13Forest Gallery opened "Alone|Together," an exhibition of recent work by Dorothea Van Camp and Jeffrey Heyne of Fort Point, Boston, on Feb. 12.

The exhibit is a rare opportunity to view the artists' individual work side by side and a video that stands as their first fully collaborative work.

As artists and a married couple, Van Camp and Heyne have a thorough understanding of each other's creative processes and frequently work behind the scenes as each other's critics and supporters.  In addition to being visual artists, Van Camp is a graphic designer and Heyne an architect who designed the award-winning space in which they live and work.  Though their individual mixed-media prints and photographs bear different aesthetics, their concern for surface, form and color are handled with equal intelligence and sensitivity.   

The majority of Van Camp's images are vector-based computer drawings that were initially screen- or litho-transferred onto variously sized panels, and then built up with oil and wax.  Through this process, Van Camp produces a series of biomorphic images that inhabit colorful, heavily textured worlds.  The visual and textural qualities of this series aligns them far less with digital output than with the tradition of deeply etched intaglio printmaking.  In short, they resolve Van Camp's admitted love/hate relationship with technology. 

Heyne's work complements Van Camp's in its obvious embrace of computer-based image making.  In his triptych Fascia, for instance, three photographic views of a 19-century marble bust are presented in ultra-soft focus and an equally soft palette.  Transferred to panels and finished with a soft sheen, the images exist in a world of anonymous, impossible beauty that can be seen - even touched - but never entered.  In the nine-panel resin work Muybridge Jump Rope Twirl, Heyne "reanimates" a single image of a young woman skipping rope from a nineteenth-century stop-action sequence by pioneering photographer Eadweard Muybridge.  Left to right, Heyne distorts the image to an ideal of frenetic, forward motion, slows the subject down to stillness, then sets her back into action - thereby creating a still but seemingly perpetual loop.

Location Gallery Hours

167A Mass. Ave. Tue-Wed-Sat 11-7, Thu-Fri 11-8

Arlington 02474 Sun by appointment or chance 

Held earlier: Art aplenty

Celebrate Third Thursdays in East Arlington

An opening reception was held Thursday, Nov. 19, for "Plenty 2009," an annual roundup of the best work local and regional artists at the 13Forest Gallery. The salon-style holiday show features new work more than over 50 local artists. Check here for a full list.

"Plenty" celebrates the artistic bounty in our midst, highlighting our latest finds from the area. In addition to painting, drawing, printmaking and photography, we've added sculpture, wood construction, and even pieces made from flower petals.

The work is intended to be modest in size and budget -- up to 20- by 20 inches and under $750. Folks are encouraged to take home their pieces upon purchase, rather than at the exhibit's close. Perfect for Santa or Hanukkah Harry to pick up on the way to a chimney or menorah near you.

In an era of big-box stores and overseas mass production, there are more reasons than ever to keep it local and artist-made for the holidays.

'Queer Animals' ran through Nov. 13

Writer Charles Mortimer got it right in his 1947 book of children's verses Some Queer Animals and Why when he declared "I think by now it's pretty clear, most animals are somehow queer."

Moving beyond the political to celebrate the queer animal in all of us, 13Forest Gallery presents work by 14 New England artists in its new show "Queer Animals." It opened Thursday, Sept. 17, with a reception, and ran through Nov. 13.

"Queer Animals" included recent work by: Bren Bataclan, Louisa Bertman, Resa Blatman, Scott Chasse, April Clay, David Colombo, Beth Dacey, Thomas Durand, Joe Keinberger, Mark Luiggi, Peter Madden, Ted Rabidoux, Ann Smith and Greg Stones.

Much like Mortimer's musings on bandicoots and okapi, the pieces in "Queer Animals" reveled in animal personalities and personifications, including human folly. The painters, printmakers, photographers, sculptors and mixed-media artists in the show exemplify Mortimer's sentiment that "The jungle's full of things, you'll find, that stagger the Progressive Mind."

Three artists offered three very different takes on the city in "Boston In Common," 13Forest Gallery's summer show.

Featuring vivid landscapes by Sean Flood, Deb Hickey and Charles Tersolo, the exhibit opened with a reception July 16 and ran through Sept. 11.

A reception for the artists and a talk was held Aug. 26.