works Singing Beach and On Coolidge Point are in the show. "My heart took flight when I learned that two of my artworks would belong to the Cape Ann Museum," she says. "It is won- derful to have work in this particular exhibit because I am familiar with the artists. Each one of us has experienced the pain of rejec- tion. It just comes with the territory; and then later, whenever an inclusion comes around, it is a very bonding experience." e wall text for this one-room show tells us: "While women have worked as artists in this region for as long as men and have exhib- ited their artwork alongside that of their male counterparts for over 100 years, many of Cape Ann's most talented women artists remain in the shadows." One of these ladies is Judith Goetemann, whose artist husband often took the spot- light in Rocky Neck before his 2016 passing. Her batik-on-cloth pieces transport us into a meditative place, all dreamy butterflies and marshland. e largest pieces in the exhibi- tion, by Ruth Mordecai of Rocky Neck, are ab- stract collages purchased with the help of the New York–based Kanter Kallman Foundation. Many in the exhibition teach at area schools and have brought their fresh skills to recent workshops at the museum, helping shape new generations of aspiring artists. "ey're like best friends now," says Oaks. "ey're willing to speak to docents, to do programming." While Pat Lowery Collins's pastels Of Time and Tides I and II offer the underside of slick boulders and water, hinting at familiar coves, inlets, and beaches, Gabrielle Barzaghi's pastels offer an inland experience with a glimpse of the view from her Dogtown studio, revealing a mythical primordial forest. Anna Comolli's Winter View from Gloucester Mill offers up a gritty view of the train tracks that has some locals pointing to the familiar scene as if it were a snapshot of their daily lives. Joy Halsted's acrylic portraits Cold Water #1 and #2 provide a familiar sensory experience of bathing in the waters off of Cape Ann, with a couple of grimacing ladies whose summer dip proves painful. "is is the beauty of the art colony here," says Oaks. "We have everything...from the absurd to the abstract." All of these works accomplish the mis- sion of the Cape Ann Museum: to focus on the collective experience of living in Cape Ann, with its abundant light and beauty, while featuring prominent artists who lived in or were inspired by the area. Works in the permanent exhibition galleries reflect the fishing and maritime industries, the gran- ite quarrying industry, and the Folly Cove Designers. is local collective of 45 (mostly) women worked away in home studios during the '40s, '50s, and '60s using linoleum blocks to print on fabric, creating pieces for both fine department stores and museum exhibi- tions. Each spring and fall, art lovers can still search out hidden studios during the oldest open studio event in the country. On June 2 and 3, the Cape Ann Artisans Studio Tour will celebrate 35 years. Not to be missed are the historic paint- ings by women artists, which are interspersed throughout the collection and just across the hallway from the special exhibitions gallery. Truly, women artists were always here. Emma