MassArt graduate John Guthrie, who previously studied aerospace engineering, has a fantastic show mounted at Room68 in Provincetown, a contemporary design shop cum gallery on Commercial Street. I stopped in last week and was wowed. I never made it to owner Brent Refsland’s original space in Jamaica Plain, though I feature pieces from the shop in my roundups for the Boston Globe all the time.
Refsland has a great eye and appreciation for contemporary design that doesn’t sacrifice useability. His shop could just as easily be at the ICA or MoMA (without the incessant branding), with furniture, accessories, and jewelry by designers who include Tina Fey, Black+Blum, and De La Espada, as well as local stars Debra Folz and Nervous System. He plans to stay put in Ptown for a while, after having transformed a tired women’s clothing retail store into an airy gallery space with white walls, track lighting, and pale wood floors last year.
An exhibition of Boston-based painter John Guthrie’s geometric abstract paintings is currently hanging. (According to Guthrie’s resume, in 2009 I wrote something in the Globe that included an image of his work—I’m guessing it was a decor story about a home with one of his paintings—but I can’t find it in my archives.) Guthrie’s work is crisp and delicious. The precise geometric forms in clear colors and perfectly shaded partner tones pop off the earthy tree trunk backgrounds, a sublime blend of mathematics and the natural world.
The geometric abstract paintings on tree trunk slices are available for sale at Room68; the canvases are also available online; prints on Etsy.
Photography by Marni Elyse Katz for StyleCarrot
Portrait of Guthrie in the gallery by Brent Refsland for Room68.
