City Hall exhibit features heavy dose of Dot artists

Dorchester artist Adam Bullock’s collages include street scenes from the neighborhood. His work is among those featured at a new exhibit on the third floor of City Hall.

Dorchester artists contributed the majority of the pieces in the two current exhibitions at City Hall organized with the help of Dot curators in honor of Black History Month.

All the works in both “Journey” and “Identities” were chosen and hung by John Crowley, the Curator and Exhibition Coordinator for the Mayor’s Office of Arts, Tourism and Special Events. But Crowley asked two Dorchester artists/curators Destiny Palmer and Laurence Pierce to recommend local black artists to invite to show. Palmer and Pierce had been featured in previous city group shows both at City Hall and the gallery space which was started about a year ago at the Strand Theater.

Four of the six artists featured live in Dorchester, and all of them are represented by one or both of two Dot arts organizations: Hancock 309 Gallery and Consignment (owned by Valerie Mergupis Owen) and Traditions Remixed. The latter is an artist collective founded by Massachusetts College of Art and Design (Massart) alumni Destiny Palmer and Stephen Hamilton.

“This collective comes out of the spirit of cooperation and community building among artists of color, which has grown out of their experiences in Massarts’ Black Artists Union,” the artists said in a joint statement. “Its goal is to create a supportive community for young artists of color, encouraging collaboration and networking.”

The Mayor’s Gallery on the fifth floor of City Hall hosts the solo show, “Journey: Paintings and Drawings by Laurence Pierce.” This colorful exhibition of about 15 paintings and drawings shows the range of this Oldfields Road painter, who teaches art at the Dimock Center. Some of these canvases were seen last February and March at Hancock 309 Gallery.

“For the past five years I have been creating what I refer to as ‘stream of consciousness’ drawing, an idea I borrowed from the great Beat Generation writers of the 50s and 60s,” Pierce says. “Sitting in my studio, I’ll relax and let my hand guide the implement defining the drawing. Sometimes the image becomes figurative and more often purely abstract.”

In the Scollay Square Gallery on the third floor of City Hall, “Identities: Five Young Artists from Boston” features about 20 canvases, some of them much larger than those in the “Journey” show.

“The exhibition features paintings, drawings, photographs and collage and focuses on the individual identities of the artists,” says Crowley. “Though the medium, subject matter and technique in their art are varied, there is a common continuity and vitality in their expression.”

The Traditions Remixed duo contributed pieces as did a third Dot resident, Adam Bullock. Palmer’s new large paintings blend Dorchester cityscapes with the woodland landscapes of her native Connecticut. Hamilton’s acrylics depict African goddesses and other black females. Bullock, another recent MassArt grad, creates collages of photos he has taken of Dorchester street scenes which he then enhances with painting and drawing.

Also on display are Sherwin Long’s portraits of famous Afro-Americans and Daniel Callahan’s photographs of his own face painted with a variety of designs.

For further information call 617-635-3245 or visit cityofboston.gov/arts.