Lydia Likes It

Breathe Life

Rob “ProBlak” Gibbs is a visual artist and organizer who has transformed the cultural landscape of Boston through graffiti art since 1991. His murals in the Breathe Life series can be found on buildings and schools in Boston's Roxbury and Dorchester neighborhoods. This stunning mural occupies a prime position on Boston's Rose Kennedy Greenway, one that until now had featured more generic work by out-of-state artists. Here is ProBlak's artist statement about this piece: "Growing up in Roxbury during the Hip-Hop Golden Age, I saw the power of graffiti as a form of self-expression. Graffiti became a tool for me, and others in my community, to chronicle and immortalize our culture and history. For me, graffiti acts as a contemporary form of hieroglyphs, a way to document and pay homage to underserved, underheard communities in the city. My vision is to beautify the predominantly Black and Brown communities of Boston, this is a driving force behind my artistic practice and vision." The girl in the mural? ProBlak's daughter. Learn more about his work here. This piece will be up until May 2023, on the Greenway near Amtrak's South Station.

Amy Sherald, portrait artist

The Obamas are coming to town. Not in person: the Obama presidential portraits, on loan from the National Portrait Gallery in Washington DC, will end their national tour in Boston later this year. Amy Sherald’s rendering of former First Lady Michelle Obama in the now-iconic, Gee's Bend-inspired, flowing white dress, is a stunning departure from earlier portraits of first ladies. Ms. Sherald grew up in Georgia, earned a master's degree from Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA) in Baltimore and studied with abstract expressionist Grace Hartigan. Though Ms. Sherald specializes in portraits of African-Americans, the portrait of Michelle Obama was her first directed commission. A distinguishing feature of her work is the use of grays, rather than blacks, to create the skin tones of her subjects. The Obama portraits will be on exhibit September 3-October 30, 2022, at Boston's Museum of Fine Arts, after which they'll return to their home at the National Portrait Gallery. 

Rainbow monster

On a recent visit to the Fitchburg Art Museum to see an exhibit of 20th Century American roadside photography, I noticed on the wall leading to the elevator an absolutely exuberant display of watercolor/collages -- faces and trees and true abstracts -- made by young children. Rainbow Monster, the creation of kindergarten student Emmanuela F., brought a huge smile to my face. Can you imagine a more cheerful monster?

Bill Cunningham, jigsaw puzzle

Bill Cunningham, arguably the best street photographer of our time, chronicled fashion and high society for The New York Times for nearly 40 years. Anyone walking around midtown Manhattan in the vicinity of 5th Avenue and 57th Street might have spotted him on his bicycle, camera around his neck, snapping the famous, the not-famous, and the unexpectedly fabulous. Even if you weren't particularly interested in fashion (me) or fashionistas (also me), if you were a faithful New York Times reader (me again), you read Bill Cunningham and marveled at his elegant photo essays. I posted in 2014 about a documentary -- Bill Cunningham New York -- and a book of his photographs that celebrate the artist and his extraordinary life and talent. Now you can build your own Bill as a jigsaw puzzle, too. It's shaped like a bicycle and, though it's only 750 pieces, it's far more challenging than you'd imagine.

Gilbert Stuart

Gilbert Stuart lives practically next door to me, in the Central Burying Ground in Boston Common. One of America's most famous early 19th Century portrait artists, Gilbert (as we call him, being neighbors and all) is perhaps best known for his unfinished likeness of George Washington, often called the Athenaeum Portrait; it's the image that graces the US one dollar bill. In his lifetime, he painted more than 1,000 portraits, including those of six presidents, yet thanks to bad spending habits he died a pauper, which is how he ended up as my neighbor in a not-very-swank cemetery in downtown Boston.