IN THE ANNEX

December 2020

Wendy Cretella-Hodge, Jamaal Eversley, and Rebecca McGee Tuck

Virtual Artist Talk + Tour: Saturday, December 12, 3–4PM

UPDATE SoWa First Friday Art Walk: Due to the recent increase in Coronavirus transmission numbers in Boston and throughout the region, we will be closed for the SOWA First Friday Art Walk on Friday, December 4th.

Stories, time capsules, and imagined experiences take over the Annex in December. Wendy Cretella-Hodge, Jamaal Eversley, and Rebecca McGee Tuck each use their unique artistic eye to explore representation. These artists capture worlds of universally-felt emotion through color, pattern, and abstraction.

*This exhibit was originally scheduled for May 2020.

Wendy Cretella-Hodge

Red Windows
oil on canvas, 24 x 36 inches

Fragile Façade
oil on canvas, 24 x 36 inches

Raging Tide
mixed media on canvas, 30 x 40 inches

Blood Moon
oil on canvas, 22 x 32 inches

Orange Door
oil on canvas, 13 x 15 inches

Wendy Cretella-Hodge’s work is driven by a visceral response to nature and experience. Her work explores the themes of vulnerability, hope and renewal through the expressive language of oil paint. The charred remains of twisted metal and wood shapes from a recent fire in her hometown informed her recent series, The Affected Area.. She is drawn to paint’s sensuous quality, its smell, buttery richness of hues, versatility in its viscosity and unexpected outcomes. Speeding up the time between thought and action, she works spontaneously in a subconscious place where discovery and newness happen. This is where she believes the painting is able to transcend the unintended and move into a realm that the mind cannot conjure up.

Cretella-Hodge grew up in southern coastal Connecticut in a family of painters where since an early age art making had always been part of her life. On completion of a BFA in painting from UMASS and further study at the Byam Shaw School of Painting in London, she continued graduate level classes at Museum School and Mass College of Art. She received an art education degree and had taught in the K-12 Brookline and Needham public schools for the past 20 years, since her recent retirement in 2018. During that time she also worked for Tufts/Museum School Art Education Graduate program to supervise students during their teaching practicum. Cretella-Hodge’s work has been included in numerous group and solo shows throughout New England and lives in many private and corporate collections. She works from her studio in Natick MA.

Jamaal Eversley

Celebr8 Scarf in collaboration with The Sassy Principessa
chiffon print, machine stitched, 36 x 36 inches

Beautifully Bold painted slip-on in collaboration with paintedbyjdg
acrylic on canvas shoes; variable sizes

Stuart Anders
acrylic on canvas; 24 x 24 inches

Barbara Lenore Thompson II
acrylic on canvas; 20 x 20 inches

Jock
acrylic on masonite, 14 x 14 inches

Celebr8 Mask in collaboration with The Sassy Principessa
cotton, machine sewn

Celebr8 Scarf in collaboration with The Sassy Principessa
silk print, hand rolled, 36 x 36 inches

The abstract art of Jamaal Eversley is meant for cultural consumption by the masses. It’s meant for everybody; it’s meant for anybody willing to connect with the composition and allow their imagination to soar. He pursues a visual grammar that is fundamentally cold and offers little emotional depth but allows him to genuinely tell loose abstract stories. Color is used as the main tool to capture attention, kindle emotions and evoke a response from the viewer. Using color in ways nobody else has thought of, he establishes unique color schemes consisting of patterns and designs that are universally recognizable and can be understood and accepted by different communities and cultures.

Jamaal Eversley hails from Randolph, MA. With a business degree in hand from Babson College, he decided to chase after his dreams and passionately pursue his talents as an eccentric abstract artist. In these ten years, he has learned how to intertwine business with the arts in order to serve the community. His art has shown and won several awards throughout the South Shore and Boston area. He has received numerous public art grants to bring his colorful patterns and personality to the community. Jamaal constantly creates to spur the juices of creative genius and put the “F” meant for “Fun” back into Fine Arts.

Rebecca McGee Tuck

Visions of the Hereafter: Now
found objects, wood, paper, thread, cloth; 24 x 28 x 3 inches

Stories We Tell
found objects, wood, paint, gold leaf; 23 x 24 x 12 inches

Smithereens
found objects, steel; 14 x 6 x 4 inches

SarahRobinDebieKatBenBrendaSamantha
jeans from people I know, found objects, thread ; 42 x 40 x 2 inches

The Ballad of Hazel and Joel
found objects, paper, thread, cloth; 35 x 25 inches

Rebecca McGee Tuck is a fiber artist, a sculptor, and a collector of lost objects. Her work is a visual narrative of what she accumulates from a throw-away society. Using welding, sewing, weaving and collage for her assemblage sculptures she creates depth and textures that become a layered narrative. Initially the objects were unwanted debris, as part of the sculpture they transform into a multilayered storyline of what was left behind.

After a 25 year hiatus to raise her family, Rebecca McGee Tuck received her BFA from MassArt in 2019. Since then her work has been juried into many exhibitions in and around Boston. Tuck won first place this March in “Emergence: Bring to Light” at the Piano Craft Gallery and most recently has the great honor of receiving the 2020 Present Tense Award from Arts Worcester. This honor is given to an artist whose work exemplifies new techniques, artist risk taking, and excellence in execution. She has recently been selected to be an Associate's Member of the Boston Sculptors Gallery. Tuck works among her menagerie of debris from her studio at the Mill Contemporary Art Studios in Framingham.