MUSA Collective—Defrost the Cake: MUSA's One Year Anniversary: January 05-28, 2018
New Exhibition: Defrost the Cake--MUSA Collective's One Year Anniversary Celebration!
Opening Reception Friday January 12, 2018 6-9 PM
The MUSA Collective
https://www.musacollectiveboston.com/
MUSA is an artist owned and operated collective in Allston, MA whose mission is to create a dialogue between artists and the Boston arts community. Membership includes Nina Stolz Bellucci, Ryan Boutin, Niels Burger, Erik Grau, Erika b Hess, Marta Kaemmer, Kathleen Kennedy, Alla Lazebnik, Elizabeth Mooney, Anya Smolnikova, Noah Sussman, Julia von Metzsch, and Crislin Waldman. Since MUSA's inception in January of 2017, monthly exhibitions, artist talks, and critiques have occurred in their gallery space as a way to promote the paintings, prints, and sculptures of its members.
Meet the Artists
Nina Bellucci
Catching Light
Nina Bellucci (b. 1983) creates dynamic paintings that are based on original, multimedia collages. She is inspired by light, the unique shapes and shadows it creates, and the inherent spirituality of the natural world. Nina graduated from Boston University with an MFA in Painting in 2009. She has received many nominations and awards, including a juror award at Newton Open Studios and most recently, a two-month residency at Room83Spring gallery in Watertown, MA. Nina has a studio at Waltham Mills Artists’ Association and lives in Newton, MA with her husband and two children.
http://ninastolzbellucci.com/home.html
Erika b Hess
Edge of the World
Erika b Hess is a painter based in Boston recognized for her use and interest in color. Hess’s work has been exhibited nationally including Prince Street Gallery in NYC, Last Projects in Los Angles, CA, and Boston Center for the Arts in Boston, MA. In 2017, she had two solo exhibitions, “The Line Between the Past and the Present at Musa Collective, Allston MA and “Viewing Light” at Newton Free Library, Newton, MA. Her work has been featured in various publications including, Poets and Artists, Fresh Paint, Charles River Journal and Post Industrial Complex, a book released by the Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit. Her work was selected by John Seed to be featured in, “Fifty Memorable Artists 2015”. She has served on panels such as Cleveland Institute of Art’s, “Feminism Now: Exposing the Truth”, was a visiting juror for Dayton Visual Art Center’s 2016-2018 biennial, and is a recurring juror for the Walker Art MFA Prize at Boston University. Hess received her MFA from Boston University.
Alla Lazebnik
Blue Flag
Alla is a figurative painter and printmaker born in Nizhniy Novgorod, Russia and currently based out of the Boston, Massachusetts area. Her works are both imaginative and expressive, using imagery from Russian folklore and storylines that have intertwined with her life. Experimentation using techniques achieved with mechanical woodcut tools has been her primary medium. Alla’s work investigates her history as well as an interpretation of the world today. Alla co-curated Fables at The Record Company in 2015 and had a solo show in 2014 at Bentley University’s McGladrey Art Gallery. She has taken part in juried exhibitions throughout the states of FL, MA, NH, NY, OR, TX, and VT, including recently at the Off the Wall show in the Danforth Museum. She was awarded Gallery Representation at Gallery 333 in North Falmouth, MA from 2009-2013, and at the Sarah Jessica Fine Arts Gallery in Provincetown, MA since 2014. Alla currently works as an Adjunct Art Professor at Lasell College. She published a collaborative set of imagery/poems with the poet Katherine Hollander called The Book of Ikons in the Common, a literary magazine (Amherst College). Alla received an MFA in Painting from Boston University and a BFA in Painting from the University of Massachusetts Amherst.
Noah Sussman
A Good Place to Park
Noah Sussman is a painter based in Somerville, MA. He grew up in Cambridge, MA and received his MFA in Painting from Boston University.
http://noahsussman.weebly.com/
Niels Burger
Boxing Day
Niels Burger is an artist based in Arlington, Massachusetts. Niels attended the Brandeis Post- Baccalaureate Studio Art program and then received his Masters in Fine Art from Boston University. Niels art has been shown in galleries throughout New England including Nahcotta Gallery, Vessels Gallery, the Concord Art Association, Hall Space Gallery and Musa Collective Gallery. Niels has taught art at Leslie University, University of Massachusetts, Dartmouth, the University of New Hampshire and the New England School of Art at Suffolk University.
Marta Kaemmer
Crown
Marta Kaemmer was born in Zimbabwe and she spent her teenage and college years in the Midwest before moving to Austria. She had numerous exhibitions in Austria before returning to the United States to earn a Masters of Fine Arts degree from Boston University in 2011. Trained as a painter, her interest in materials keeps her moving between media and has included printmaking, sculpture and textiles in her work. She currently has a studio in Waltham Mills in Waltham, MA.
Elizabeth Mooney
Strider
Elizabeth Mooney is a visual artist that lives and works in Boston, Massachusetts. She received her MFA in 2007 from California College of the Arts in San Francisco. Elizabeth studied as an undergraduate at the Lorenzo De Medici School in Florence, Italy and received her BFA from Lesley University College of Art and Design (formerly AIB). Elizabeth was the recipient of a 2009-2010 Visual Artist Fellowship at the Provincetown Fine Arts Work Center, an Artist’s Grant from the Greater Pittsburgh Arts Council, and a grant from the Berkshire Taconic Community Foundation. Elizabeth has taught at Carnegie Mellon University, RISD, Lesley University, Brandeis University, and currently at Massachusetts College of Art. Exhibitions include The Pittsburgh Biennial in Pittsburgh PA, SiteLines at Wheaton College in Norton MA, Supra Natural at the KALA Institute for the Arts in Berkeley CA, 2014 Artist in Residence Exhibition at Lesley University in Boston, MA and Off the Wall/Contemporary Fresco at the Hudson Gallery in Chelsea, NY. Elizabeth’s solo exhibition In Due Time will be in February 2018 at MUSA Gallery in Allston, MA.
Julia von Metzsch
Winter Island
Julia von Metzsch Ramos is a painter from Boston Massachusetts. Ramos uses transparent layers of paint to achieve depth and illusion. This disjunction between the layers of paint application creates a tension particularly well suited to the ever-changing New England weather. Ramos received her BA in 2007 and Masters in 2010 in Fine Arts from Boston University, and then returned to Boston University as a MFA Painting Fellow at the School of Visual Arts. Ramos is in the collection of Danforth Art and the Cape Anne Museum. While she currently lives and works in Cambridge, she paints plein air oceanscapes on Cape Anne. Her work can be seen at Mercury Gallery in Rockport, MA and at Gallery Naga in Boston, MA. Ramos works at Massachusetts College of Fine Arts as adjunct faculty and she is a founder and member of the Musa Collective.
Erik Grau
Promise
Erik Grau was born and raised in Milwaukee, Wisconsin and studied sculpture at Carroll University before moving to Boston, Massachusetts to pursue an MFA in sculpture. His early work focused on political ideas surrounding factory farming, while more recent work focuses on depictions of cats, crystals, and knick-knacks in his immediate home environment. In addition to visual art, Erik studied Applied Behavior Analysis and Education at the University of Massachusetts Lowell and began working full time as a Board Certified Behavior Analyst and Boston Public Schools Kindergarten inclusion teacher. Erik is a member of Boston’s Musa Collective, an artist owned and operated gallery space in Brighton. He has exhibited work in the Midwest and the East coast and has work in the Wisconsin Collection. Most recently Erik was the artist in residence at Room83Spring in Watertown, MA. Erik is the current President of the Piano Craft Gallery.
Kathleen Kennedy
The Sweetest Catch
Kathleen Kennedy is a Boston based painter from Dade City, Florida. She earned her Bachelors of Fine Arts from Guilford College in 2010 and her Masters of Fine Arts from Boston University in 2013.
Anya Smolnikova
Untitled (Part of Pretty Girls Crying Series)
Anya Smolnikova was born in Belarus in 1987. In 1999, she immigrated to Marblehead, Massachusetts with her family, where she attended public school and became a committed student at the Acorn School of Art pre-college program. Anya received a full merit scholarship to Boston University where she completed a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in 2009, majoring in Painting and Sculpture, and minoring in Printmaking and Art History. Since her graduation, Anya has been a resident at Vermont Studio Center twice, traveled to over ten countries, participated in eighteen exhibitions, three of which were solo shows. Anya lives and works in Boston, where she teaches art at the Museum of Fine Arts, and the Cambridge and Boston centers for adult education. Anya has her studio at Dorchester Art Project, where she heads the curatorial program and is currently assisting in a major transition. Anya is currently in the process of applying for an MFA in Painting.
https://asmolnikova.wordpress.com/
Crislin Waldman
Liminal Space
Crislin lives in Newton, Massachusetts with her family. She has always had an interest in creating, and has explored a wide range of art-making processes, which include painting, film, drawing, and print-making. Crislin focused her drawing and painting skills while attending the School of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston before completing her MFA in painting at Boston University. She has had a rich background in art instruction both at Boston University and the School of the Museum of Fine Arts and brings her knowledge of art-making, materials, and processes to her own visual artwork.
https://www.crislinwaldman.com/
Ryan Boutin
Safety Glass
I am currently a painting professor at Massasoit Community College in Brockton and hold a Master of Fine Arts degree from Boston University (2011). I was born here in Boston but grew up further south on our South Coast where I now maintain a studio in Fall River, a perfect base for both drawing and for fishing. I range all along the coast between New Haven to Brunswick Maine but mainly operate between Boston and Providence for my landscape and fishing work. These activities are done best when done together. As a printmaker, I was awarded the prestigious Blanche E. Colman award in 2016 and have recently closed my first print solo exhibition, Journey Home, with MUSA Collective in Boston, Massachusetts. My most recent body of work deals directly with the landscape using found materials in process-based printmaking taken from the drawing sites of my intaglio work.
http://www.krop.com/ryanboutin/
About the Piano Craft Gallery
The Piano Craft Gallery, dedicated to offering thought-provoking and engaging exhibitions, is a historic Boston landmark located at 793 Tremont Street, Boston, Massachusetts. For more information, visit www.pianocraftgallery.com or www.facebook.com/gallerypf.
