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The Eleventh Annual One: A Members' Exhibition
July 27 through August 27, 2023
ArtsWorcester Main Galleries
The 11th Annual One is an annual artist favorite. All artist members were invited to exhibit the one artwork they most want to exhibit, regardless of medium or theme. $500 in prizes were awarded by Stacey Parker, Gallery Director of The Mary Cosgrove Dolphin Gallery and Professor of Visual and Performing Arts, Worcester State University.
The Twentieth ArtsWorcester Biennial
May 4 through July 9, 2023
ArtsWorcester Main Galleries
The year 2023 marks the twentieth ArtsWorcester Biennial, an exhibition that has included a range of the region’s best visual art since 1985. This year’s Biennial will be juried by Conor Moynihan, Assistant Curator, Prints, Drawings and Photographs at the RISD Museum.
Impact: A Members' Exhibition in partnership with the Fitchburg Art Museum
February 25 through April 8, 2023
ArtsWorcester Main Galleries
The natural world has always inspired artists with its beauty, power, and the raw materials it offers for artmaking. Today, in the face of our climate crisis, many artists bear witness to and represent environmental changes in their work–even as others draw from the beautiful ways humans have shaped and utilized the earth. For this eleventh annual “call and response” exhibition, artist members are asked to consider humanity’s complex relationship with our environment through artworks on loan from the Fitchburg Art Museum.
The Nineteenth ArtsWorcester College Show
February 9 through April 8, 2023
ArtsWorcester at the Davis Art Gallery
After two years of virtual exhibitions, the College Show returns in-person! The Nineteenth Annual College Show is a juried exhibition open to all undergraduate college students studying or residing in Massachusetts, in any major. This year’s juror is Ellie Krakow, Assistant Professor of Art and Mazmanian Gallery Director, Framingham State University.
Strut: A Members' Exhibition
January 13 through February 12, 2023
ArtsWorcester Main Galleries
Wearable or frameable, these works are all about fashion, textiles and styles Prizes were awarded by theo tyson, Penny Vinik Curator of Fashion Arts at Boston’s Museum of Fine Arts. Strut also showcased five new pieces by Worcester designers acquired by the Worcester Historical Museum for its Costume Collection.
Leslie Schomp: With You Here Between
November 3 through December 18, 2022
Window Gallery
Leslie Schomp’s stitched hair drawings are both objects of devotion and drawn illusions. Hair has a history of being a medium of commemoration and love. By pairing self portraits with images from nature, the artist emphasizes our place in the natural world through this humble medium. Her drawings serve as a love letter to all that nature is: heartbreaking, terrifying, awe-inspiring, nostalgic, and magical.
Catherine Smith: Dread Running
November 10 through December 18, 2022
East Gallery
Smith’s series investigates humanity’s relationship to the animal world, establishes a place to mourn and pay tribute to countless unnamed shelter dogs, and asks the viewer to acknowledge painful truths about our society. In a complicated act of grieving and honoring their lives, she combined the discarded cremains of dogs with ceramic glaze to create a set of relief sculptures. When compiled into a stop-motion video, these reliefs evoke the past lives of these creatures and the eternity in which they now run.
Go Big: A Juried Members' Exhibition
November 3 through December 18, 2022
West Gallery
Large-scale works induce drama and can provoke oversized reactions. For this competitive exhibition juried by Nancy Burns, Stoddard Associate Curator of Prints, Drawings and Photographs at Worcester Art Museum, we invited members to think big.
Outside of Class: Works by Worcester Public Schools Visual Arts Faculty
November 3 through December 18, 2022
ArtsWorcester at the Davis Art Gallery
In collaboration with the Worcester Public Schools, Outside of Class highlights the studio work of the WPS visual arts faculty, the artists teaching this city's K-12 students. Artists constantly explore their environments and personal histories in the creation of new art. This wide-ranging exhibition showcases that process for these unique artists, and their diverse studio practices.
partnership exhibition
Fathom: The Art of Kat O'Connor
July 16 – October 16, 2022
Worcester Art Museum, 55 Salisbury Street
Worcester artist Kat O’Connor, explores the world above and below the surface of swimming pools from the unusual perspective of someone underwater. Her otherworldly paintings feature figures gently distorted by ripples, bubbles, and reflections, and immerse the viewer in a dreamlike environment. O'Connor was awarded the top honor of the the Sally R. Bishop Prize at the ArtsWorcester Biennial in 2021, which rewards the artist with a solo show at the Worcester Art Museum. Click here for a price list of artworks.
Material Needs 2022
September 8 through October 9, 2022
West Gallery
The artists of this year’s Material Needs exhibition received awards ranging from $500 to $1,500 to create new work in Worcester County, art that is new to the region and to the artist’s practice. Projects supported by these anonymous grants this year include extruded ceramic sculptures, mixed media portraits of notable historical women of Worcester, and enamel works inspired by African traditions. Since they were first awarded in 2013, eighty-nine artists have had their work advanced by these grants.
Project Spaces
Evan Charney, Woodcut and Wood Engraving: Craft and Art
John Slepian, Small Worlds
Amber Rose Tortorelli, Mani(a)c
Jill Watts, From my Yard
Mark Zieff, Ghosts of Seasons Past
September 8 through October 9, 2022
East Gallery
The Tenth Annual One: A Members' Exhibition
July 14 through August 21, 2022
East and West Galleries
An annual favorite turns ten! For the Tenth Annual One, all ArtsWorcester members were invited to exhibit one artwork they want to exhibit most, regardless of medium or theme. Prizes were awarded by Karl Cole, Art Historian and Curator of Images of Davis Publications and Co-Curator of the Davis Art Gallery.
Tom Grady: 100 Views of Worcester
April 30 through August 27, 2022
Multiple locations
This ambitious series of small oil paintings depicts with pride and love Worcester’s everyday vistas, buildings, and streetscapes. As a 300th anniversary gift to the City, the entire series goes on view during the last half of May in additional downtown venues, including the Printers Building, the Jean McDonough Arts Center, and the YWCA.
Playing Games: A Members' Exhibition
May 12 through June 19, 2022
ArtsWorcester West Gallery
This huge exhibition is all about fun and games, and works that are fun and games! Touchable and kinetic pieces will turn the gallery experience upside down, and offer us all the chance to stop, look, and play.
Jason Fiering: Turned Down
April 14 through June 19, 2022
ArtsWorcester at the Davis Art Gallery
These precise, minimalist assemblies offer multiple interpretations of the bed, a site associated with rest, refuge, intimacy, illness, and violence alike. Fiering reflects the ambiguities of that site in the constructions themselves. The motif of a single fold, the “turn down,” bends the picture plane and emphasizes the ambiguities of front and back, image and object, and painting and sculpture. Fiering’s meticulous construction, uncompromising hard edges, and mathematical proportions invite us to consider a familiar form anew, and challenge our desires for security and certainty.
Material Matters: A Members' Exhibition in partnership with the Fitchburg Art Museum
March 17 through April 24, 2022
ArtsWorcester East and West Galleries
This tenth anniversary celebration of our partnership with FAM returns to their extensive collection of African art, the catalyst of the first “call and response” collaboration in 2012. For this exhibition, artists consider the materiality of their own work, the choices behind their medium, and engage with one of the works loaned by FAM. From Material Matters, FAM’s curators select ten works to go on view there, alongside the original loan.
Tracy Spadafora: Left Behind
January 8 through April 23, 2022
The Franklin Square Salon at The Hanover Theatre
Dumpsters and trash bins are ubiquitous yet often go unnoticed. Through her observation of containers behind office buildings, strip malls, construction sites, and restaurants, Spadafora captures signs of corrosion and decay in her latest series. By documenting the layers of wear, she searches for a history within the marks, creating a record of human impact on our environment.
The 18th ArtsWorcester College Show
a juried online exhibition
online only
The Eighteenth Annual College Show is a juried, online exhibition open to undergraduate college students in any major. This year, prize winners were exhibited in-person at ArtsWorcester after the online exhibition went live. The College Show has no theme and is open to students pursuing any degree program. This year's juror was Jessica Roscio, Director and Curator, Danforth Art Museum. Artists selected for exhibition have been announced.
Lisa Barthelson: meld merge mix
January 20 through February 27, 2022
ArtsWorcester East Gallery
A sharp look at sustainability, meld merge mix is an immersive, site-specific installation that scrutinizes consumerism and its persistent byproducts. Through the creation of a new environment using one family's cast-off debris, Lisa Barthelson reimagines the impact of "disposable" objects familiar to our everyday lives and actions.
Dodge and Burn: A Juried Members' Exhibition
January 20 through February 27, 2022
ArtsWorcester West Gallery
Dodging and burning are the ways photographers in the darkroom either lighten or darken different areas of an image, a technique that has since been modernized in digital editing software. The resulting effect is a heightened visual contrast. For this juried exhibition, artists capture elements of contrast--visual or thematic--within a single artwork.