Beacon Gallery has become ShowUp - a 501c3 nonprofit art space | For all the latest happenings at 524B Harrison head over to showupinc.org 

Beacon Gallery is pleased to announce its upcoming show entitled Mixed Messages, opening July 17th and running through August 30th, 2020. 

SCHEDULE YOUR VISIT 

(Visitors are welcome during gallery open hours - 11-3 Sundays - and also by appointment at our usual retail hours. Schedule a time above, or email us!)

Mixed Messages is a group show bringing together multiple artists and their work around the concept of sexual violence. Our intention is for visitors to get a sense of the pervasive and insidious nature of sexual violence in our culture. According to the CDC, over 1 in 3 women undergo physical sexual violence in their lifetimes, as do nearly 1 in 4 men. From what some experience at home or in the street to the words of our current president, this is a subject that impacts everyone. 
 
While the works included in Mixed Messages can only hope to scratch the surface of such a broad and emotionally fraught topic, we at Beacon Gallery wish – most of all - to bring an increased awareness to sexual violence to foster discussion. Often a hidden crime, sexual assault, violence, and even harassment are too easily concealed. It’s time to bring that which is often kept in secrecy and darkness, out into the open. 
 
Mixed Messages includes bodies of works that intend to spark discussion and contemplation. The show will include the Dress in Water series by Jean Sbarra Jones, works on paper by Ibrahim Ali-Salaam, mixed media pieces by Raleigh Strott, selections from Invisible Fractures by Rachel Tine, and works from The Tiny Pricks Project and the Social Justice Sewing Academy. 
 
The Tiny Pricks Project, curated by Diana Weymar, is a textile-based project which immortalizes the language of the Trump presidency through quotes stitched onto vintage fabrics. The pieces selected for the show specifically relate to Trump’s language from "locker room" to White House, comments about women's bodies, and the power dynamics as they relate to gender in our current political discourse. During his presidency, Trump has launched many "nasty" attacks on women through his powerful social media platforms. 
 
This crowd-sourced sensation will be coming to Boston via Mixed Messages for the first time this summer. Tiny Pricks Project has been featured in The New Yorker, BBC, NPR, Vogue, Marie Claire, CBC, Agence France Presse, Liberation, artnet News, amongst other media outlets. In 2019-20 it parts of the project were exhibited in Victoria BC, San Diego, Chicago, Washington DC, Tacoma, San Francisco, Miami, Brooklyn, Portland ME, NYC, Princeton NJ, West Stockbridge MA, and Northampton MA. 

Like Tiny Pricks, The Social Justice Sewing Academy (SJSA) is fabric-based. SJSA will be featuring a work that speaks directly to sexual assault. 
The Dress in Water series by Jones is set of evocative acrylic paintings showing dresses floating or discarded in bodies of water. With their ability to be interpreted by the viewer as either haunting or cathartic, these pieces represent an opportunity to consider the stories within the paintings as well as one’s own personal story. 
 
Invisible Fractures by Rachel Tine explores abuse at the hands of a partner. The invisible nature of much of sexual violence (and abuse in general) is brought to a forefront as Tine presents both photographs and recorded interviews of her subjects. 

Raleigh Strott describes her work in the following manner: “My focus as an artist is a dissection of feminine sexuality... I seek to reveal the dilemma of our dystopian time, wherein women struggle to maintain agency and possession over their bodies, but at every turn it is reasserted that any self-ownership is tenuous at best.”
 
Ibrahim Ali-Salaam’s work attempts to disprove the misconception that only women are victims of sexual harassment and violence. Through a series of works on paper Ali-Salaam chronicles experiences of sexual harassment on men. 
 
In order to ensure support for visitors to Mixed Messages Beacon Gallery is working with The Boston Area Rape Crisis Center (BARCC). It is our intention to have resources available in the gallery for those who may require them as a result of a visit. We also hope to support the important work of BARCC through this exhibition.  

 

ABOUT THE ARTISTS

About Ibrahim Ali-Salaam

Ibrahim Ali-Salaam takes his inspiration from the world around him and his lived experience. His art tends to focus on the human form. Over the years, in between series of still lifes of other subjects (his most known being bicycles) he has continued a series of nude self-portraits. These have always been inspired by periods of transition or strife. 

The body pushes against the boundaries of the paper, which represents how the artist feels: pushing against the boundaries of society. Many individuals feel as though they life in a culture that always seeks to classify them as one thing or another, whereas they do not wish to be classified. I wish to represent those individuals through my work. 

 

About Jean Sbarra Jones

Jean Sbarra Jones creates poetry in her luminous acrylic paintings of dresses floating in bodies of water. She lives in the North Shore of Massachusetts where she has spent many days on a boat with her husband casting a fishing line attached to a vintage dress. The dresses have travelled from Massachusetts to Aruba, inspiring a body of work rich in narrative and hauntingly beautiful. 

Jean is an award-winning artist, holding a Master of Fine Arts degree in painting from Boston University College of Art. She has exhibited widely, received grants for residencies and been published most recently in AcrylicWorks5 and Studio Visit Magazine. She currently teaches at Massachusetts College of Art and Design. Her work has been selected to be included in exhibitions by numerous leaders in the art world such as Alan Weinberg, director of the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York and Clifford Ackley, curator at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston. Jean's paintings have also been juried and chosen by well-known artists such as William Bailey, Judy Chicago, Faith Ringgold and Donald Sultan. Her work is included in many private collections, including the estate of the late Kenneth Noland, a well-known 1960’s color field painter. Jean speaks publicly about her work in relationship to her personal life experiences and faith, which illuminates more thoroughly the unique and powerful meaning embedded in her paintings.

 

About Raleigh Strott

Raleigh Strott’s work takes mass-media images, particularly those from pornography, and reworks them into meditations on the female form, the male gaze and the fight women have to maintain possession of their own bodies. In a world where women are constantly objectified and commodified, Strott works to subvert those traditional narratives with their precise and unique vision.  

 

About Social Justice Sewing Academy   

The Social Justice Sewing Academy (SJSA) was founded in 2017. A youth education program,  it bridges artistic expression with activism to advocate for social justice. SJSA empowers youth to use textile art as a vehicle for personal transformation and community cohesion and become agents of social change. Many of its young artists make art that explores issues such as gender discrimination, mass incarceration, gun violence and gentrification. 

 

About Rachel Tine

Rachel Tine, a Boston based fine art photographer, is best known for her unique use of light and color as well as her fun, considerate, and collaborative approach to her subjects. The most important element of Rachel’s shoots is her connection with her subjects and her ability to make almost anyone feel comfortable in front of the lens. When not photographing nude art models or portrait clients, Rachel aims to use her photography to empower survivors of various social issues. Her series “Invisible Fractures: The Enduring Trauma of Emotional Abuse” opened to a gallery reception of nearly 500 people, including many of the 22 domestic violence survivors who participated in the series. In addition to photographing many more people in increasingly interesting and beautiful locations and situations, Rachel also looks forward to empowering and assisting multiple populations, including the homeless, opiate addicts, and victims of racial discrimination, through her work.

 

About The Tiny Pricks Project & Diana Weymar 

Tiny Pricks Project is a public art project created in 2018 and curated by Diana Weymar that is now a collection of over 3,500 pieces. Contributors from around the world stitch are stitching Donald Trump’s words into vintage textiles, creating the material record of the language of his presidency and of the movement against it. Tiny Pricks Project holds a creative space in a tumultuous political climate. The collection counterbalances the impermanence of Twitter and other social media, with the textiles that embody warmth, craft, permanence, civility, and a shared history. The daintiness and integrity of each piece stand in stark contrast to his presidency. Diana Weymar is an artist and activist. She grew up in the wilderness of Northern British Columbia, studied creative writing at Princeton University, and worked in film in New York City. She has created projects with Build Peace (in Nicosia, Bogota, Zurich, Belfast and the US/Mexico border), the Arts Council of Princeton, the Nantucket Atheneum, the W.E.B. Du Bois Center at UMass Amherst, the University of Puget

Sound, The Zen Hospice Project (San Francisco), the Peddie School, Open Arts Space (Damascus, Syria), Trans Tipping Point Project (Victoria, BC), New York Textile Month, Textile Arts Center (Brooklyn, NY), The Wing (NYC and SF), and Alison Cornyn’s Incorrigibles project, as well as Syrian journalist and activist Mansour Omari. She is a judge / presenter for All Stitched Up at the University of Puget Sound. 

She has also curated exhibitions at the Princeton, NJ headquarters of Fortune 500 company NRG Energy, and exhibits for the Arts Council of Princeton.

Diana is the creator and curator of Interwoven Stories and The Tiny Pricks Project, both of which are open for public participation. Her work has been exhibited and collected in the United States and Canada.

About The Boston Area Rape Crisis Center (BARCC)

Founded in 1973, the Boston Area Rape Crisis Center (BARCC) is the only comprehensive rape crisis center in the Greater Boston area and the oldest and largest center of its kind in New England. Their mission is to end sexual violence through healing and social change.

BARCC provides free, confidential support and services to survivors of sexual violence ages 12 and up and their families and friends. They work with survivors of all genders, and their goal is to empower survivors to heal and seek justice in ways that are meaningful to them. They meet the needs of survivors in crisis and long after, and also assist them as they navigate the healthcare, criminal legal, social service, and school systems.

BARCC takes the knowledge they learn from survivors and from current research out into the community. They work with a wide range of schools, campuses, community groups, and organizations. These include middle and high schools, colleges, police, health-care providers, businesses, and more. Amongst other initiatives BARCC advocates for change and works with communities to help them understand their role in preventing sexual violence.