Berkshire Arts #018 Berkshire Fine Arts Has Moved http://www.berkshirefinearts.com Berkshire Arts #017 Bird Soars Sweetly at WTF Looking ahead at the Main Stage in Williamstown Berkshire Arts #015 Two Must See Documentaries Inconvenient Truth and Wordplay Berkshire Arts #014 Swan Songs Covering the Eclipse Mill, Tanglewood and the Williamstown Theatre Festival Berkshire Arts #013 Berkshire Notes: July 21, 2006 Eagle Beach, artStart, Northern Berkshire Creative Arts, Brill Gallery Studio, Stephen Clark Lecture, TV Star Amy Brenneman for Nikos Stage at WTF

In the vocabulary of the Old West a Maverick was an unbranded steer. So called for an individual named Maverick who had moved west from Boston. In 1992 Charles Giuliano bought property near Maverick Square in East Boston. Shortly after that Maverick Arts was started initially as a house gallery and on September 17, 2000 as an on line artsletter. This occured out of a sense of the frustration of dealing with many publishers and editors from Art News through Art New England. Over the years I had been an arts reporter for Boston After Dark/ Phoenix, The Boston Ledger, and the Boston Herald Traveler as well as the Microsoft based web site, Sidewalk. In the past five years Maverick has evolved its own voice and style commenting primarily on contemporary art in Boston, New York, Montreal and Europe. The major events that have been covered include numerous Boston and New York museum and gallery exhibitions,Whitney Biennials, and the past two versions of documenta in Kassel Germany. This past year, 2005, saw the inception of the Beer and Burgers series of interviews with artists, gallerists, museum directors, and curators. There have also be a number of studio reports. These articles offer in depth profiles and commentary about ideas and issues of contemporary art. The Maverick website is also designed to allow visitors to browse through a portfolio section. This includes several categories of work from collage to postcards, currency, landscapes, portraits and vintage erotica. The photobased work and appropriations are printed with archival inks and editioned in a 13 x 19 format as well as in larger custom sizes. The work is represented by FLATFILESgallery in Chicago. Giuliano was born in Brooklyn, New York on October 25, 1940. A native of Boston he graduated from Boston Latin School in 1959 and from Brandeis University with honors in fine arts in 1963. He received the university's Edgar V. M. Gilbert Award in Fine Arts. He studied Egyptology at the Institute of Fine Arts following a three year internship in the Department of Egyptian Art of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. He holds a M.A. degree in American Art and Architecture from Boston University where he completed all doctoral requirements other than a dissertation. During the mid 1960s he lived in New York where he was director of the Spectrum Gallery, a cooperative, and assistant director of the East Hampton Gallery which specialised in Op art. He organized the first Psychedelic Art exhibition which became the topic of a book published by Grove Press. Back in Boston he was an editor of the underground paper The Avatar before an appointment as art diector of Boston After Dark, and its art critic. That was followed by a stint as Jazz and Rock critic for the daily Herald Traveler. Then years of freelance writing in the arts. Having earned a master's degree in art history he has taught for the New England School of Art & Design for some 30 plus years. Several years ago the art school merged with Suffolk University where he teaches in the Integrated Studies program. He teaches Modern Art and the Avant Garde as an adjunct for the Metropolitan College of Boston University and art appreciation for U. Mass. Lowell. He is married to the German born, Astrid Hiemer, a writer and translator. They divide their time between Boston and the Berkshires where they have a home in Adams and a loft studio in North Adams. As a studio major at Brandeis University (class of 1963) I studied painting with Mitchell Siporin, sculpture and print making with Peter Grippe, and drawing with Arthur Polonsky. That was about all of my formal studio training other than a photo darkroom semester with Jim Haberman much later. Initially, I had exhibitions of painting and watercolor. The medium of watercolor occured when I received a commission in the late 1960s from the Harcus Krakow Rosen Sonnabend Gallery to create a suite of fifty images of the History of Jazz and Blues for the Sonesta Hotel in New Orleans. My work in that medium continued into the 1980s. As I became active as a jazz and rock critic eventually I began to photograph performances to illustrate articles I wrote for a number of publications. Eventually I had exhibitions of the material including a one person show at the former Akin Gallery in Boston as well as in schools and restaurants. By the 1980s I began to make annual visits to Europe and this initiated a series of collage panoramas. Following a trip to Paris and a visit to the Pere Lachese Cemetary to view the grave of rock star, Jim Morrison, a couple of months later I exhibited collages and an installation based on that experience in a one person show at the New England School of Art & Design. A series of collage exhibitions followed that including one person shows at Lyman Eyer Gallery, with catalouge in Netwon and Provincetown, as well as a three person exhibition at Flatfiles Gallery in Chicago which continues to represent the work. Initially, the collages were influenced by the Starn Twins technique of taping together photographs. I still use this technique to make surreal collages and panoramas but there is now a second phase in which the works are rephotographed as large transparencies which I then scan and rework with photoshop. So there are three distinct phases to the work: Taking the initial images, collaging them, then post production. The final image is then printed using an Epson 2200 or printed onto watercolor paper in a larger format using an Iris printer. Following 9/11 I created a series of images shot from TV news coverage. This was worked in photoshop and printed in large format. The material was exhibited in several one person and group shows at Gallery Gora in Montreal, Thayer Academy, and the Fitchurg Art Museum which acquired a work from the series for its collection. As the 9/11 series continued it evolved into the larger theme of War and Man's Inhumanity to Man. This was the theme of the large Thayer show that included more than 100 images. While in London several years ago, post 9/11, I acquired vintage currency and stamps with a focus on World War Two and the Holocaust. This led to a large series of appropriated enlargements that expanded to a global view of the 20th century and includes images of individual as well as a sheets of stamps. In the estate process of clearing my mother's house several years ago I acquired a book of 1950s erotica from Sweden. This became a series of enhanced appropriations which were shown in an erotic gallery in Chicago at the time of my Flatfiles show. Since then I have reworked a number of the images. During a trip to Montreal where I showed a portfolio to gallerist, Rene Blouin, he commented that he preferred the surreal subjects to the panoramas that he described as too much resembling "postcards." That taboo turned into a challenge and resulted in a series of postcard appropriations with an emphasis on vintage kitsch. The prohibition against popular imagery became flipped as a post modern statement about the nature of sentiment and memory. The images deconstruct their embedded irony. Related to the 9/11 series is a suite of images involving the flags that became ubiquitous following that act of terrorism. Other recent portfolios include images shot in the American South West and Vegas. The range and intention of the work is eclectic from assembled collages to approptiations and classically based single frame, color images.