In "Sleight of Hand," Will Schaff’s embroidery of St. Rita of Cascia portrays the saint in a nun’s habit, with bleeding stigmata across her forehead and a cross in her hands. Schaff’s embroideries often feature grotesque imagery warmed by intense handcraft. This is another obsessive tour de force, but the composition is awkward, so it doesn’t have his usual charge.
Richard Saja's Please Try to Understand transforms fabric printed with an 18th-century-style pattern of trees, horses, and strolling gentlemen by embroidering green threads over one of the men to turn him into a swamp thing. It’s a cheeky, crafty bit of graffiti.
Leisa Rich stitches together textile portraits of birds framed in machine-embroidered, 19th-century-style frames of vinyl. Michael Aaron McAllister makes brightly beaded, cartoony portraits of Alfred Kinsey, Emily Dickinson, Sylvia Plath, and Eugene O'Neill. Rich’s work is sleekly decorative and McAllister’s beading offers mildly amusing kitschy jokes. But they demonstrate one of the difficulties of exhibiting at Craftland: the store’s inventory of screenprinted baby T-shirts, stitched dolls, posters, and greeting cards is so dazzlingly witty and charismatically design-ed that it’s often hard for the gallery’s “fine” art to compete.
Read Greg Cook’s blog at gregcookland.com/journal.
Editor's note: A previous version of this article referred to Jen Raimondi’s exhibit as "New Growth." The name of the show was changed to "Cultivar" after the article was published; we have updated the story to reflect the name change.
Related:
Two sides of life, 2009: Worth another look, Tight but loose, More 
- Two sides of life
"I started as a commercial artist, and I want to finish as a business artist," the Pop artist Andy Warhol wrote in 1975. "Making money is art and working is art and good business is the best art."
- 2009: Worth another look
The lousy economy hit home this year as Stairwell Gallery in Providence and Yes Gallery in Warren closed their doors.
- Tight but loose
I had never come across the adjective "jangular" until I visited the Glowkid website.
- Cubism and collage
Maqbool Fida Husain has long been known as one of the grand old men of Indian art.
- Straight outta Tallahassee
Tallahassee transplant (via Toronto) Kylewilliam Campol absolutely loves to call Rhode Island home, having moved here last May to further his career as a musician and establish the world headquarters for his post-punk outfit Imadethismistake — a move some homegrown cynics may consider ass-backwards.
- Making the rounds
The Spot offers a pair of quirky halls that sprout smaller nooks and crannies.
- Poetic chaos
The melodic noise collective known as A Troop of Echoes will unveil their full-length debut Days In Automation next weekend at AS220, hosting their album release party alongside an impressive gathering of local support.
- The surreal world
Corey Grayhorse offers a style of synthetic glitz that seems to channel our society’s plastic, superficial heart.
- With plans for a downtown mural, Shepard Fairey returns to Providence
It is a rather unremarkable collection of bricks at the moment: an exterior wall at the back of Trinity Repertory Company’s Pell Chafee Performance Center in downtown Providence.
- AS220 at 25
You might say it all began with a thumbs-down review of an art exhibit by Umberto Crenca. To Bert and his friends, it was just one more example of how they were excluded by the art establishment.
- Photos: Foo Fest 2010 at AS220
Foo Fest's slam poetry, music, and exhibits come to AS220 on August 14, 2010.
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Museum And Gallery
, Entertainment, Arts, Jen Raimondi, More
, Entertainment, Arts, Jen Raimondi, AS220, AS220, Bones, Craftland, Craftland, Less
