From the Israel-Hamas war to the mass shooting in Lewiston, Maine, and beyond, it has been a terrible month of violence and grief. “Evening’s Evening,” Crystalle Lacouture’s exhibition at Praise Shadows Art Gallery, is a balm. “The gentlest of shows,” I scribbled in my notebook as I walked through.
Loss and care are at the heart of Lacouture’s art. Her mother, Marlene Adelmann, received a terminal cancer diagnosis in the early days of the pandemic and had to limit in-person contact. That’s when the artist began a daily devotional practice of drawing in gouache and colored pencil on paper targets from shooting ranges. These small, sunny-colored, mostly symmetrical abstractions read like sacred geometry — full of shapes and patterns that may recur in nature and religious symbolism. On each one, Lacouture inscribes “MAMA,” a murmuring mantra of love...
