Michelle Mercaldo, an artist and master craftsperson in her own right, is hosting a strong group show in her jewelry showroom, featuring the work of Isabel Riley, John Guthrie, and Judy Riola. Michelle’s own practice is in fine metalwork, and that sensibility, precision, and materiality, with a feel for surface, inform whose work she chooses to put on her walls.
Judy Riola’s oil paintings place the viewer in a post-human world where sofas and gorillas in the woods are no big deal. What reads at first as innocent, almost storybook, quickly curdles into something stranger. Animals are guardians and caretakers for one another, and landscapes are on the verge of dissolving into the figures that inhabit them. Riola’s small ceramic sculptures are wall-mounted and paired with each painting. She says the pairings were unintentional, but a natural dialogue emerges, and I couldn’t help but smile at a duck-like figure from the painting above it seemingly come to life.
Riola’s paintings are rich with small brushstrokes of saturated color, reminding me of Vuillard’s impressionist parlor scenes. Her work provides us with intimate and wise explorations of human relationships.
Here, John Guthrie’s work feels more human-scale and softer, a shift for an artist I’ve associated with hard-edged geometric paintings. Alongside a group of subtly glazed sculptures that refer to portraits, he shows a series of smaller monochromatic, gestural acrylic paintings on paper. They feel fresh and spontaneous, a natural extension of his longstanding interest in symbolic form, now pushed into material experimentation and quieter transformation.
Isabel Riley combines liquid and solid, embedding and appliquéing metal scavenged along her way, until the pieces read as small icons: part formal exercise, part talisman, carrying emotional and spiritual weight. Riley has an eye for detail and precision, while also allowing her materials to do what they will. Her panel paintings and small box-like sculptures, formed of plaster, metal, and wood, reveal patterns that remind me of sacred objects in old cathedrals: precious for their handmade, worn, gilded surfaces.
Together, the three make a good argument for the show’s premise: Riola’s clay creatures escaping into two dimensions, Riley’s icons blurring painting and relic, Guthrie’s glazed portraits behaving like paintings — the line between image and object is more porous than we usually admit.
Image vs Object, Michele Mercaldo Jewelry, 46 Waltham Street #1A, Boston, MA 02118. A group show featuring 2D and 3D works by Isabel Riley, John Guthrie, and Judy Riola. On view now through September 30, 2026. Hours: Summer (Wed–Fri, 11 am–6 pm); from Sept. 19, Wed–Sat, 11 am–6 pm.
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About the writer: Adria Arch is a Boston-based sculptor and painter. Her work is included in many private and public collections, including Google headquarters in Boston, the DeCordova Sculpture Park and Museum, Fidelity Corporation, and the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston. Arch has shown extensively in New England: Boston Sculptors Gallery, Brattleboro Art Museum in Vermont, and the Danforth Museum in Framingham, MA and others. Her work was recently featured at the San Luis Obispo Museum of Art and the Boston City Hall Atrium Gallery.