Alaina Mahoney and VF Wolf Opening Reception
Alaina Mahoney, both a painter and a metalworker, received her Bachelor of Fine Arts Degree in painting from Massachusetts College of Art and Design and is head fabricator at Schiff Architectural Detail in Chelsea, MA. Alaina was born and educated in Brockton, MA by her parents Ginny and John Mahoney (who are also artists) and Mr. Allen at Brockton High School.
Alaina Mahoney settled in East Boston and has a studio around the corner in Chelsea called Carter Street Artists’ Union, where she paints colorful renditions of friends reacting to caricatures of their minor interests, and her eye-catching forged plants spread their steel wings. An architectural welder, she has built a furnace for melting iron.
Alaina’s body of work for this exhibit at Studio Z is titled “Stuff We Like”. Alaina Mahoney states “The series ‘Stuff We Like’ involves either me or folks I know doing things that you’d only know about them if you spent way too much time around them. Clearly I’ve spent too much time with my self so you’ll see a lot of self portraits. Some of this series has to do with my brother Greg and me being little kids together; bits of that past that have stuck with us over the years. I think you begin to know an adult when you can instantly pick out the moments that put them right back in the mindset of their early years. This series tries to encapsulate those moments. For instance, you’d only know that I’m scared of moths and fuzzy grass if you spent enough time around me, or if you knew me when I was 5. Well…now you all know so I guess I’ve blown it.”
VF Wolf is a painter who is surrounded by Fine Art, as a night watchman at the Rhode Island School of Design Museum located in Providence, RI. He was an officer in the Army Reserve from 2000-2007 and has traveled extensively throughout the United States and lived in both Egypt and Ireland. He received a Bachelor degree in art history (2007) and a Bachelor of Fine Art in painting (2011) from Rhode Island College, and was recently was granted a Master of Fine Art from Massachusetts College of Art and Design (2013). VF currently resides and works in Pawtucket, RI.
VF has titled his body of work for this exhibit “Martial Memories”. VF States “I want my art to be repulsive and attractive. I paint the ugly and disturbing, mask-like figures because I use them as metaphor to analyze the shadow that lies in every society’s sub-conscious, that part of the psyche that craves violence and destruction.”
“This fascination of studying the dark side of man most likely started when I was a young man in the military. I would witness the violence and brutality on a daily basis and this became the starting point that informed much of my artwork. My art is the by-product of thinking about my life, in particular my military experiences.”
