On the Verge: Emerging Massachusetts Artists

John Berger’s meditations on Vermeer’s painting “Painter in his Studio” (Pequod 28/29/30, pages 11–16) led me to think more deeply than I ever had before about the difficulties of the jurying process. Our first response to a piece is far from our final, and not always our finest, one. Sometimes we need to let a work come to us taking small steps. This ought to happen naturally. Berger’s description of Vermeer’s painting and his analysis of it caused me to remember the time required in grasping, understanding and feeling a piece of artwork. The jurying process, as it is practiced today (indeed, as it was practiced by this feature’s curators: Gerry Bergstein, Mark Booth and I) is not natural. It’s based on instinct and reactions to reproductions of the real work. One is asked to respond quickly, sensitively, ruthlessly. And yet within the confines of time and despite the difficulty of this task one goes deep within oneself and searches for that voice which conveys to us our feelings about what is before us in that instant.

The only criteria we had when we decided to organize “On the Verge” was that the artists selected were from Massachusetts and that they had no gallery representation. We looked at all five slides by each of the 144 applicants anonymously and we voted, also anonymously, until we reduced the pool of candidates to 30.

At this point we began discussing the work. We selected an eclectic combination of 11 artists who were indeed on “the verge” of something new, and whose work was strong, promising, and met our intuitive criteria.

After the selection process was completed, I left to teach and travel in Ukraine. When I returned to Boston last September I learned that one of our curators, Mark Booth, had left the Artists Foundation where the show was originally scheduled to go up that November. The Foundation, along with the rest of the world, had fallen on hard times. May they pass, and quickly.

Since we’d postponed the show a number of times already, I decided to seek alternative quarters. After many phone calls and much slogging around Boston, and with the energetic help of Jan Collins, the work found Peter Barnes with his wonderful openness and his fine ambitious new Gallery Equus at 125 Kingston Street, in Boston. That’s where the show will be held during the month of April, 1993.

[Artists’ self-descriptions of their work follow.]