Pruchansky

*
There is a certain vibe in the Bloc 11 Cafe in Union Square, Somerville. You can expect the excited screams of kids with their beleaguered parents in quick pursuit, as the tykes explore the inviting jail cell in the back of the cafe. There are the catcalls from the baristas to the patrons to pick up their fare. There is the smoky and scratched voice of Louis Armstrong singing Baby It’s Cold Outside on a warm morning in May. And on this morning Alison Pruchansky joined me at my table with the remnants of my morning repast: smoked mackerel, a plain, pedestrian bagel, with artisanal tomatoes brushed off to the side.

Alison Pruchansky is a Somerville artist who has a studio at the Vernon Street Studios. She has her own business, Ample Art and Design, where she now primarily works with corporate clients to select art – often her own – to add to the interior design of their offices. She also works as a gallery coordinator at the Chase Young Gallery in Boston.

Pruchansky has been trained as an artist at Skidmore and the Sotheby Institute of Art in London. She does mixed media painting on canvas. I viewed a selection of her small canvases. They primarily focus on flowers. They seem like a dream of florid blossoms, heightened by the backgrounds, that seem to almost lift the work off the canvas. Her use of vivid color engages the eye.

Pruchansky is mostly a painter. She uses acrylics, watercolors, puffy paints and the like, and experiments with them.

Living in Somerville and working at the Vernon Street Studios with a number of accomplished artists surely helps her own art.

Pruchansky shares her concern with the cost of housing in Somerville. She has noticed the displacement of a number of artists because of gentrification, and hopes to some extent this will abate.

She is engaged in the art community. She is the Asst. Coordinator for Somerville Open Studios, and has bought a home with her husband in the city. Like her painting, Pruchansky is sure to flower, here, in the Paris of New England.

For more information, go to: http://ampleartdesign.com