13FOREST Gallery has marked the past two presidential inaugurations with an exhibition titled Transition of Power. The show we curated at the beginning of the Trump presidency was characterized by fear and uncertainty over what the next four years would bring and questions about the strength of our democracy. Looking back on that group of work now, we see that many of those fears have been realized. Transition of Power: 2021 will debut following an unprecedented attack on our nation’s capital and the very process of democratic elections. For the first time in modern history, we are witnessing a decidedly hostile transition of power between presidential administrations.

The work featured in Transition of Power: 2021 chronicles artistic responses to the polarization and extreme rhetoric of the past four years. Though we face mounting political violence and divisiveness, the coming inauguration still offers some hope that the United States of America will find a way forward with new leadership.

January 20 - February 19, 2021

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A Closer Look - read statements from the artists featured in Transition of Power: 2021 about their work in the show

Tour Transition of Power: 2021 - a walk-through of Transition of Power: 2021 with Gallery Owner Marc Gurton and Gallery Director Caitee Hoglund

Featured Artists

Scott Bakal ∙ Resa Blatman ∙ Jean Marie Cummiskey ∙ Gary Duehr ∙ Caitlin Duennebier ∙ Eben Haines ∙ Joe Keinberger ∙ Patt Kelley ∙ Ted Ollier ∙ Ellen Shattuck Pierce ∙ Adrienne Sloane ∙ Naoe Suzuki ∙ Joe Taveras

Above: Eben Haines, Monuments, graphite, acrylic, beeswax, plaster and wood

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. He later received a Master of Arts from Syracuse University and a Master of Fine Arts from the University of Hartford. Bakal is currently an Associate Professor at the Massachusetts College of Art and Design. His work has been featured in the New York Times, Rolling Stone, Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, and The Boston Globe, among numerous other publications.

Resa Blatman is a visual artist who works with varying media including large-scale art installations and mixed-media painting and drawings. Her primary focus is on public art projects and she recently completed two permanent, public art installations for Denver Health and Texas A&M University. Blatman's paintings are in collections at the Museum of Arts and Sciences (Macon, Georgia), Twitter, Fidelity Investments, Hilton Hotel, and The WH Ming Hotel (China). Blatman exhibits her work at universities and art institutions throughout the United States.

Jean Marie Cummiskey’s interest in art started early as a fan of Saturday morning cartoons and as an observer of nature in nearby salt marshes. Her interest in politics emerged later during the tumult of the 1960s and 70s. Her dual interests merged in college with a double major in studio art and political science. Today her favorite mediums are photography and mosaics, and her preferred subjects continue to include politics, nature, cities and people. 

Gary Duehr was chosen as a Best Emerging Artist in New England by the International Association of Art Critics. His work has been exhibited throughout the world, including the Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston, MOMA PS 1, New York, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, as well as exhibitions in Tokyo, Venice, Stockholm, London and Barcelona. His public artworks include a commission from the Massachusetts Bay Transit Authority for a permanent photo installation at North Station in Boston. Currently he manages Bromfield Gallery in Boston's South End.

Caitlin Duennebier received her Bachelor of Fine Arts in photography at Massachusetts College of Art and Design in 2009 and studied at the University of the Arts London. She currently lives and works in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Working in painting, drawing, sculpture and animation, Duennebier creates surreal narratives featuring a cast of oddball characters. Drawn in a crude and illustrative manner, her scenes commingle threat and sly humor, showing everyday life tainted with the disappointments of violence and body image. 

Eben Haines was born in Boston, Massachusetts and received his Bachelor of Fine Arts with honors from the Massachusetts College of Art and Design. His work emphasizes the history and process of objects, focusing on human form and the built environment. Through a process of building up and covering over his material, Haines aims to present hand, object and image simultaneously. He currently lives and works in Boston.

Joe Keinberger grew up in the one and a half horse town of Hingham, Massachusetts, before moving to Boston to attend Massachusetts College of Art and Design. He now lives in Somerville where he paints and illustrates out of his hidden studio deep below the earth's crust. Keinberger works primarily in ink and acrylic, doing loose ink drawings on top of built-up texture of acrylic and assorted dry media. His paintings are kind of strange, but kind of humorous, too.

Patt Kelley earned a Bachelor of Arts from the Massachusetts College of Art and Design. He creates a weekly comic strip for DigBoston called What's for Breakfast. Kelley lives in Boston, Massachusetts with his wife, a dog and several household plants. During the day the Kelleys operate a dog walking business and otherwise, in Kelley’s words, he works on his art “literally every other available second.” With a focus on nature, his illustrative watercolors have a tongue-in-cheek sentimentality that could cause a laugh or make a heart swell.

Ted Ollier was born in the Midwest, lived in the South, and now resides in the Northeast. Ollier holds degrees from the University of Texas, Texas State University and the Massachusetts College of Art and Design. At present, he is a printmaker and conceptual artist working in Medford, Massachusetts. He teaches letterpress and design through the Harvard Extension School at the Bow & Arrow Press in Cambridge. Ollier is the Pressmaster of Reflex Letterpress in Charlestown. His concerns are with data and its interaction with the consensus reality, and how that reality is affected and changed by that data.

Ellen Shattuck Pierce graduated from the University of Massachusetts with a Bachelor of Arts in art and women's studies and received a Master of Fine Arts from York University in Toronto. Pierce's work often expresses the private fantasies she experiences as a parent that often do not harmonize with the ideals of modern American homemaking. Pierce enjoys pushing the boundaries of printmaking by using collage and incorporating unexpected materials such as fur or glitter. She currently lives in Jamaica Plain, Massachusetts.

Adrienne Sloane is a contemporary fiber artist with a political focus; she deeply explores all forms of sculptural knit structures out of her Lexington, Massachusetts studio. As a hand and machine knitter, her work often addresses timely but universal issues while remaining mindful of the rich historical context of her medium. Sloane exhibits and teaches internationally and has also worked with indigenous knitters on economic development projects in Bolivia and Peru. She also enjoys writing regularly for the magazine Fiber Art Now.

Naoe Suzuki was born in Tokyo, Japan, and came to the United States in 1985. Her work is conceptually driven by exploring our relationship with the environment through drawing, language, maps and history. Suzuki received a Bachelor of Arts in Studio Art from Bridgewater State University and a Master of Fine Arts from Massachusetts College of Art and Design. Suzuki has served as an artist-in-residence for the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, the Boston Arts Academy, and the Women’s Studies Research Center at Brandeis University. Her work has been shown nationally including at the deCordova Sculpture Park and Museum. She lives and works in Waltham, Massachusetts.

Joe Taveras is a roboticist, designer and artist who has spent most of his career selling robots around the world. For two years, Taveras served as Marketing Director for a leading personal robotics company. At the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, he began painting for the first time. Having had no formal training, Taveras used the time in quarantine to engage in trial-and-error to develop his own style. Taveras uses painting to explore themes of technology, robotics and science fiction.