Newton, Massachusetts
Because few venues can, or will, show large-scale outdoor sculpture, a community tends to forget how much talent is available to be tapped. Curator Allison Newsome isn’t letting Boston forget. It took three years of petitioning, permitting, and organizing, but a littleknown green space on Newton’s south side recently hosted a display of outdoor art of surprising quality. Although Newsome stressed the goal of developing works inspired by the site, not every piece conformed. The epitome of the idea was best expressed in Jean Blackburn’s Kennard Web. Seeing an affinity among five mature trees near the entrance to the park, Blackburn bound them together visually and literally with a set of colored bands made of webbing belt. The simplicity of the idea became sophisticated thanks to the choice of which trunks to link, and which colors and widths to use for the bindings, leading the eye through the maze in intricate ways. .…see the entire review in the print version of March’s Sculpture magazine.
