Artists Open Doors Wide For ​“Open Source” Weekend

It was quieter than in years past, for the obvious Covid-19-related reasons. The hallways of Erector Square weren’t quite so jammed, the conversations were a little more subdued.

But still, Citywide Open Studios — part of Artspace’s rebranded Open Source Festival — happened this past weekend: Artists threw open the doors of their studios, and on Saturday and Sunday people moved from spot to spot in Erector Square’s warren-like maze of hallways, visiting old friends, making fresh acquaintances, and in many cases getting the first chance since the pandemic began to see the art both longtime and new tenants of the Peck Street complex had been making since before the pandemic began.

Among Erector Square’s newer tenants since the last Citywide Open Studios was Alecia Massaro, who now occupies a sunny, high-ceilinged studio facing the interior of the complex. For Massaro, the pandemic was a time of rapid artistic transformation, as her brush led her both far away from and back toward the training she had just received from art school.

“In the beginning of my art journey it was portraits,” said Massaro. ​“Abstracts started happening at the beginning of the pandemic.” Massaro was a student at Paier College and graduated in 2020. ​“That was a journey!” she said. And after it, ​“everything changed.” At Paier, she had learned the techniques needed to do realism, to make portraits, many of which hang in her studio and the walls outside it. ​“The abstracts started happening because I had so much emotion and feeling going on,” she said.

Massaro leaned into the change, using it as an opportunity to explore, to follow the flow of her artistic practice. In time she saw how her grounding in realism and forays into abstraction came together in ways that proved satisfying. ​“If I see balance in a painting, it balances how I’m feeling,” she said.

One prominent example was a canvas that leaned against the wall of her studio. The lower half was an abstract field of color; the upper half was a shape that was easy to read as a mountain, a fiery sky behind it. ​“I was missing the West” and its landscapes, Massaro said. She was also missing a friend who had moved there. The painting, she said, encapsulated what she was feeling at the time.

She doesn’t see herself ever abandoning portraiture altogether — she takes commissions, and a commissioned portrait was in fact in progress on her easel. ​“I like portraits,” she said, ​“but I have so much going on inside that I’m moving away from what I was” — that is, solely a portrait painter. It has only been a year since she graduated from Paier, but she’s already gaining perspective on how to use the training she received. ​“They always say learn the rules to break the rules,” she said. Besides, ​“I always like playing with reality and abstraction,” she added, ​“because what is reality anyway but an abstraction?”

“I feel like I’m heading into a wave of having more confidence in myself, and fearlessness,” she continued. She is currently plotting a series of portraits that will explore abstract elements based on the ongoing campaign to ​“free the nipple” — that is, allow women to be seen bare-chested in photographs without repercussions and to go bare-chested in public — that has had its latest iteration in Instagram’s ban on pictures of female but not male nipples. To Massaro, the campaign opens up questions about the ways female bodies are constantly sexualized in contexts where male bodies are not (think sunbathing at the beach, exercising, yard work). That can change; it is, after all, not a universal human value that women must cover up all the time, although trends in Europe are moving toward covering, with women citing fears of photos ending up on social media as among their concerns.

“How did this happen? Where did we go so wrong?” Massaro said. ​“We’ve sexualized the body so much, and not just seen it as a vessel for the soul.”

Massaro began renting her studio space in Jan. 2020. ​“I stalked Erector Square’s page,” she said, for an affordable space, taking over for a longtime tenant whose husband, she learned, had been a lithographer for Salvador Dalí. ​“This is the first time people get to come in to see my sweet loves,” she said with a laugh, referring to her paintings.

Massaro’s studio was just across the hall from the photography studio of Ebony McKelvey, who has had a photography studio since 2013 with the mission of ​“capturing the beauty of the African American woman.” Her latest series of photographs, ​“Sisterhood — What Once Was,” hung in the hallway outside the door. The photographs are quite personal; they were ​“inspired by the passing of my sister” this May, McKelvey said. ​“I wanted to capture the essence of sisterhood and the essence of loneliness. ​“This was my baby. It was my way of relieving stress and keeping her memories alive.”

The full series of photographs (which can be seen on her website) first depicts two women in a room of vivid earth-tone colors, interacting in a variety of ways that capture a sense of humor and complicatedness, then depicts one of the women by herself. Juxtaposed, the absence of the second woman in the second set of images is palpable.

The women’s clothing, the room’s decor, and even the quality of the images are redolent of the 1970s, quite intentionally. ​“I like the vibe of it, the griminess — not so perfect,” McKelvey said. ​“I love the fashion” of the era. ​“I love how we embraced our femininity as women. I feel like that was my time,” she said. Looking at the images of the two women, ​“I could see myself wearing something like that today.”

She took all the photos in her Erector Square studio, constructing the set, acquiring the decor, props, and furniture, and finding the right dresses. Some objects were donated. ​“The antique frames are from 100 years ago,” she said, given to her to use by another Erector Square tenant. ​“I usually thrift a lot,” she said, explaining how she got some of the pieces she needed. Other things — like the wallpaper and the chair — she ordered online.

The personal nature of the project represented a new step for McKelvey. ​“Most of the projects I do concentrate on women of color,” she said. In her sisterhood project, ​“I was telling a story. It has purpose within each photo.” She’s embracing this new direction in her work. ​“It says a lot as to who I’ve become,” she said.

The Open Source Festival continues through Oct. 24. Visit its website for a full listing of events.