Upcoming Exhibits
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Community Tapestry at Magazine Beach
Michelle Lougee and curator Cecily Miller are teaming up with the community to create a tapestry and mosaic made up of post-consumer waste. The finished tapestry will hang in Mass Audubon's new Nature Center in the historic 1818 granite Powder Magazine which gives the park its name.
This collaborative art project will warn of the environmental dangers of plastic, while celebrating the Magazine Beach park. Morse School students; volunteers from MBP, CRC, Mass Audubon, Riverside Boat Club, Gallery 263 and other neighbors; and Cambridge Community Art Center teens will all contribute to the Tapestry, which will be unveiled at the Powder Magazine in July.
The organizers are raising project funds for art-making workshops run by teens from the Community Arts Center and other outreach/education activities through Go Fund Me; please consider making a donation at gofundme.com/f/magazine-beach-community-tapestry. The Tapestry was awarded a start-up grant from the Mass Cultural Council and Magazine Beach Partners is facilitating a gift specifically for this project, but more is needed to pull off it off.
TO GET INVOLVED, SIGN UP HERE
DONATE TO OUR GOFUNDME CAMPAIGN
Artist Talk and Mini-Workshop @ Gallery 263 May 3, 7-9 pm
Learn more and work hands-on! Guest speaker: Eileen Ryan on the plastic crisis and what you can do. Register Here
Free Screening – Plastic Bag Store: The Film May 10, 7-8:30 pm
Watch Robin Frohardt's magical film using humor, evocative puppets, and inventive staging to follow a plastic water bottle into a dystopian future (after "the Robot Wars") where it is carefully excavated and misinterpreted to be a precious artifact from a vanished civilization – ours! Followed by an artist talk with Robin and Michelle on art & activism. View in person at Arlington's Regent Theater or live-stream at home. MORE INFO and TICKETS.
Workshop @ Gallery 263 Thursday May 19, 7-9 pm
Learn more and work hands-on! REGISTER HERE
Workshop @ Gallery 263 Sunday May 22, 1-4 pm
Learn more and work hands-on! Stay the whole time or just stop by for an hour. REGISTER HERE
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@ Minuteman Bikeway, Arlington MA
Persistence: A Community Response
to Pervasive Plastic Through October, 2021A large-scale collaborative public art project developed with the community for the Minuteman Bikeway, through the Arlington Commission for Arts and Culture’s first artist-in-residence program.
Recent Press
Persistence: A Community Responds to Pervasive Plastic
An introduction to a collaborative public art project led by artist-in-residence Michelle Lougee and public art curator Cecily Miller. Persistence is part of the Arlington Commission for Arts and Culture's ongoing Pathways Public Art Program. Through Michelle's residency, over 100 people of all ages contributed to a project that transformed thousands of single use plastic bags into art for the Minuteman Bikeway. Fabricated using basic crochet techniques, the sculpture is inspired by organic forms, including single cell organisms found naturally in water.
The project message is that single use plastic persists in our environment for more than 100 years, breaking down into microplastics that enter the food chain and, ultimately, our own bodies. Persistence will be required to reduce plastic waste, but this is essential to preserve human and environmental health. Persistence was also required for the project volunteers, who continued to participate during the COVID-19 pandemic despite many challenges. The vibrant display of large scale sculpture, installed in trees along the Bikeway near Spy Pond, demonstrates the amazing things we can accomplish working together.