Brian Fox, a local sports and celebrity artist of national renown, donated a one of a kind painting depicting Mark Wahlberg in “The Fighter” to the Mark Wahlberg Youth Foundation. The painting, unveiled and autographed by Wahlberg at his Celebrity Golf Tournament Pre-Event Party, is the product of over 100 hours of work.

The Pre-Event Party took place June 24 at Tasty Burger on Boylston Street. Proceeds directly benefit the Mark Wahlberg Youth Foundation, a charitable organization dedicated to improving the lives of inner city youth through a working partnership with other organizations.

Fox, who is practiced in painting both sports figures and celebrities, found depicting Wahlberg in his role as legendary fighter Micky Ward to be both a satisfying combination of his two subjects and a wonderful way to contribute to the community.

Fox notes that in addition to respecting Wahlberg for his incredible acting talent, he is also has a great appreciation for his continued commitment to to his local roots and the community that defined his childhood.

On working in Boston, Fox states, “I enjoy working as an artist in this area. I have been extremely fortunate to paint many athletes from all over the world, but I do enjoy when the opportunity arrives to paint the Boston teams.”

Fox described the donation of the painting as one of the high points of his career, noting, “I feel blessed and thankful to be able to do this for a living, and to work with athletes, celebrities and organizations to give back as much as I can.”

ROME — The “Gagosian Gallery,” from February 3 will present the exhibition “Sanctuary,” a group of forty-one black and white photographs made by George Crewdson in the legendary Cinecittà studios in Rome. The abandoned outdoor film sets have become the subject of, rather than the mere setting for, his pictures. Moving through the empty streets of “Ancient Rome” at the beginning and end of the day, he has captured the palpable atmospheres. Crewdson was born in 1962 in Brooklyn, New York and hid photographs are included in numerous museums and public collections around the world including Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and so on.

In the “Sanctuary” exhibition, Crewdson’s focus is on scenographic architecture as the principal subject underscores the illusory techniques that he has previously used to construct his scenes and actions. The series contains certain characteristics of a documentary film by which is exposed the hidden life of movies and their artifacts that remain once production has ceased. The intimate scale of the black-and-white photographs serves to further intensify the poignancy of each deserted scene.

The exhibition is at the Gagosian Gallery in Rome on Francesco Crispi Street from February 3 to March 5.

ROME — The exhibition “Rituals of Life” is accessible to visitors to the Vatican Museums will be on display for all of 2011.

“Rituals of Life” is a journey through the spirituality and culture of the Aboriginal people of Australia through the collection brought together in the Ethnological Museum of the Vatican Museums. “Rituals of Life” was collated by Fr. Nicola Mapelli, Curator of the Ethnological Collections of the Vatican Museums, with the support and collaboration of the National Museum of Australia through the work of Senior Indigenous curator Margo Neale and Katherine Aigner; and with the assistance of Nadia Fiussello.

The objects of the exhibition were prepared and organised thanks to the care and competent restoration undertaken on the works of art displayed by the Poly-Material laboratory of the Vatican Museums, coordinated by Stefania Pandozy. The exhibition “Rituals life” is permeated by spirituality and allusions to the ancestral world. The centrality of the indigenous art is strongly connected to their spirituality and you can find part of the spirituality in the exhibition “Rituals life”.

ROME — After 26 years of restoration work, the Temple of Venus in the Roman Forum is set to reopen tomorrow. A monumental temple will be returned to the city of Rome.

The space between the Basilica of Maxentius and the Valley of the Colosseum is taken up with the remains of the great temple of the two goddesses Venus and Roma. This was built according to the wishes of the Emperor Hadrian on the entrance hall of the Domus Aurea, Nero’s Golden House.

The whole project was conceived by the Emperor on the model of Greek temples and it emphasizes how greatly he was inspired by the Greeks in creating his own image as sovereign ruler. The temple was constructed with a separate “cella” for each goddess. The revival of the worship of Venus, the mother of Aeneas and of the Julian family, and the inauguration of the cult of the goddess Roma Eterna were fundamental aspects of Hadrian’s political and religious policies. Hadrian’s power was founded on the worship of Rome and of the Emperor himself.

In the past the abandonment of the building and the subsequent looting of the facilities beginning in the VII century, when Emperor Heraclius grants to Pope Honorius (625-638) tiles on the roof of the brass to use them to St. Peter. Today it’s possible visit the Temple of Venus again.

NEW YORK — When new acquaintances learn that Anna Hrachovec knits professionally, she receives varied responses. “Some people say ‘oh, that’s nice,’ and I often hear that their aunt knits, or their sister knits,” she says. “And then some people get very excited about it, which is fun.”

Hrachovec (huh-ROCK-uh-vic) maintains the knitting website MochimochiLand.com, which, in the parlance of the hip, is not your grandmother’s sweater. Since launching the site in 2007, Hrachovec has shared and sold patterns for knit toys of her own design. Her book of knitting patterns, “Knitting Mochimochi,” was released in June, and she most recently produced a knit installation, “Greetings from Mochimochi,” for Gallery Hanahou in Manhattan.

The installation is a culmination of Hrachovec’s inspired and occasionally twisted mind. Spread across a table in the gallery space (with a few rogue characters climbing windowsills and walls), Mochimochi Land features rat-infested skyscrapers, a rainbow covered in unicorns, a hot-pink God with Elvis sideburns sitting on a cloud, imposter Santas, self-actualizing snowmen, and swamp monsters. The installation was built around a model train — with a knit cover, of course — that she calls a “giant freakshow of a worm,” which follows a fixed route, occasionally malfunctions, and “enjoys British sitcoms and pistachios.” Many of the inhabitants are no bigger than your thumb, and most inanimate objects — cacti, bulldozers, gravestones — have little black eyes that stare back at you.

Hrachovec began knitting while she was an exchange student in Japan, and she cites Japanese kawaii design as a primary inspiration for her patterns. “I like the genre of Hello Kitty that’s extremely simple design, and I do like the big vacant eyes,” Hrachovec says. “The simplicity and smaller appendages — it does have an automatic cued response in your brain that it’s something you want to love. But I think the simplicity also means that you can read a lot of personality into the thing you’re looking at, because then it’s kind of ambiguous — if it’s something that’s just cute or something a little bit sinister.”

A Tulsa native, Hrachovec studied film and Japanese language at Dartmouth. Following another stint in Japan, she landed a job in New York at CWC International, a creative agency that finds placement for illustrators with magazines and advertising agencies. When CWC decided to launch a Soho gallery, Hrachovec turned their new logo into three-dimensional toys for her colleagues, which got her excited about other toys she could create.

“I do think a lot of people appreciate that I design toys but they’re not, like, dolls, or anything specific that would just be for children or just for girls,” she says.

Hrachovec began posting her toys on Flickr in 2006, and a few people noticed and offered to test-knit patterns for her. Soon after she launched MochimochiLand.com, which she named for the Japanese phrase “mochi mochi,” which dually functions as an onomatopoeia and an adjective for when something is sticky and squishy, like a mochi rice ball. The transition from working for CWC International has been gradual, but now Hrachovec primarily designs knitting patterns for a living.

While her anarchistic characters may sometimes seem to run the show, her website asserts that Mochimochi Land is “a place where knitted toys and people can live together in a spirit of tolerance.” In that vein, New York has been inspiring for Hrachovec, since it is home to so many creative people and galleries that can give her work broad exposure. Before deciding on the fantastical Mochimochi Land installation, she considered knitting a map of New York. “I love looking at maps of the city and different neighborhoods, and seeing things coming together in a very chaotic sort of way,” she says.

When asked how her parents describe her chosen profession to their friends, Hrachovec laughs. “I don’t know exactly. I think that they probably make a funny face, and are like, oh, you know, she lives in New York and likes to be creative,” she says. “And they always use that word, ‘creative,’ which is like patting me on the head.” She says the publication of her book helped legitimize her newly found profession, and her parents recently visited to see the gallery installation.

“I guess I knew that knitting was popular again this decade, but I was really surprised to see how many knitters are online, and they also very much use the internet for their hobby,” Hrachovec says. “I often get photos of the stuff that they make from my patterns, so it’s really fun to see.”

“Greetings from Mochimochi” is on view at Gallery Hanahou now through October 29.

ROME — Italy’s STEN & LEX present their work in the United States, in New York, at the Brooklynite Gallery together with another street artist called Gaia.

They prefer black and white using half shades and therefore dots and lines, because, observing the art from a distance, there are chiaroscuros that make the images realistic. But in their more recent work, however, they have used the four-color process which involves using superimposed transparent colors. Sten&Lex fall exhibition in New York City is a big step for their work.

They are widely considered to be the pioneers of “stencil graffiti” in Italy. Best known for introducing their “halftone stencil” technique, these two self-proclamined “Hole School” artists spend ample time hand-cutting pixel dots and lines to compose their imagery which is best viewed from a distance. For the first time, starting this weekend, they’ll be showing with Gaia ‘Portraits’ at Brooklynite Gallery.

The subjects of portraits comes from the historic Italian archives they’ve rescued from the 1960s, 70s and 80s. Just go to the exhibition and try to discover what does it mean the art of stencil for them.

The exhibit runs at the Brooklinite Gallery, 334 Malcolm X Blvd. Brooklyn from Saturday through November 13, from 7-10 p.m.

ROME — Barberini’s is one of the city’s most beautiful and imposing palaces dating back to the baroque.

Palazzo Barberini, on Quattro Fontane street, last weekend celebrated the inauguration of the recently restored gallery. The public’s focus is centered on one of the highlights of the collection, Raphael’s enigmatic painting "La Fornarina." Known in English as “Portrait of a Young Woman.”

Palazzo Barberini was built in the first half of the 17th century for the Barberini family, and three architects were involved in the building’s design. The first was Carlo Maderno, who began work in 1627 and was assisted by his nephew Francesco Borromini, while it was Gian Lorenzo Bernini who oversaw the building’s completion in 1633. Until recently, in addition to the palazzo being home to the state-run National Gallery of Ancient Art, a section of the building was used by the officer’s club of the Italian armed forces. Palazzo Barberini is a very interesting museum to visit. Also who likes Raphael should go just for admire "La Fornarina" portrait. The woman is pictured with an oriental style hat and bare breasts. She is making the gesture to cover her left breast, or to turn it with her hand, and is illuminated by a strong artificial light coming from the external.

The collection of the National Gallery of Ancient Art of Barberini Palace is mainly of Italian painting with works by Piero della Francesca, Fra Angelico, Filippo Lippi, Lorenzo Lotto, Andrea del Sarto, Perugino, Caravaggio, Canaletto, Guercino, Pietro da Cortona and so on. Newly renovated, this museum offers paintings from Italian artists, as well as Dutch and Flemish works. If you have the chance, just visit this beautiful museum.

ROME — On the occasion of the fourth centenary of Caravaggio’s death, many of his works of art will tour Italy and the world. In Rome, for example, there are only a few days left to admire his art at the Scuderie del Quirinale (until June 13).

Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio (29 September 1571 — 18 July 1610) was an Italian artist active in Rome, Naples, Malta and Sicily between 1593 and 1610. His intensely emotional realism and dramatic use of lighting had a formative influence on the Baroque school of painting.

Neither the cursed artist not the atheist, this is a new Caravaggio, differing greatly from the stereotypes, a man of profound spirituality and one of art’s greatest innovators, who emerges from the documentary investigations of the National Committee for the celebrations of the fourth centenary of his death, which will be made public in exhibitions, conferences and publications throughout 2010.The anniversary of the fourth centenary provides an opportunity for redefining through highly scientific initiatives the Maestro’s real human and artistic profile and for providing moments of in-depth analysis and reflection on his extraordinary pictorial production. Thanks to the flourishing of studies, Merisi’s biography had largely been reconstructed, although the stereotypes formulated overtime often run the risk of reducing his complex personality to the easy and inappropriate image of a "cursed artist" (a description borrowed from the end of 19th century "cursed poets").

The objective of the many events, is not to make known Caravaggio, perhaps the most appreciated artist in history, but rather to better investigate his work. Recent studies have in fact provided a significant increase in the number of sources, and diagnostic testing on his paintings are revealing unknown and fundamental details of the techniques he used. This includes the manner in which he used drawing in a number of paintings, of which, for example, there are a number of traces in the "Boy with a Fruit Basket."

The Banksy buzz has been building around Boston since the subversive street artist’s film "Exit through the Gift Shop" opened at Cambridge’s Kendall Square Cinema in late April, but over the last few days the hype has reached new heights, and with good reason.

Finally, Boston has been blessed with some Banksy of its own. On a wall adjacent an Essex Street parking lot at the border of Chinatown in downtown Boston and on another Essex Street over the Charles in Cambridge on the side of a Super Cuts building, graffiti has surfaced that is widely believed to be the work of the ever-elusive guerrilla artist himself.

The works resemble traditional Banksy pieces in terms of style, satire, and social commentary, but no one can ever really be sure what’s authentic and what’s imitation. However, most of the people I talked to today seemed convinced that these were legitimate. And I am on board with the believers. Even if they really are the work of the anonymous artist, that doesn’t necessarily mean that he was the one who actually put them up; it’s well known that Banksy has a team and isn’t solely responsible for everything that goes up in his name. Still, I’d like to think the illustrious Banksy, himself, was crawling the streets of Boston at ungodly hours, hooded with cans in hand, searching for the perfect places to play his pranks.

This Boston resident is happy that Banksy has left his mark here, but we’ll have to wait and see how other citizens respond—namely the owners of the buildings he tagged. I will say, though, that when I went to both sites today, there were small crowds at each taking pictures and discussing the work; build on Banksy buzz, build on.

To read more about Banksy, check out this issue’s feature, "Banksy: A Postmodern Pioneer."

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