The Moon Visits

The Moon Visits is a new group exhibition of paintings, prints, photography, sculpture, and art objects, celebrating Pride Month through trans, queer female, and other gender identities, guest curated by longtime Childs Gallery artist, Hannah Barrett. The exhibition gathers the artist's friends and compatriots in a delightfully discordant grouping of enigmatic liaisons, tender moments, quiet scenes, and curious oddities. 

Barrett describes the exhibition as such: 

'The Moon Visits' presents the work of eighteen artists of varying degrees of connectedness and weirdness, including artists affiliated with Childs Gallery, based in Boston or nearby, and/or within shared artistic circles. The title is taken from Nancy McCarthy's painting 'The Moon Visits the Fortune Tellers,' a mysterious image in which two flamingos at a table with a crystal ball are joined by a yellow orb. There is a story here as there is behind each object in the show, or in some cases it's a riddle, a trace, an enigma, a cypher, or a surprise. There are vintage cars, prudes, perverts, ornate and derelict interiors, geometry, astrology, gay constructions, mixed media brews, printed flowers, and of course, flamingos. The moon is a big personality, and it can be a pain, but it's also a feminist, a witch magnet, the menstrual cycle, all things crazy, a beautiful nightlight, lesbian, queer, and trans. 

Once you peek beneath the hood of 'The Moon Visits,' some common currents assert themselves by theme or media. In the esoteric realm: Natalie Hays Hammond's needlepointed astrological signs, Xylor Jane's pyramid of nested primes, and Laurel Spark's 'Beaver Moon.' There are lots of people, including Helen of Troy by Louise Nevelson, out of bounds tourists at the Doris Duke Foundation by Tony Bluestone, Gabrielle D'Estrées and her sister by Catherine Kehoe, the altered Kewpie and his bad boy alter ego after Christian Schad by Caleb Cole, the classic Butch mechanics by Lizi Brown, scenes of counterculture domestic bliss by Opal Ecker DeRuvo, and the typical family portrait (yours truly). Deborah Bright's 'Dorian' is in a class of its own, headless with leather jacket and channeling Betty Parsons. Spooky rooms are represented by an elegant staircase and ethereal chair by Mara Baldwin, as well as formal interiors reclaimed by nature in Shellburne Thurber's '9 Wellington' photographs. Along abstract and constructed lines: a cubic valentine by RJ Messineo; a wire, toothpick, and scrap wood wall sculpture by Molly Zuckerman-Hartung; small raft like objects made of sticks and other things also by Mara Baldwin; and Laurel Spark's cookies dangling from garlands. Two artists reinterpret flora: Nancy Haselbacher presents two photographs of plant matter from the forest floor reverse printed to suggest old negatives, and E. Lombardo collects multitudes of flowers, then inks and directly stamps them onto paper to create iconic symbols of LGBTQ resistance.  

Childs Gallery takes the long as well as the immediate view of history, which is really the moment we are in this annual Pride, as we acknowledge the brutal assault on human rights by the Trump Administration, and at the same time continue our individual and collective art making. While the emphasis is on living artists, our show is enriched by the work of Natalie Hays Hammond (1904- 1985) and Louise Nevelson (1899 - 1988) who left historic legacies in their work, philanthropy, and personas. Both Hays Hammond and Nevelson spent considerable periods of their lives with female companions and otherwise expanded expectations for the private lives of women in the arts. As gender has evolved, the group of living artists here belongs to a spectrum of alternative identities that has the 'female' as the original – the ever-present deviant and outcast - and rapturously embraces trans people of various genders. By banding together and showing our work, we present a unique and varied salad of aesthetics flourishing in the cracks and subcultures. 

The Moon Visits is on view at Childs Gallery in our main space, May 23 through July 13, 2025. The exhibition includes works by Mara Baldwin, Hannah Barrett, Tony Bluestone, Deborah Bright, Lizi Brown, Caleb Cole, Opal Ecker DeRuvo, Natalie Hays Hammond, Nancy Haselbacher, Xylor Jane, Catherine Kehoe, E. Lombardo, Nancy McCarthy, Louise Nevelson, RJ Messineo, Laurel Sparks, Shellburne Thurber, and Molly Zuckerman-Hartung. Please join us for a reception with many of the artists in attendance, Friday, May 23, 5-7pm.