OFFICE ART EXHIBITS — Artist of the Quarter
At Peridot Family Law we strive to create a welcoming, calm atmosphere in our office. We prioritize wellness and believe in the power of art to heal. For the wellbeing and enrichment of our clients and staff we present the work of Boston area artists in our offices through our “Artist of the Quarter” exhibition program.
Here are our most recent featured artists:
Randi Freundlich
Randi Freundlich's photography is featured at Peridot Family Law for the third quarter of 2024. She is showing selections from her series "Children of the World", a collection of stories, in photographs and words, about children of immigrant families who live in the Boston area.
In Randi's words: "I’ve always been interested in my own family’s immigrant origins. Where did we come from, and how does that make us who we are? How do parents, who emigrated to the U.S. from other places, adapt to their new world?
I met many immigrant families in my job as a social worker, and was fascinated to learn more about their lives. I began photographing the children, and listened to how they understood their family’s immigrant story. Photographing them in their homes, I love to see how they ‘become Americans’, and at the same time hold on to some of their identity from the home country. A 12 year-old boy said, “I was born in America, but my parents are from the Caribbean. I’m American by citizenship, but ‘American’ is just a label… my blood is from Dominica.
I want to introduce these different worlds and cultures to a wider audience. My hope is that the viewer will learn something about the ‘children of the world’ here among us.”
As of June 2024, there are 58 countries represented. The series has been on exhibit at the Boston Convention and Exhibition Center, Boston City, and Somerville City Hall. A slideshow of images was included in the Dreams of Freedom exhibit at the Skywalk Observatory at the Prudential Center. The project is ongoing.
Randi Freundlich is a photographer and former social worker, living in Somerville, MA. She received her BFA in Photography from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and her Master’s Degree in Social Work from Boston University. Randi has exhibited in and around Boston; her first solo exhibition was at the Boston Convention Center.
Learn more about Randi and her photography at www.randifreundlichphotography.com.
Ruth Susen Riley
Ruth Susen Riley is Peridot Family Law’s featured artist for the second quarter of 2024.
Raised in a rural New England town, Ruth spent her childhood roaming freely outside in the uninhabited acres around her home. The textures of plants and animals in the context of their settings captured her eye and imagination. Through gardening and caring for the land and various farm animals, she developed an abiding love for the natural world. Her images have consistently relied on the inspiration she derives from the landscape and her relationship to it, both in general terms and specifically.
Ruth's journey has taken her across the country and back to New England. She began with printmaking and now works mostly with oil paints. Her goal in painting is to continue to explore not just her psychological understanding of imagery but to be attentive to the process and allow it to lead her in creating a work of art.
Galleries throughout the United States in Chicago, New York, the Butler Institute in Ohio, the Downey Museum in California, Nevada, Maryland and numerous other venues have shown Ruth's work in both solo shows and group exhibits. Her work is included in private collections throughout New England, the U.S. and Europe, and in corporate collections in New England.
Narrative has always been and continues to be integral to Ruth's image making. Exploring the connections humans have with the natural world has been the ongoing theme of her work.
Learn more about Ruth and her artwork at www.rsrileyfineart.com
Cindy Fenichel
Cindy Fenichel's artwork was featured at Peridot Family Law for the first quarter of 2024.
Cindy Fenichel has always had a passion for drawing and painting. She began taking art classes in her teens, and has taken classes at different museums and schools in New York and Massachusetts over the years. She focused on practicing as an attorney for several years, but her love of art never left. When her children were young, Cindy took time off from work to raise them...and began to focus on artwork again. It was at this time that she discovered her love of watercolors. Watercolor is spontaneous and some find it challenging to control the movement of the paint. Cindy loves the looseness of the medium as much as the images she tries to convey.
Most of her paintings are inspired by her love of nature and her love of travel. Her favorite subjects include animals, flowers and landscapes of places she has visited (such as "Smith Rock, Oregon", above). Painting a scene from a place she has hiked is like revisiting it and capturing its mood. Cindy is a member of the Natick Watercolor Connection, a group of artists who paint together once a week.
Luanne Witkowski
Luanne E Witkowski’s artwork was featured at Peridot Family Law during the fourth quarter of 2023.
Luanne works in a wide range of media and reflective social practice. Using mixed materials and processes her constructions, paintings, prints, and multi-media exhibits are reflections on observations of the natural world and humanity through her experiences creating environmental and site-specific installations. Luanne’s pieces reflect her curiosity and interest in ephemera vs eternal, and she also produces ‘portraits of place’.
Luanne’s works are in collections throughout the United States and abroad. She has been a member of the Kingston Gallery in Boston since 2005. Her organizational affiliations include the United South End Artists, Mission Hill Artist Collective, and the Provincetown Art Association and Museum. Witkowski is a recipient of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts Lifetime Achievement in Art & Commerce Commendation, UMB Faculty Award, and Wellfleet Boathouse AIR.
In addition to her studio practice, she is the Assistant Design Studio Director, adjunct faculty, and LR-MFA Mentor and 2019 AIR at Massachusetts College of Art and Design. She teaches Creative Thinking in the Critical & Creative Thinking (CCT) graduate program at the University of Massachusetts-Boston.
Carmela Cattuti
Carmela is a painter and author of three books. Coming from a New York Italian family where creativity was celebrated, she knew from an early age she would become an artist. She has traveled extensively in western Europe and received her graduate degree in English Literature from Boston College.
Carmela’s career as an artist began in the early 1990s when she studied at the Museum of Fine Arts and then at the Academy of Realist Art, Boston. She continues to study at the Academy to hone her skills in realism. Carmela exhibits throughout the Boston area and online and was a first winner in the Masters Academy of Art Head Start Competition 2022.
CJ Lori
C.J. Lori is an experienced oil painter whose compositions allow others to perceive the natural world through her eyes as she explores the relationship between the environment and humanity. Her work reflects her interest in literature, anthropology, and psychology, as well as an abiding fascination with the natural world. She often exaggerates or distorts color, form, and composition to emphasize sensations that are often contradictory: clarity and mystery, excitement and sorrow, beauty and decay.
C.J. works with tiny brushes for fine detail, and she uses intricacy to “celebrate the splendor that surrounds us while acknowledging its inevitable ruin.” Based in Brookline, Massachusetts, she has exhibited her paintings throughout New England and in New York and Chicago. She had several solo exhibitions at Galatea Fine Art in Boston, work at the Danforth Museum in Framingham, and she won first prize in Paint!, a national exhibition juried by artist Gerry Bergstein at the South Shore Arts Center.
C.J. served as Vice-President of the National Women’s Caucus for Art, President of their Boston Chapter, and was Exhibitions Chair and Vice President at Galatea Fine Art in Boston from 2017–2020. In her free time, she enjoys reading, traveling, watching professional football, and hiking in the woods or by the sea.
Mary Bucci McCoy
Mary Bucci McCoy is a painter, educated as a ceramic sculptor, whose intimately scaled, non-objective paintings are materially resonant, poetic meditations on the relationships between the human, animal, vegetal and mineral. Based in Essex County on the coast north of Boston, Massachusetts, she has had solo exhibitions at venues inlcuding Gray Contemporary, Houston, TX; CG2 Gallery, Nashville, TN; Kingston Gallery, Boston, MA; the Artists Foundation, Boston, MA; Montserrat College of Art, Beverly, MA; and Salem State University, Salem, MA. Her work has been included in numerous group exhibitions at venues including Museum St. Wendel, St. Wendel, Germany; Boeckercontemporary, Heidelberg, Germany; Marquee Projects, Bellport, NY; Key Projects, Long Island City, NY; The Curator Gallery, New York, NY; Gray Contemporary, Houston, TX; The Neon Heater, Findlay, OH; Aqua Art Miami art fair; Divisible, Dayton, OH; Tiger Strikes Asteroid, Philadelphia, PA; Southern New Hampshire University, Manchester, NH; Art Complex Museum, Duxbury, MA; Merrimack College, Andover, MA; and Emmanuel College, Boston, MA.
She has been an artist in residence at the Studios at Mass MoCA, and her work has also been supported by a merit-based residency grant from the Vermont Studio Center, a Painting Fellowship from the Massachusetts Cultural Council, and Faculty Development Awards from Montserrat College of Art in Beverly, MA. Her work is held in numerous private collections.
Mary was born in northern New Jersey and spent her formative years in the greater Philadelphia area. She holds degrees from Tufts University, Medford, MA and the School of the Museum of Fine Arts/Tufts University, Boston, MA. In addition, she has studied ceramic sculpture and glaze technology at l'Ecole des Arts Decoratifs in Geneva, Switzerland (now Haute École d’Art et de Design Genève).
If you are interested in being one of our featured artists, please visit our Opportunities page for information about submitting your work.
