Artist to Know: Bert Crenca — Inside Art with Michael Rose

Artist to Know: Bert Crenca — Inside Art with Michael Rose

 

Few cultural leaders have had as distinct an impact on the Rhode Island art scene as Umberto Crenca. A painter and musician, Crenca was one of the individuals integral to making Providence an art-focused city in the 1990s. As the founder and longtime creative force behind AS220, he established and nurtured a dynamic and unjuried art space where generations of artists and performers of all ages have shared their passions. A new exhibition opening at WaterFire Arts Center on October 12 aims to share Crenca’s own work. His vast series of local cityscapes, dubbed “Divine Providence,” will be on view, celebrating a painter who knows and loves the city in a profound way.

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A Rhode Island College alumnus, Crenca tried his hand at a variety of careers before settling on art and activism. Founding AS220 in the 1980s, he became a catalyst for cultural change and dedicated his life to the community. Since his retirement from the space he created, he has centered his day-to-day life on making his own art and maintains an active studio practice as an urban painter who focuses on capturing the minutiae of Providence.

 

 

For Crenca, the city is his muse. His interest in its buildings, streets, and people has inspired dozens of finely detailed paintings. Describing the place that appears in all of the artworks that will be in his WaterFire show, he says, “What inspires me about Providence is the diversity of its people, neighborhoods, and architecture. The architecture speaks to a working-class industrial past, a history of immigration and migration. The story of my family.”

 

Crenca embodies his interest in Providence. He and his wife, artist Susan Clausen, live in a converted Italian-American club where they make visual art and music. Crenca and Clausen are both members of The Gillen Street Ensemble, a music and performance group that will perform together on October 29 at 7 pm at Wilbury Theatre Group’s space inside the WaterFire Arts Center. This event will show off the performative aspect of Crenca’s artistic practice while his visual artworks are on display.

 

 

The exhibition of Crenca’s paintings will bring together over 200 images of Providence captured in every corner of the city. Some paintings that have previously sold will be on loan for the event and other pieces will be exposed to new audiences for the first time. All of them are remarkable for the specificity of their treatment and the everydayness of their subject.

 

Reflecting on what he hopes people see when they look at this series, Crenca states, “My goal in creating Divine Providence is to honor and celebrate the commonplace. To celebrate the pedestrian perspective. Maybe scale the world down to something familiar and manageable. I hope the takeaway for people is a different perspective on the neighborhoods they walk and drive through every day. A perspective imbued with a feeling, for the generations of past lives lived.”

 

 

Crenca produces his paintings by walking the city’s streets and exploring its diverse neighborhoods. Landmarks recognizable to residents from all areas of Providence show up in Crenca’s art and his process involves taking himself out of the work in order to allow viewers to really see and explore the streetscapes he paints. Snapping hundreds of photos and looking closely on his own, he returns to his studio to transform canvases into poignant reflections on place. What emerges is a broad image of innumerable interwoven local stories set against the backdrop of the corner store, the construction site, the alleyway.

 

Asked about his views on the state-of-the-art scene in the Creative Capital, Crenca says, “First of all, I love Providence. It’s where my father‘s family first settled coming from Italy. As far as the Providence scene, I believe it’s still evolving, as it should, and hopefully always will. Covid certainly slowed the pace, but it seems most folks are back on track. I think there are a lot of new young voices that are insisting on being heard. A very good thing.”

 

 

Umberto Crenca is one of the city’s most impactful cultural visionaries and his recent body of work is a celebration of the place that he helped to shape. His exhibition at WaterFire Arts Center promises to be one of the most important surveys of work by a Rhode Island artist in recent memory and will offer viewers from across the city and beyond an opportunity to see Providence, and Bert Crenca, anew.

 

 

Umberto Crenca’s exhibition Divine Providence will be on view at the WaterFire Arts Center at 475 Valley Street in Providence from October 12 -  November 12, 2023. There will be an opening reception on Thursday, October 12 from 5-8 pm. For more information, visit www.waterfire.org.

 

Learn more about Umberto Crenca at his website www.umbertocrenca.com.