Erica Lemberg Flores, Gillian Frazier, and Susan Jaworski-Stranc

March 6 - April 28, 2023

Explore these provocative works that chronicle the ravages of climate change on our natural world and ask us to thoughtfully consider how both awareness and activism may yet save our devastated landscapes and altered existence from an uncertain, bleak future. 

Historias Mezcaldas – Eduin Fraga – Mixed Stories

September 12 – December 9, 2022

Experience the powerful storytelling of these immersive and biographical collage-paintings that reflect the dignity, humanity, and creativity of regular people in both Cuba and beyond. Reflect on the tensions between lived realities and hegemonic narratives that are explored through the works’ dynamic images, compelling narratives, and collective memories. Share in the complex lives and tangible experiences detailed in remarkably unembellished depictions of our contemporary realities.

View the Historias Mezcaldas – Eduin Fraga – Mixed Stories Catalog

Art asks us to – Experience. Reflect. Share.

About the Artist: Eduin Fraga was born in Havana, Cuba in 1974. He began painting over twenty years ago, blending newspaper collage and paint on canvas in order to capture dynamic fragments of society within the piece. Fraga considers his technique of painting and newspaper collage to be a unique mechanism through which to add complexity and richness to the work while simultaneously transforming it into a form of historical register of social experience. Fraga formally studied painting and drawing at the Experimental Center of Visual Arts in Havana and graduated in 2012. He has been invited to present his work in galleries and universities within the US and in Cuba. Some of his works are part of the Northwestern Mutual Insurance’s Giving Gallery, a 2018 exhibit that focuses on philanthropic partnerships in Milwaukee, WI. Fraga currently divides his time between Cuba and the United States.

May 2 - August 5, 2022

Engage with mixed-media artist, performer, and poet Deta Galloway’s immersive paintings. Experience musical recordings of songs created to accompany the art. Hear poetic musings to heal body and soul from past and present trauma.

About the Artist: Deta Galloway is a multi-media and multi-genre Boston-based artist who produces paintings, poems, and music that reflect her experience growing up in Jamaica, her work as a nurse and a healer, and her abiding faith in forces both seen and unseen.

“Ragged Sanctuary,” her first solo show at the Mary L. Fifield Art Gallery, features work that explores the darkness and trauma of the last two years while keeping an eye on the mystical strength and supernatural powers that surround us. “These are the forces that can help us. And you must become familiar with them and know that they will help us,” she says.

Many of Deta’s paintings are like portals – whole histories and narratives – and a form of visual storytelling and spiritual exploration. Given the difficulties of the COVID-19 pandemic and other events, “Ragged Sanctuary” functions as a place for healing – a place that, however battered and bruised and tattered, is a refuge and a home, as well as a place of power.

The show contains one of Deta’s shrines as well as multimedia presentations of her poetry and music. Her paintings reflect the evolution of her artistic practice to include iridescence as a medium – something that helps capture what she calls “the shimmering inside me.” This technique, she says, has helped her capture feelings of joy and light that persist despite the trauma of recent years.

Deta’s works have been featured nationally and internationally for nearly four decades, and she has been a warm and welcoming presence in previous BHCC exhibitions and events. Her live performances have been seen on festival stages, including the Indiana Women’s Music Festival, among others. Five of her watercolors were featured in a film on African American watercolors, 1866 to the present; these watercolors are now part of the Smithsonian’s collections.

Her works are in the holdings of the Danforth Art Museum, the Etheridge Knight Archives of Martin University, and the Northeastern University Archive, and have been collected by Kofi Kayiga, Taj Mahal, Arthur W. Clewes, Xavier Crenshaw, and Edmund Barry Gaither. She has exhibited at the Rose Art Museum of Brandeis University, the National Museum of Senegal, the Pao Arts Center in Boston’s Chinatown, Bunker Hill Community College, and the National Center for Afro-American Artists in Roxbury.

Her poems explore journeys, immigration, pandemics, and the strength of the natural world. She has been published in Stone Soup and other journals. A trip to Paris to attend the Bi-annual Conference of the Plastic Arts of the African Diaspora yielded an invitation to appear at the at the Sorbonne ‘s 100-year anniversary celebration of American poet Langston Hughes.

Deta Galloway was born in Kingston, Jamaica in the West Indies. She emigrated to America at age eighteen with an American husband. Upon his death, she was left widowed to raise a new daughter in a new homeland. She is educated in professional nursing, Human Services and Management, and specializes in Behavioral Nursing. She has lived and traveled in the U.S. South and lived for nearly two decades in Georgia before returning to the Boston area to reside.

Deta’s use of oils and acrylics was influenced by the paint mediums that her mother used in Jamaica. Her mother would boil plants to create a color, and she would add olive oil or other oils, and make what they called “inka” or a dye. Deta would mix lye and ashes from the fires and create whitewash. She drew with charcoal, only realizing later this was a medium one could buy. She also works in watercolors and began adding iridescence to her paintings a decade ago.

Deta began writing poetry at thirteen and has been published in several anthologies and journals. As a young mother and nurse, she met Gwendolyn Brooks, one of the most highly regarded, influential, and widely read poets of 20th-century American poetry and first Black author to win the Pulitzer Prize. Brooks encouraged Deta to do more readings of her work and to find a way to do less medicine and more poetry. “So even though I continued working to educate my daughter and make sure that she had some opportunities that in some ways I missed because of the early death of my very supportive husband and the transition of my career from wanting to become a psychiatrist to nursing, I held on very strongly to the art, no matter what,” Deta says.

November 15, 2021 - February 26, 2022

ENGAGED! RESILIENT! GLOBAL! Selections from BHCC's Teaching and Learning Collection, with Faculty, Resident and Visiting Artists-

A group exhibition that illuminates the power and importance of international education and global exchange. Experience art that connects cultures, crosses borders, and envisions a bold new future.

Featuring Roya Amigh, Robin Chandler, Julio Flores, Gillian Frazier, Deta Galloway, David Goldman, Maddu Huacuja, Renold Laurent, Alberto Lanzano, Yary Livan, Woomin Kim, Proshot Kalami, Jimmy Valdez Osaku, Consuelo Perez, and Wen-ti Tsen

Jimmy Valdez Osaku - Creative Exile

September 7, 2020 – April 23, 2021

The Creative Exile of Jimmy Valdez Osaku, at the Mary L. Fifield Art Gallery from September 7, 2020 to April 23, 2021, features the art and poetry of New York-based Jimmy Valdez Osaku in a powerful exploration of loss, loneliness, and endurance. Organized just as COVID-19 was shutting down the United States, the exhibition includes older works plus paintings and writings produced in response to the pandemic. Valdez’s art chronicles his journey, struggles as an immigrant, and suggests that we have all become exiles in a virus-plagued world.

According to poet, translator, and educator Rhina P. Espaillat, BHCC's 2019-2020 Distinguished Artist Scholar in Residence,   “Jimmy’s work reflects the divided self straining to create its own autobiography, speaking to what it contains and is constantly aware of, but cannot unify.”

The full exhibition catalog contains a selection of the artist's poetry translated by Espaillat, as well as reflections from BHCC Faculty, the artist himself, and others.

View Jimmy Valdez Osaku Catalog

October 10, 2019 – February 21, 2020

Artist Statement

“Open the way” is Maddu Huacuja’s meditation on movement, life, migration and the journey of life to death, expressed in the paintings and drawings featured in this exhibition. Four paintings, three drawings, and three oil pastels comprise the presented trajectory of Huacuja’s engagement with the present and the transcendent and with the material and evanescent aspects of history and existence.

Huacuja’s path to this exhibition began with her lifelong exploration of her identity, as a Mexican-American, and her existence as a global citizen. As her life has unfolded, Huacuja has explored her mixed selves combined with her interest in diverse environments and in the animals and peoples who share our living space. One of her early interests was the Amazon jungle, with its rich and diverse life and its peoples, myths and iconic animal life. From her regard and research, she began, in the past ten years, to create a series of drawings and paintings within which she explores subjects and themes focused on her desire to capture that which is fleeting and vanishing in the Amazon. Yet, even as the jungle diminishes, its continuing life still retains its continuity and connections with Nature.

Within the world Huacuja has created, she follows a train of thought that links animals and people, who merge into one another in a continuing cycle of shared existence. Migration and movement have been a part of human existence since the first homo sapiens walked out of our ancestral home in Africa and began to wander and populate the world. Migrations caused by natural disasters, such as fire, flood, drought and the failure of land to produce abundant food define Latin America’s history in significant ways. From the abandoned cities of the Maya, the Aztec and the Moche, which became lost in time, when they could no longer sustain their peoples, to the more recent waves of migrants coming north to seek new places to live, the movement of people and animals in search of a sustainable life is part of Latin American identity.

This exhibition is an opportunity for spectators to stop and consider the subjects and themes she presents to the spectator in the works that spring from her desire to enable others to understand why what is happening to the helpless and unfortunate matters. Through the artist’s representation of the environments, animal species and humans being impacted by the forces that destroy their homes and lives, she enables her audience to commune with their plight and with her emotional response to their reality. In so doing, Huacuja leads her audience to its reception of her message, one which delineates this crucial moment in human history in which we currently find ourselves.

Open the Way

An exhibition of works that celebrate dignity and cultural wealth by dispelling the myths and misperceptions about migrants.

March 30 – December 18, 2020

Women Artists Share Work about the Body, Memory and Pain

Each piece in Things Left Unsaid represents an act of courage. The nine artists in this multimedia, multi-dimensional exhibit have made visible something that is often minimized, silenced or erased from a woman’s life – pain, sexual desire, illness, body image, faith, and the longing for a better life. Each work is a signature piece that confronts issues both historic and contemporary, both local and global. Some of these pieces are so deeply personal that viewers may feel as if they are being drawn into an intimate conversation with the artist. Others dwell on universal themes of memory, loss, and journeys into the unknown. Some of these pieces depict experiences that are difficult, even horrific, but the art is also suffused with the willingness to endure.

Interviews with several of the artists in this exhibition have been recorded, and may be used to enhance teaching and learning at the College.  To view interviews or schedule a remote classroom visit with an artist from Things Left Unsaid, please contact Denise Turner in the Office of College Events and Cultural Planning at dwturner@bhcc.edu. 

View Things Left Unsaid Brochure

The Chinese first came to Boston in late 19th century when Chinese laborers migrated east, away from racial persecution in the West after the completion of the transcontinental railroads. The people settled in a residual area in the city when many of the better offs were moving to the outskirts. For decades, due to racial discrimination, the Chinese were restricted in their livelihoods mostly only to running laundries and restaurants. To avoid competition with each other, the shops often had to be located in distant and isolated towns all over New England. For them, Boston’s Chinatown served, once every few months, as a refuge and a connection to “home”. It became, through most of the 20th century, the economic and social fulcrum for the Chinese of the region, and, later, as other immigrants arrived, for most Asians.

In the late 1960s the major threats to the community started when the City claimed blocks for highway construction. In the 1980s, in the name of urban renewal, the City zoned large residential areas for demolition to be replaced by commercial and institutional developments. The community fought back, and arrested some of the plans and diverted the land to the construction of mixed-rent housing for long-time residents.

In recent times, a new threat arises as a new professional class, desiring to live closer to work and play, started moving back into the city.Both property values and rents increased sharply, with the consequent heavy pressure on disposing neighborhood housing in favor of high-cost, high-rise luxury coop buildings. This poses further danger for Chinatown to be able to stay as a viable place for long-time residents and businesses, and continue as the locus of the area’s Asian population.

This project is to emphasize to the community and the public at large the importance of maintaining a home for the Asian Americans in the Northeast. The portraits of the 12 figures and groups were selected from the archives of Chinese Historical Society of New England (CHSNE). They show the continuing presence of people in Chinatown during the past 125 years.

This project became available with assistance provided by Jasmine Lee, (Captions) Prof. Wing-Kai To, Bridgewater State University A New England Foundation for the Arts (NEFA) Creative City Project and in partnership with CHSNE.

ABOUT THE ARTIST

Wen-ti Tsen is a painter and public artist. He was born in China, grew up in Europe, before coming to the U.S. to study painting at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. Since the mid-1970s, after living and traveling for several years in different countries, he has been engaged in making art that explores cultural connections: with personal paintings and installations, large-scale public art sculptures and working with communities to express social issues in various art forms.

HOMETOWN

Re-presenting Boston Chinatown as a Place of People was setup as an art project in the streets and public spaces of Boston Chinatown to draw attention to the gentrification and other developments of the last 40 years that continually threaten the historical nature of Chinatown.

The second part of this project was in collecting sets of photo portraits of current people “residents, workers and visitors” posing in front of a backdrop of Harrison Avenue, Chinatown as reproduced from an actual printed postcard of the same location, circa 1910s postcard.

Wen-ti Tsen Catalog

Exhibition Run: August 5 – October 20, 2019 

Photographer John Munson takes us on a journey with his deeply moving images.  In this series of photographs, generations of history, figures of people known and unknown and remembrances of landscapes and city streets converge in a cultural intersection that is both personal and universal. Through the lens of his camera, he sheds light on accurate details of daily life in Moroccan society.  His photographs portray the memories of the child he once was, living with his family. They are also illustrative of a father returning with his own “Americanized” children after nearly thirty years to the native land and rich culture of his heritage.

John Munson’s sense of art is shaped by his experience of being the son of a Moroccan mother and an American father.  He seems to perceive in many dimensions at the same time—past and present; history and current moment; lived experience and expectant dream.  What does he see and what does he show us?  Physical space and real place are not only part of his individual memory, but rather illustrate for the viewer a pattern of representations associated with “being” and “identity.”  In other words, the photographs in this exhibit show us, in the most valuable and relevant way, what it means to be alive and complex--to be human.

Munson presents us with an essentially philosophical point of view.  In a world of intertwining identities and cultures, “place” is subject to our own negotiated perception.  As philosopher Merleau-Ponty suggests, “Because we are in the world, we are condemned to meaning.”  Perhaps the greatest function of art is to create new meaning in the world; to re-invent the past in and through the present moment. Hence, the artist is always the one who accentuates the shadows and the margins, showing us the delicateness and essential triumph of the act of remembering. Artists, such as Munson, help us to understand our relationship with the periphery, asking us to reflect on our own reality, and, eventually, to embrace a better understanding of ourselves.

Fine Art Quilts by Susan Thompson

These deeply human and richly textured fiber art quilts by Boston based textile and multi-media artist and educator Susan Thompson celebrate deep connections between family, community, spirituality, history and other shared cultural experience.

February 4 through April 30, 2019

Events

Art Brunch
Meet the artist in person, share music, refreshments and conversation with members of the BHCC community.
February 17, 2019, 1 p.m. | Library and Learning Commons

Artist Talk: — “How I Became an Artist”
Join the artist for an intimate evening of reflection and dialogue about her influences and art making process that connects generations and cultures.
March 26, 2019, 6 p.m. | Library and Learning Commons

Textile Art and Quilt Making Workshop
Interactive studio instruction on how to use fabric to create personal art pieces that incorporate history and community in the design process.
April 13, 2019, 11 a.m.–2 p.m. | Visual Media Arts Studio, E 148

Boston-area artists share work that reflects their personal experiences navigating crises, resilience and reconciliation.

March 5 – May 11, 2018

With Sonia Andujar, Oldren Angel, Janet Cormier, Deta Galloway, David Goldman, Alberto Lozano,
Ed Pontes, Hakim Raquib and Roger Sheppard

Guest Curator Gloria Carrigg

October 22, 2018, through June 30, 2019

These richly ornamented and masterful works are by one of only a few traditional ceramicists to survive the Khmer Rouge. His personal story is one of overcoming hardship and keeping art, community and culture alive. His commitment to uphold history, revitalize ancient traditions and boldly explore contemporary forms makes this artist a living treasure.

The Mary L. Fifield Art Gallery at Bunker Hill Community College presents

Janet Cormier–Artist, Activist and Poet

Deeply human and richly textured paintings that celebrate both personal identity and shared cultural experience.

February 1-28, 2018

January 16 – February 24, 2018
Mary L. Fifield Art Gallery

inVisible

The Mary L. Fifield Art Gallery at Bunker Hill Community College presents

Boston-area Latinx artists share their art and define what it means to live in America.

Also featuring Treasures from the Homeland—fine art photographs of El Salvador by Gloria Carrigg, Thomas A Kershaw Culinary Arts Dining Room

and

One of My Many Faces—a companion display of vibrant carnival masks from the Dominican Republic crafted by artist and educator Ana Meja, BHCC Library and Learning Commons

Exhibits by guest curator Gloria Carrigg

October 30 – December 22, 2017

Toro, by F. Garcia (mixed media)

Silhouette, by J. Guzman (oil on canvas)

The Mask, by A. Lozano (oil on canvas)

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 La Palmita, by H. Perlera (acrylic on canvas)

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Join graduating senior students from the Bunker Hill Community College Visual + Media Arts Department as they embark on the next phase of their art educations and careers at the reception showcasing their talents and art in this student group-curated exhibit.

May 10 - June 16, 2017

In honor of Women’s History Month, the Mary L. Fifield Art Gallery at Bunker Hill Community College presents:

MOTHER TONGUE 

Pan-Asian Boston-Area Women Artists

Experience this multi-media group exhibit that explores the complex relationship between personal identity, storytelling and cultural expectation.

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February 6 through the 28, 2017

Hakim Raquib 
Determined Blackness: Race, Representation and Redefining Black Male Identity

Artist's Reception

Thursday, February 23, 2017  •  6 - 8 p.m.
A300 Art Gallery/Lounge

Now through February 3, 2017

Featuring: Works from BHCC Students

Artist's Reception

Thursday, January 26, 6-8 p.m.

A300 Art Gallery

Now through December 23, 2016 and from January 3 - 6, 2017

Experience this group exhibition of Massachusetts and Border State Native American Fine Arts and Craft.

Artist's Reception

Thursday, December 1, 6-8 p.m.

A300 Art Gallery

2016 VISUAL + MEDIA ARTS DEPARTMENT STUDENT EXHIBIT

Featuring: Works from BHCC Students

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Artists' Reception 
Thursday, May 5, 2016 • 6 p.m.

Exhibit Runs:
May 2 - June 3, 2016
The Mary L. Fifield Gallery at BHCC

CUBA: DIVERSIDAD
A Photographic Journey

Featuring: Gloretta Baynes, Lou Jones and Don West

With guest photographers: Jonathan Hansen, Linda Hirsch, John Kennard, Arthur Newberg, Barbara Trachtenberg and Peg Tuitt

February 15 - April 4, 2016
The Mary L. Fifield Gallery at BHCC

Artists' Reception 
Thursday, February 18, 2016 • 6 p.m.

Gallery Talk 
Thursday, March 10, 2016 • 1 p.m. 

CUBA : An Evening of Words and Music
Thursday, March 6, 2016 • 6 p.m. 

HAYMARKET

The Soul of the City
Photographs by Justin Goodstein

Photographs by Justin Goodstein
On view November 2 - December 18, 2015
The Mary L. Fifield Gallery at BHCC

Artist Reception
Tuesday, November 17, 2015 6 - 8 p.m. • Art Gallery

Film Screening, Gallery Talk and Book Signing
Thursday, December 3, 2015 • 6 p.m. A300 Auditorium, Art Gallery and Lounge

The Greenhouse at Russell's Garden Center
Photographs by Mark Diamond

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On view August 24 - October 15
The Mary L. Fifield Art Gallery at BHCC

Exhibit Runs:
February 17, 2015 - extended through April 3, 2015

Exhibit Runs:
December 11, 2014 - January 5, 2015

Ceramics en-MASSe

A large group exhibition of Massachusetts ceramics programs and independent artisans.

Exhibit Runs:
September 24, 2014 - November 21, 2014

Artists Reception:
Thursday, October 02, 2014, 6-8:00 p.m

blackJAZZ 

An exhibit by Boston-area African American artists showcasing the imagery of jazz performers. 

Exhibit Runs:
February 13 - March 31, 2014 

Boston Strong/Boston Proper

Celebrating the spirit of place via Boston's landscapes and landmarks in painting, photography, mixed media and more. 

Exhibit Runs:
September 30 - December 20, 2013

Artists Reception:
Thursday, October 24, 6-8:00 p.m.

The Mary L. Fifield Art Gallery at Bunker Hill Community College Presents

The BHCC Art Gallery Turns 10
A decade of art exhibition posters

Posters created by BHCC Creative Services and Students from the Visual + Media Arts Department

Exhibit Runs:
August 26-September 20, 2013

Closing Reception:
Thursday, September 19, 4-6:00 p.m.
Dessert Social and 10 Year Celebration of the Art Gallery

2013 Annual BHCC
Visual + Media Arts Department Student Exhibit and
President’s Artistic Achievement Awards

Exhibit Runs:
April 22 - June 7, 2013

Artists’ Reception and Awards Ceremony:
Thursday, May 9, 6-8:00 p.m.

The Other “F” Word
The Future of Feminism Today

Exhibit Runs:
March 7 - April 5, 2013, 2013

Artists’ Reception:
Thursday, March 14, 6-8:00 p.m.
Featuring Live Music with Yani Batteau and Boston Women’s Organizations Mini Information Fair

BLACK MALE’D
African American Male Identity in Art

Exhibit Runs:
February 4 - 28, 2013

Artists’ Closing Reception:
Thursday, February 28, 6-8:00 p.m.

An Evening of Spoken Word and Poetry:
Hosted by Jean Dany Joachim with open-mic session
February 26, 6:30 p.m.

May 22 - July 27, 2018

Material Consequences is an exhibition that examines how different materials, from oil paint to coffee grounds, can enter into artistic dialogue with one another across time.  This exhibition represents two phases in Laurent’s artistic work.  In the first phase, he uses conventional materials to paint brilliant, colorful forms; in the second phase of black-and-white paintings, he uses nonconventional materials such as fabric remnants, coal and coffee grounds to demonstrate how the local materials sourced from his surroundings in his Haitian homeland can matter not only practically, but also artistically.

About the Artist

Renold Laurent was born on July 15, 1978 in Source Bretoux, a village at the foot of the Marbial Valley  – a few kilometers from the city of Jacmel, Haiti – into a family of painters. This small corner of the world could easily be considered  unremarkable, except that it produced four of Haitian Art History’s most famous painters:  Castera Basile, Wilmino Domond, Celestin Faustin and Fritzner Lamour.  Today, Source Bretoux remains one of only a few painter villages left in Haiti.  He is one of its first abstract painters.  Renold is also a writer, having published five works of poetry – two in French and three in Haitian Kreyol.

At the age of ten, Renold began to draw and paint under the direction of his father, Maccene Laurent.  But he soon abandoned the naïve painting of his beginnings to move towards a less stylized and more realistic form of representation.  Currently, he considers himself an abstract artist, because he views abstract painting as the most expressive means to explore the extraordinary power of the imagination.