Guess Who I Saw Today?
“Guess Who I Saw Today” features the narrative work of three gifted Boston-based artists: DaNice Marshall, Matt Brackett, and Ivan Brens. This show poses the question: what is the relationship between craftsmanship and the expression of the human condition through art? Matt, DaNice, and Ivan incorporate subjects relating to history, familial bonds, and the natural world to reveal the nuances of the creative process. Their work affirms art’s role in providing critical insight into examining how we all interact with the world around us.
Guess Who I Saw Today? Artist Talk
Online, October 26, 2023, 7:00 PM-8:00 PM
Learn more about the exhibition in this short video:
Curator
Ashleigh Dior Coren
Ashleigh Dior Coren (she/her) is a museum interpreter in Washington, D.C. Her writing has been published in The Journal of American Folklore, Viewfinder: Reflecting Upon Museum Education, and the International Review of African American Art. She also serves on the Board for the Museum Education Roundtable.
Artists
DaNice Marshall
DaNice D Marshall (she/her) Pronounced duh-NYSE is a born writer who transitioned after a serious illness left her with hearing loss and unable to concentrate to write. DaNice started painting abstracts, mostly to watch the paint dry. And then discovered portraiture art was a way for her to paint the stories that she could no longer write.
There is a familiar thread, a human story, that acts as a reminder that we are more alike, than we are different.
DaNice’s art has been exhibited in places like Abigail Ogilvy Gallery, Boston, the NIU Museum of Art, Illinois, New Art Corridor Gallery, Newton and the d’Art Center in VA.
In 2023, DaNice had her first solo exhibition “When There’s Laughter” in Newton, MA. She’s a grant recipient of Mass Cultural Council’s Visual Art. She has a forthcoming solo exhibition at Piano Craft Gallery in Boston.
DaNice lives with her husband, Ben and their dog, Tigger outside of Boston, MA.
Ivan Brens
Ivan Brens is a self-taught painter born in the Dominican Republic where as a child, he started his artistic career. He studied printmaking and photography in the University of Mass. and sculpture in Mass. College of Art in Boston, U.S.A.
The artwork has an emphasis upon distortion of the human form resembling the struggle and distress for freedom. I am driven to portray the racial and social injustice of our true history. I intend to question our indignity and religion to unravel caged emotions and the anguish for change.
I create images that suggest and fulminate movement: compositions that can be viewed in all angles as a visual counterpoint like Jazz. I intend to break, mix the styles, movements and technique to align the subject of each artwork with a unique imaginary and message. To be uncategorized or de-categorize a signature style freed from any link of tradition and identification but for the artwork itself to be independent with its own meaning.
Matt Brackett
Matt Brackett is a painter who uses traditional painting techniques to explore themes involving memory, wonder and menace through a contemporary lens. His imagery, while realist in appearance, is derived from completely artificial constructs. Brackett’s themes have touched on familial memory, near-fatal illness, and in a recent turn, national politics. Brackett was born in Berkeley, CA and received a Bachelor’s degree in painting from Yale University in 1997 where he was the recipient of the Ethel Childe Walker Prize.
His work has been shown nationally in galleries and museums, including the Danforth Museum of Art, MA; The Aqua Wynwood, FL; the Fort Mason Center for Arts and Culture, CA; The DeCordova Museum, MA; The Merchandise Mart, IL; the Brattleboro Museum, VT; Yale University Art Gallery, CT.
He has also been featured in New American Painting’s juried exhibition in print, issues #38, #56 and #80. Brackett is the recipient of numerous awards, including grants from the Pollock-Krasner Foundation, the Elizabeth Greenshields Foundation, the Massachusetts Cultural Council, and the George Sugarman Foundation.
He has won a Certificate of Excellence from the American Portrait Society and has held residencies at Yaddo and the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts. Brackett’s work appears in the collection of Wellington Management in Boston, the Danforth Museum of Art in Framingham, MA, and numerous private collections in the U.S., India, Germany and England.
