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."

For photo licensing rights e-mail newsroom@blastmagazine.com

MIAMI — On a hot day in April, on the West end of Wynwood, I visited the Center For Visual Communication on the edge of what is referred to as the Fashion District of Miami. Enter the main gallery and ask the attendant to take you next door to the Project Space, a temporary venue showing the exhibition Beyond the Daily Life: Guerra de la Paz and Teresa Diehl curated by Julian Navarro.

Walking around the three-room exhibition, you would probably over look this work. It is an all white installation, on the floor of an unfinished room, with a low level audio track playing. Escape the warehouse wasteland of hot dogs and bulk bling and absorb this cool contemplative landscape.

The installation, Hover, by Teresa Diehl is made of three inch figurines of humans and animals standing around a mini mountain. The sound of a helicopter comes in and out making it impossible not to think of Vietnam. Spotlights cast long shows of the mound against the wall, highlighting the details in the figures. You realize they are women carrying baby sheep, the fragile, and including the landscape the whole work is made of the same destructible material, glycerin, or soap.

This work resonates- you can flip through our chapters of vulnerability- war and natural disasters, and the piece still speaks to the present. The mind flashes to Haiti, the land of undrinkable water, sick soil, and poverty.

The longer you spend in the room, the long shadows, low audio, and white sculpture, you realize what is missing from the piece is the hysteria. There is no frenzy. The figurines are not pushing to the top like one would expect, there is just a natural force swirling them up were we naturally seem to want to go. The work is a beautiful and subtle mediation on impermanence, loss, the human condition and the repetition of time.

Guerra de la Paz, the collaborative team of Alain Guerra and Neraldo de la Paz, the other artists showing in the exhibition, like always, do not disappoint with their meticulously woven, playful sculptures commenting on contemporary culture. The colorful pieces provide a nice contrast to the ghost white work of Teresa Diehl. As you leave exhibition, take note of the irony of Guerra de la Paz exhibiting in the heart of Miami’s Fashion District.

Center for a Visual Communication
Beyond the Daily Life: Guerra de la Paz and Teresa Diehl
541 NW 27th St. (Next door at the Project Space)
Tuesday through Friday: 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.
Saturday: Noon to 5 p.m.
http://www.visual.org/index.html
The show is up until the space gets rented

ROME — The countdown has begun, and a month before it opens to the public, on May 30 for the MAXXI designed by Zaha Hadid with its exhibitions and its guidelines.

The MAXXI, the National Museum of 20th Century Art, is a foundation set-up by the Ministry of Cultural Heritage and Activities. Inside the MAXXI there are two different museums. One dedicated to art and the other to architecture. The museum is in synergy with all Rome’s international realities, starting with a cooperation agreement for establishing a partnership currently being negotiated with Fendi, the legendary maison that has always been sensitive to art and the signs of contemporary life.

The museum is a starkly 21st century building that stands out in B.C. Rome.

The opening of the MAXXI will mark a great moment for contemporary art as well as for Roman and Italian culture, involving all the more important state and private institutions. Together with the Music for Rome Foundation, a musical pathway has been created that will accompany visitors during the inauguration on May 28th and 29th. There will be more musical surprises for viewers with a project by the American Academy in Rome on May 30th. Furthermore, the National Gallery of Modern Art, together with other institutions belonging to the AMACI circuit, is participating in the museum inaugural exhibition loaning works of art. The MAXXI’s art and architectural collections, inspired to Zaha Hadid’s fluid shapes, interpret the museum’s interdisciplinary characteristics.

ROME — "Without having seen the Sistine Chapel one can form no appreciable idea of what one man is capable of achieving" said J. W. Goethe in 1787 in Rome.

The Vatican has a very detailed, three-dimensional, Flash tour of the Sistine Chapel. There’s nothing new about the technology itself, but the implementation new for the historic chapel.

The wall paintings were executed by the most respected painters of the 15th century: Pietro Perugino, Sandro Botticelli, Domenico Ghirlandaio, Cosimo Rosselli, Luca Signorelli and their respective workshops, which included Pinturicchio, Piero di Cosimo and Bartolomeo della Gatta.

Sistine Chapel is the best-known chapel in the Apostolic Palace.It is famous for its architecture, evocative of Solomon’s Temple of the Old Testament, and its decoration which has been frescoed throughout by the greatest Renaissance artists including Michelangelo, Raphael, Bernini, and Sandro Botticelli. Under the patronage of Pope Julius II, Michelangelo painted 12,000 square feet (1,100 m2) of the chapel ceiling between 1508 and 1512. He resented the commission, and believed his work only served the Pope’s need for grandeur. However, today the ceiling, and especially The Last Judgement, are widely believed to be Michelangelo’s crowning achievements in painting.

The chapel takes its name from Pope Sixtus IV, who restored the old Cappella Magna between 1477 and 1480.

Now it’s possible admire the Sistine Chapel online. Of course it’s a different view but it’s a nifty experience, a 360-degree, zoomable simulacra of the legendary chamber, with its assorted frescos, some of the most famous religious artworks in history.

Boston might be more famous for its museums than its nightlife, but there’s certainly plenty of both.  When you combine the two, sophisticated Bostonians turn out in droves.  "Gardner After Hours," held at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum on the third Thursday of each month, is just such an event.

Maybe you’ve downed cocktails in a museum before?  If so, you might be expecting music along the lines of a string quartet.  But here, the atmosphere is completely different.  Once you get past the velvet ropes, you’re not greeted with Haydn or Mozart.  Instead you’ll hear the thumbing sounds of spin professionals like DJ Coralcola.  The subdued lighting and tightly-packed crowd adds to the relaxed and informal atmosphere.

Unlike many cocktail parties, there’s more to do here than eat, drink and talk.  On any given night there might be live musicians performing in one part of the museum, informal tours in another part, and people trying their hands at sketching somewhere else.

But best of all, there’s the collection itself.  Art by masters like Botticelli, Vermeer, and Rembrandt share the space with signed letters from George Washington and Teddy Roosevelt.  There’s so much to look at and talk about, boredom is impossible.

Once folks get a little loosened up (Bellinis are a cocktail of choice since the building is a facsimile Venetian palazzo), friends and strangers alike ask each other questions about the amazing stuff on display or share their theories about the infamous 1990 robbery, a still-unsolved heist that netted $500 million in art.

The party ends at just 9:30 pm, so think of this as a unique place to start your night before walking to a bar in Brigham Circle or hopping a cab to nightclubs on Lansdowne Street, in the Theater District, or wherever the spirit takes you.

Isabella Stewart Gardner, affectionately known as "Mrs. Jack," had a reputation as a party girl.  She’d be glad to know that her palatial former home, now the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, is once again host to music, laughter, and the sound of clinking glasses.

Gardner After Hours, Third Thursdays 5:30-9:30 p.m., see "gardnermuseum.org/afterhours" for price schedule

Here at Blast, we’re big fans of The Good Men Project, and we’ve put our pens to Shepard Fairey and his Boston drama.

In this video, the iconic artist discusses modern manhood for The Good Men Project during a panel discussion in Los Angeles.

ROME — The plaque is already there, the old sign for a “Museo di Roma” that was never really created on the ashes of the former Pantanella pasta factory in Via dei Cerchi.

The approval of this project, costing 100 million Euros and several years worth of work, was announced a few days ago by the Municipality of Rome’s Councilor for Culture, Umberto Croppi.

“The project has been approved, and the memorandum from the City Council has been passed,” Croppi said. “We now need to identify financial resources within a framework of creating partnerships with private sponsors and start operations with an international competition based on a meta-project presented by the Municipal Superintendence for Cultural Heritage. Designers will have to find architectural solutions that will work with the cultural and conceptual aspects outlined for this museum."

The future Museum of the City of Rome, with a planned 2013 inauguration, will not only be a container for art and will not only have on show the extraordinary Torlonia collection, but will also include didactic material and the reconstruction in 3D of a number of rooms from ancient Rome.

More than a museum, the project intends to create a center of orientation and communication to ensure an understanding of the Urbe, both ancient and modern, experiencing through interactive journeys the city’s stratifications and transformations.

Rhode Island artist Brian Fox put together an incredible portrait for the NHL Winter Classic going on today at Fenway Park.

As the Flyers take on the Bruins, it’s Fox’s impeccable style and attention to detail that stands out for the art buffs here at Blast.

His portrait will be featured on the limited edition gameday program, and the original will be auctioned off to fight cancer.

Brian has painted some of the brightest stars around, including the late Jackie Robinson, Keith Richards, Michael Phelps, Johnny Depp, Ray Charles, and Mixed Martial Arts Champion Georges St-Pierre.