As the largest habitat on our planet, the Earth’s oceans are vast ecosystems of which only a small fraction has been explored. Today, our oceans are greatly endangered by human activity, and recent studies have found that approximately 8 million metric tons of plastic enter the ocean on an annual basis. As this crisis escalates, climate change art bridges the scientific and visual, making hard data more accessible through an emotional response to art. By helping us process this information, climate change art seeks to affect meaningful change between humans and their environment.

Making Waves presents the work of three women artists, Resa Blatman, Joan Hall, and Karen Lee Sobol, who each use their art to address humankind’s relationship to the ocean. Through different media, including painting, printmaking, and mixed media installation, the artists advocate for greater awareness of the climate crisis.

Resa Blatman’s paintings and prints draw upon her innate draftsmanship to craft visions of a future climate dystopia. Her work predicts landscapes and seascapes warped by rising tides, envisioning displaced species within a world in flux. Blatman contrasts her skillfully rendered flora and fauna with dark, turbulent backgrounds, heightening the creeping feeling of unease within her work. While looking towards a chaotic future, Blatman also looks to the past, peppering her work with art historical references. Paintings like Toxic Bloom 2 and Refugees reference Martin Johnson Heade’s naturalist landscapes but diverge with frenzied colors and frantic calls to action. Blatman visually articulates the messages of scientific data on climate change - in her paintings, prints, and drawings, human action and inaction have wrought catastrophic natural consequences. The artist gives us hope, however, through the various animals that persist within her tumultuous landscapes - though the conspicuous absence of human figures is telling. Blatman presents an alluringly bleak world in the hope that we may avoid this fate. Her lushly constructed artwork is a warning against this particular glimpse of our possible future.

An avid sailor, Joan Hall works tirelessly to promote marine advocacy through her art. From her home and studio in Jamestown, Rhode Island, Hall sees the effects of climate change firsthand. Non-native, invasive algae species and plastic pollution found in the waters of Narragansett Bay feature prominently in her large-scale mixed media installations. Hall focuses on the use of handmade paper to shape the undulating wave-like forms of her sculptural pieces. Works like The New Normal also incorporate various printmaking techniques, using plastics and assorted trash found on local beaches to create collagraphic plates. The resultant prints are a beautiful but brutal reminder of humankind’s role in widespread oceanic pollution. In other works, such as Beneath the Tropic Sea, Hall directly infuses detritus into the artwork – a visual representation of how pervasive the plastic problem truly is. Ultimately, Hall’s goal is to initiate a conversation about the deterioration of our greatest resource – water. The intensive process and sheer scale of Hall’s work commands attention, confronting the audience with beauty that conceals ecological trouble.

In the face of the devastating effects of climate change, Karen Lee Sobol is determined to remain an optimist. Her paintings reflect a positivity born from deep admiration for the natural world, and a belief in our role as both benefactors and stewards of the environment. Focusing on nature’s inherent beauty, Sobol’s work is resplendent with splashy colors and bold strokes, hiding human and animal figures within her playful lines. Alongside her message of hope is the ominous presence of escalating environmental degradation; the juxtaposition is meant to invoke a protective instinct, to call the audience to action. Sobol’s Goddess series of mixed media paintings on large canvases viscerally depicts powerful yet threatened goddesses of the Earth and sea. Her works expound the need for environmental vigilance with a visually arresting heartfelt plea from Mother Nature herself.

With the threat of pollution and warming temperatures, our ocean levels are rising, coral reefs are dying, and invasive algae species are spreading worldwide. Blatman, Hall, and Sobol’s response is to create art that is beautifully alarming and cautionary, yet hopeful that their messages can engender ideas for change. Making Waves explores the stark realities of climate change through the work of these three artists, and their determination to confront our manmade climate crisis head-on.

On view in Childs Gallery’s Print Department from March 5 to April 26, Setting Sail: Works on Paper features a diverse selection of prints, drawings, and watercolors depicting the sea. Artists have long been captivated by the ocean, fascinated by the varied effects of wind and weather, from stormy seas to tranquil waters. Drawn from Childs Gallery’s extensive collection of works on paper, Setting Sail reflects the broad range of artistic interpretations of this dynamic subject over the course of the 20^th century.

Artwork on view includes atmospheric watercolors by Lynn Beach Painter William Partridge Burpee, delightful ink wash drawings of the Maine coast by Bernard Brussel-Smith, and Leo Meissner’s turbulent wood engravings of crashing waves. The exhibition encompasses a variety of artistic styles, from the Impressionist seascapes of Boston Brahmin watercolorist Gertrude Beals Bourne, to Ted Davis’s abstracted renderings of angular sailboats. Setting Sail offers something for everyone with an exciting array of modern and traditional seascapes.

Let your imagination take flight in our online-exclusive exhibition, Avian Art! Birds of paradise and prey are on view in paintings, works on paper, and sculpture in this exhibition. As common and highly visible animals, birds have long been a fascination of humans. Avian Art explores the artistic depiction of birds as creatures important to both humankind and the natural world.

Though popularized by artists like Rembrandt, etching had widely fallen out of favor by the early 19^th century, being seen as a reproductive process rather than fine art. This attitude began to change, however, in the mid-1800s when artists reexamined the technique and it was once again promoted as an original art medium. In his writings, surgeon, etcher, and author, Sir Francis Seymour Haden extolled the creative qualities of etching as an immediate response to nature. Haden’s brother-in-law, James Abbott McNeill Whistler, became a leading figure of the Etching Revival, and his mastery of the medium inspired other artists to explore the technique in the late 19^th century.

Whistler is renown as one of the great virtuosos of etching, known for his experimentation in paper, ink, and composition. As an internationally recognized artist, his work was well positioned to influence countless others who admired his handling of atmosphere, line, and tone. This exhibition presents prints by Whistler and fellow artists who explored etching as an independent mode of expression, creating striking compositions that captured the attention of both collectors and the broader public. Images of London and Venice, favorites of Whistler, feature prominently, alongside the intricate facades and twisting streets of other cities, an indication of the Revival’s spread across Europe and America. Just as Whistler preferred hidden neighborhoods and ramshackle buildings to more fashionable areas, his admirers followed suit with prints of lesser known, but no-less-interesting scenes. Such views, intimate and eye-catching, were faithfully captured through the etched line.

Including works by Otto Bacher, Ernest Roth, Joseph Pennell, James McBey, David Young Cameron, Sir Francis Seymour Haden, Muirhead Bone, and John Marin, Etching Revival: Whistler and His Circle explores this renewed interest in etching and the enthusiasm with which artists embraced it.

Hannah Barrett: Transitions is a retrospective mélange of works from the artist’s various series – from Secret Society to Monsters – that traces Barrett’s development as she progresses from collage to imagination as the source of her portraiture.

Barrett has previously described her paintings as “invented portraits based on collage: copies of photos or in some cases, copies of paintings are cut apart and reassembled into figures of ambiguous gender. Fusing the features of both sexes creates a range of androgynous characters that may be straight, queer, hermaphroditic or just cross-dressing.” Her aim is to create portraiture that deviates from the conventional male or female, and to explore the resulting pictorial and conceptual possibilities in a fun and unexpected way.

In her latest series Monsters, Barrett has created creatures that are fully of her own imagination, with no singular reference to reality. In this way her Monsters are entirely fictional, and the viewer can project their own character onto the portraits.

The progression of Barrett’s artwork reflects how gender expectations have changed since she began painting her first series, Secret Society, in 2006. In her early portraiture, Barrett felt an urgency to make gender fluidity more visible. Creating portraits from collaged elements of photographs and paintings thus tied her ambiguous characters to reality, making them more of-this-world than an entirely imaginary figure.

Barrett’s transition in source material has happened alongside a cultural shift in gender perception. A broader awareness of gender as a construct and an expansion of vocabulary for gender have thus been a driving force in her new work. The visibility of trans culture and other LGBTQ identities prompted a move away from collaged figures, as Barrett became more invested in completely made-up worlds, accessible directly by drawing. Where her paintings previously began by making collage prototypes, she now works from line drawings made in sketchbooks. Her new characters, still playfully androgynous, non-binary, or anthropomorphic, come together through a process like automatic drawing, wherein Barrett selects heads, costumes, and settings from references studied over the past twenty years.

Transitions observes this artistic shift in Barrett’s work from reality-adjacent to entirely-imaginary through a rousing journey within her amusingly eclectic world. Her artistic progression is inextricably tied larger cultural shifts and proves a humorous proxy to a more serious conversation about gender identity. Drawing from her numerous series including Secret Society, Family Jewels, Tales of the House of Gibson, Hunters’ Picnic, Rustics, Detectives, Fire Island, and Monsters, Transitions presents Barrett’s boldly absurd works as a viewable timeline of both artistic and societal progression. Her pastiched characters, whether collaged from bits and pieces or drawn from pure imagination, make for perplexingly charming guides throughout this retrospective.

Herbert Barnett was an American artist whose life and work was closely tied to New England, and yet, his distinctive style of painting drew heavily upon the artistic innovations of Cubism. Though portraits, landscapes, and genre scenes are all among the artist’s oeuvre, still lifes were a thematic constant throughout Barnett’s career, providing an endless study of Cubist forms and angles. This exhibition is a survey of the artist’s continual exploration of the still life over a 30 year period.

Born in Cranston, Rhode Island, Barnett grew up in Providence.  While still in high school, he began to study painting at the Rhode Island School of Design.  From 1927-31, he studied at the Boston Museum School and soon acquired a reputation for technical proficiency.  At seventeen, he had his first one-man show at the Grace Horne Gallery in Boston and was already teaching private classes.  After art school, where he won the Paige Travelling Fellowship, Barnett spent three years traveling and studying in Europe.  As he assimilated what he had learned in Europe and absorbed the influence of the older generations of American painters, notably Marsden Hartley, Walt Kuhn, and Edward Hopper, Barnett's style evolved rapidly, and by 1939, his painting possessed characteristics that would remain relatively constant in his further development.

Barnett’s working method is best exemplified by his still life paintings which frequently feature fruit, bottles, and other everyday objects balanced on tilted, topsy-turvy tabletops.  He began each work by quickly drawing with the brush to capture the basic contours of his subject.  Next, he made a tonal underpainting in oil wash to indicate the most prominent volumes as areas of light and shadow.  The painted surface consists of a pattern of discreet, rectangular brushstrokes.  Barnett's emphasis on structure clearly reflects his admiration for Cezanne and the Cubists.

Driftwood, bones, seashells, and art materials are among the subjects that feature in Barnett’s still life paintings. Such items allowed Barnett to explore planarity and rhythm in untraditional objects. His Cubist manipulation of the still life afforded experimentation in composition, creating bold and expressive paintings with inventive takes on form and perspective.

Awarded several distinguished positions at prestigious museum schools and honored with exhibitions around the country, Barnett was widely regarded as a painter of extraordinary ability and a virtuoso draftsman. Herbert Barnett and the Cubist Still Life focuses on one genre within the artist’s long, respected career through which both his technical skill and Cubist sensibilities are evident to dramatic and striking effect.

For centuries, the city of Paris - known as "La Ville Lumière", or "The City of Light" - has electrified the abounding curiosities of artists and intellectuals worldwide. From Childs Gallery's unique collection of works on paper, this exhibition is a tour of the Parisian Scene from the 19th century through today.

Paris is referred to as the City of Light for a number of reasons: its leading role in the Age of Enlightenment, its early adoption of gas street lighting, and its famed open boulevards and urban design. In 1853, at the direction of French emperor Louis Napoleon, Baron Georges-Eugène Haussmann embarked on a project of urban renewal and modernization, transforming the old, cramped medieval city into a “City of Light”. The result was the open light-filled city we know today: a Paris characterized by wide boulevards, homogenous architectural blocks, and open public spaces.

By the 19th century, the Salons and Academies of Paris were the Mecca of art students and the city itself the center of the art world. The radiance of Paris drew countless artists from across the globe, finding in its vibrant mood a climate favorable to their art. The dazzling city itself was often the subject of such works, captured by the artist’s brush, pen, and burin. Each artist had their own vision and fantasy of Paris: its beauty, its vibrancy and light, its myriad attractions. The combination of old and new buildings, the splendors of boulevards, the profusion of cafes and grand theaters, and cherished landmarks such as the Eiffel Tower and Notre Dame Cathedral, all exerted a spell-like effect upon those who visited.

La Ville Lumière features artists’ interpretations of the Parisian cityscape from the 19^th century to today. Focused on printmaking, the exhibition showcases a range of print media from varied artistic styles and movements.