ART 100 BOSTON offers affordable artwork in time for the holidays

Approximately 500 people packed the Piano Craft Gallery at 793 Tremont Street on Friday night, December 2, to browse a diverse array of visual art, sip cocktails and meet the artists at the opening of the third annual ART 100 BOSTON, an exhibit and sale encompassing the works of over 60 artists, with each piece priced at $100. According to Pares Mallis, gallery director and founder/curator of ART 100 BOSTON, 300 pieces were sold on opening night netting a total of approximately $3,000. "I was very happy with the turnout on Friday night. There was a good crowd over the weekend, but I expected more than 20 visitors a day," Mallis said in a follow-up e-mail. Cocktails flowed courtesy of sponsor Bombay Sapphire Gin and co-sponsor Bark Thin provided chocolaty snacks.

In addition to the exhibiting artists and their friends and families, longtime residents of the Piano Factory including photographer and jazz musician Arni Cheatham; artist/illustrator and Piano Factory historian Thom Donovan and abstract painter James DeCrescentis mixed and mingled. Former resident David Mynott II offers a collection of delicate nature images in the show. Mallis envisioned ART 100 BOSTON as a win-win for artists and for art enthusiasts. "In 2014 I created ART 100 BOSTON as an alternative to the established art market. Concurrently, I felt it would address the artist's need to experiment with ideas, materials and styles without commercial pressure. Each of the works exhibited is priced at the symbolic value of $100 during the exhibition to encourage art collection and to monetarily inspire the artist to continue to explore new concepts and mediums," Mallis explained.

The works on display and sale represent a wide array of media and moods. Eva Mallis exhibits colorful street-life photos and artist Kamal Sen, whose main focus is painting, said that architectural forms came to remind him of abstract painting, which led him to paint on top of photos of architectural structures. Fanciful works include Remi Picó's installation, "Oops! I stepped on a piece of art", a series of shoes with black and white geometric designs painted on the soles that is mounted directly on the wall; Anthony Astone's satirical shadow-boxes; Michael Carnes's LPs painted with brightly colored, psychedelic designs and Antoinette Marcoux's quintet of copies of iconic works such as Vincent Van Gogh's self-portrait, Grant Wood's "American Gothic" and James MacNeill Whistler's "Arrangement in Grey and Black No. 1", popularly known as "Whistler's Mother", all with horse's heads. Elizabeth Boates offers a collection of colorful, miniature rocket ships conceived while she was planning a birthday party for her son.

Sober and provocative works include a series of photographs of climatological phenomena such as floods and storm surges that artist Morel Orta describes as "threats to society. These things don't happen normally, but they are going to happen more in the future," he said. Hank Hauptmann, whose photographs of ordinary street scenes have unusual twists, will donate 75 per cent of the proceeds of his sales to the Standing Rock Sioux tribe. He said, "[The DAPL pipeline] was rejected by people who are living in Bismarck because it is unsafe so the Army Corps of Engineers moved it south, near the reservation. These people are fighting for something and they got rejected. Because winter's coming soon and they need supplies and money and I think they should get that." He continued, "But that's what my donation is about, that is not what my work is about. I'm a photographer, and a lot of these pictures were made over the course of 8 or 9 hours a day, and it can take 1,000 to 1,200 pictures to get one good one."

The exhibit and sale runs through December 17 with hours from 4:00-8:00 PM Tuesday through Friday and 12:00 noon-5:00 PM Saturdays and Sundays.

Susan Kommit's "dust bunnies"

Elizabeth Boates, center and her spaceships

Works by Antoinette Marcoux

Photographer Hank Hauptmann, right.