Tall Tales
Scott Bakal, Dim Stars: Alien Transport - The Arrival, acrylic and ink on panel
Boriana Kantcheva, Winter Solstice (Winter Witch), gouache on paper
On view March 23 - May 24, 2024
Sat 3/23, 4-6 pm: Opening reception
Sat 4/27, 4-6 pm: Mythmaking - a conversation with the artists
Sat 5/11, 4-6 pm: Outside|In - meet Sonya Quinlan-Khan, TJ Reynolds and Molly Scannell, the artists behind the Friends and Neighbors: Arlington Stories banner project
Bakal has compiled contemporaneous newspaper clippings, photos, and interviews for the UFO sightings depicted in his work, available here.
13FOREST Gallery is pleased to present Tall Tales, an exhibition of new paintings by Scott Bakal and Boriana Kantcheva.
Storytelling traditions use tall tales, folklore and legends to entertain, convey values and build a shared cultural mythology. Tall tales often revolve around a central heroic figure, blending fact and fiction into heightened stories of adventure and lore. In Tall Tales, Bakal and Kantcheva create their own mythic figures and immersive narratives while revealing their personal fascinations.
In its simplified yet eminently expressive humanoid form, Bakal’s Dim Stars character has been a prominent feature of the artist’s work for many years, appearing in numerous contexts and stories. In his new body of work, Dim Stars: Alien Transport, Bakal draws on historical photos of UFO sightings and reimagines them to form a universe of American extraterrestrial folklore. Styled as secret government documents that have been leaked to the public, Dim Stars: Alien Transport entices the viewer with clandestine lore. Bakal renders an alternative reality in which Earth has been visited by a friendly alien that travels in delicate spaceships emerging from clouds of colorful flowers.
Challenging the long-held bias that women are less scientifically inclined than men, Kantcheva has conceived a powerful female explorer, the Naturalist, who studies and communes with the natural world. Kantcheva creates her mythological hero by weaving together traditional Bulgarian and Eastern European folk costumes, folk magic, traditional feminine archetypes and references to mythical figures like the Lady of the Lake and the Slavic rusalka. This body of work draws inspiration yet deviates from elements of traditional portraiture to create a woman who fully and comfortably inhabits worlds replete with magic, animal familiars and discoveries waiting to be made.
Spinning modern fables from history and established folklore, Bakal and Kantcheva delight their audiences with new tall tales and invite them to enter splendidly crafted worlds.
Preview Tall Tales
About the Artists
Scott Bakal graduated from the School of Visual Arts in New York City in 1993 and has been creating art for print and exhibition worldwide since then. A little over a decade later, he received a Masters of Arts from Syracuse University and received a Master of Fine Arts from the University of Hartford. As an instructor Bakal has taught and lectured at various schools including Fashion Institute of Technology and is currently an Associate Professor at the Massachusetts College of Art and Design. In 2010, he was honored to receive the Artist/Educator of the Year award by 3×3 Magazine.
Bakal’s work has been featured in the New York Times, Rolling Stone, Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, The Boston Globe, Variety, Playboy, Family Circle, O Magazine (Oprah), Ebony, Tufts, Wells Fargo, Yoga Journal, Discover, Smithsonian, Scientific American, Sierra, Tor Books, Schwartz & Wade and the Vancouver Opera as well as over 100 other publications and media. Bakal has received numerous awards for his work, including honors from the Society of Illustrators (Silver Medal) and the Society of Illustrators of Los Angeles (Gold Medal), and was published as one of the 200 Best Illustrators Worldwide by Luerzer’s Archive. His work is in the permanent collection of the Norman Rockwell Museum, the Society of Illustrators at the Museum of American Illustration, the New Britain Museum of American Art and the National Museum of the United States Air Force.
Boriana Kantcheva draws on memories and imagination to create compelling narrative images in print and gouache. After emigrating from Bulgaria, Kantcheva received a Bachelors of Fine Arts from Massachusetts College of Art and Design and a Masters of Fine Arts from the School of the Museum of Fine Arts and Tufts University joint degree program. Kantcheva is the Director of Visual Arts at the Mosesian Center for the Arts in Watertown. She has worked as an assistant teacher at the Carpenter Center for Visual and Environmental Studies where she has received several Harvard University Certificates of Distinction in Teaching awards. She previously managed Chandler Gallery at Maud Morgan Arts Center in Cambridge. She has exhibited her work in Boston and New York.