Bluebottle Art Gallery and Store
415 E Pine St, 325-1592
Last December Andrea and Matthew Porter opened Bluebottle Art Gallery and Store for many of the reasons artists usually open galleries: to show their own work as well as work they like, and make some money in the process.
They also wanted to create a store where finer art would be shown alongside functional art, thereby coaxing a more comfortable leap from the one to the other, from the $3 note card to the $50 framed photograph. With 85 artists represented, the results are mixed but nonetheless seductive, and you are constantly considering purchasing objects either for yourself, a friend, or, in my case, some kids I know (there's plenty that's appropriate for any age).
Bluebottle's positioning as a gallery/retail space, with a mission that reads more like a nonprofit arts organization's, points toward an emerging trend in combined art and business ventures. As arts funding continues to diminish and the economy goes further south, artists are looking for alternatives to the traditional art-world structure and making work that crosses and then recrosses boundaries between high- and low-end.
For artists as well as art buyers, the valuation and devaluation of art is a constant point of inquiry, and many artists have even turned commodification into its own art form (such as Greg Lundgren's painting This painting will be worth a lot of money someday). On the flip side is someone, like "painter of light" artist Thomas Kinkade, whose work exploits naive art buyers who want something pretty to hang over their couch. The perceived preciousness and worth of art is a conundrum, but in the end, artists everywhere make things and honestly, and rightfully, would like to be paid for them.
The Porters say they like work that is "bright and colorful," and much of their inventory leans toward variations on pop art. The emphasis on functional art is evidenced in objects such as handsewn vinyl hipster wallets, soap with plastic monkeys and unicorns suspended inside, decorated light-switch covers, bottlecap magnets, tiny ceramic shot glasses (some of which are inexplicably adorned with noses and mustaches), wall clocks, and jewelry. Tucked in among these items are gems like Dana Hunting's high-contrast photographs of carnival rides, Kamala Dolphin-Kingsley's inkjet prints of animals, flowers, and insects, and Debbie Reichard's brilliant ceramic pieces that riff on Delftware and other vintage ceramics.
Matthew Porter's own work provides a framework for Bluebottle's aesthetic. His children's alphabet (J is for Jaguar, U is for Ukulele, and so on) and his Cat That Ate the World and Sideshow series all have a straightforward charm. Unlike René Magritte's Ceci n'est pas une pipe, the lions are lions, the airplanes are airplanes, and Boy Change to Girl is exactly what the title says. It's a bright, graphic, accessible kind of art that eases the way for people who suspect artists are trying to pull a fast one on them.
With work arranged salon-style and individual artists' pieces often scattered over different shelves, it's more of a choose-your-own-adventure gallery experience. Some of the work takes a second, third, and even fourth look to discern if it's an original, and how the artist is approaching it--whether it's a compelling idea, an out-and-out consumer lure, or something in between. T. Christopher Hacker's postcard-sized watercolor of a cat playing cat's cradle, hung in a corner a few feet from the floor, falls in the first category, while Melissa West's super-cute felt robots, teddy bears, dinosaurs, and Jolly Roger flags--all with magnets affixed to the back--are more of an impulse buy.
The upstairs gallery, at the top of a narrow spiral staircase, provides a space for solo exhibitions--which, outside of coffee shops, are hard to come by for emerging artists. Boston artist Ted Reiderer's current exhibition, Sacredprofane: Numinous Merchandise, features gilded oil-on-wood portraits of TV and movie icons in Catholic scenarios (Bruce Lee vs. Job, The Star Wars Pieta, et cetera). Reiderer contextualizes the show with a Jean Baudrillard quote that could apply to the gallery itself: "The aura of the world is no longer sacred, no longer the numinous horizon of appearances but one of absolute merchandise." The quote, paired with Yoda Pope, appears on a silk-screened poster for the low, low price of $25.
